New technologies such as tablet computers and techniques such as online data analysis are heralding a new age of customised learning assistance for young people who are severely disabled, a practitioner has told E-Access Bulletin.

A voice-activated machine combining web search engine technology with 3D printing is giving visually impaired school children in Tokyo the chance to experiment with what could be a glimpse into the future for the creation of live tactile teaching aids.

Libraries in the Czech Republic are sharing and re-using a specialised open source content management system, Kramerius, to preserve historic documents and make them available online. The Kramerius software is developed with the support of the Library of the Academy of Sciences, the National Library, both in Prague, and the Moravian Library in the city of Brno.

A case study on Kramerius was published this week on Joinup.

Advocates of free and open source are warning that the Greek government is going to waste millions of euro on proprietary software licences for the country's schools. They are calling on the Ministry of Education to cancel its latest procurement. "Favouring proprietary software while ignoring the potential of open source, constitutes a choking of the educational process."

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A group of 45 Italian and international advocacy groups of free and open source are pressing the Italian Ministry of Education to make its IT tests for prospective teachers platform independent. The ministry currently only tests their understanding of a single proprietary system. The groups urge the ministry to devise tests "closer to the realities of the IT world".

The ministry did not yet respond to repeated calls by phone and email seeking comments.

Public comment is being invited on a newly updated accessibility standard for students and learners, which focuses on personalising digital learning resources as a method of maximising accessibility for each learner.

Rosedu, a group of open source enthusiasts from the University Politehnica in Bucharest, Romania, is starting to introduce high school students in the country to free and open source software. Supported by Google, the group in late October and early November got together 32 high school pupils, introducing them to Linux and other free software tools.

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The Greek School Network is extensively using open source, reports Panagiotis Angelopoulos, an IT engineer working for national ICT technology research institute Diophantus. Free and open source IT solutions are implemented both on GSN's servers and on school desktops. The solutions are used for teaching and for providing IT services such as email.

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The Ministry for Education for the French speaking part of Belgium wants to know more about how schools in the region use ICT for teaching. The survey is organised by the Claroline project of the ministry. The Walloon-Brussels federation is one of the supporters of the development Claroline, an open source learning management system.

"Many schools are implementing ICT integration projects", writes Michel Damay, Claroline's community manager, in his introduction to the survey. "We wish to know what is the potential in this area."

The Maesydderwen School in the Welsh Powys County Council in the United Kingdom uses open source to run most of its servers. Sirius, the IT firm that supplied the school's software and services, reported last week that school wants to increase its use of free and open source.

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Open source can provide schools with high quality, well-functioning IT solutions at low cost, according to a case study done by VTT, a Finnish government research institute. The researchers looked at the use of Linux and other open source applications by the Kasavuoren Secondary School in Kauniainen, a municipality near Helsinki.

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Two free new learning resources have been released by JISC TechDis, a education advisory service on accessible and inclusive technology, to boost skills for learners with and without disabilities.

The first resource will help learners who use text-to-speech applications: two new voices for text-to-speech were commissioned from specialists CereProc available for free to learners and learning institutes.

eMundus, an open source content management system (CMS) available on Joinup, is designed to help both universities and students in creating a simplified application procedures for Erasmus Mundus programmes. Erasmus Mundus is the European Commission’s cooperation and mobility programme in the field of higher education. Erasmus applicants can submit their application forms with attachments and follow-up the evaluation of their applications by logging on to their profile page.