Current mood:	accomplished
Entry tags:	assessment, css, exam, floss, foss, free, ita, nautilus, ooo, open source, screenshot, software, style, ubuntu, vitta

Finished and free

I finally caught up and nearly finished preparing one of the VITTA sample examinations for VCE ITA. Well it is 90% done and I can take a breath for a week for a break.

The template I was given wasn't all that original so I doctored it up using open office, ODT and a set of custom style conventions. It might drive the others nuts but it is the way that I work best and makes as much sense as using CSS for web pages. Can easily be stripped out if needed.

Not one of my best efforts and it took a while to get beyond the first blank page. I finally had some fun getting into the swing of thinking good questions by starting with some issues and favourite topics. I know it wasn't very original but I did better to look at the text book and other examination questions for structure, ideas and inspiration.

This is a screenshot of the Nautilus file browser used with Ubuntu 6.10 that I used for a sample question and can be freely downloaded as FLOSS. Shown here are some files on the cdrom. From memory I wanted something generic and was asking a question about file types and sizes. I made this as I thought that it would be good to give the students something that steps slightly outside their familiar file browser comfort zone.

I have figured out that it better to call free, libre open source free software FLOSS instead of FOSS so that the emphasis is on Libre or freedom instead of the ambiguous word free. Nice FLOSS page on WIkipedia that explains this in more detail.