The same company offers free, open source OSQA: <a href="http://www.osqa.net/">http://www.osqa.net/</a> Which we use and like for Natural Math: <a href="http://ask.naturalmath.com/">http://ask.naturalmath.com/</a> It is also used at P2PU for their Q&A: <a href="http://qa.p2pu.org/">http://qa.p2pu.org/</a> I accept the software not being free overall, as long as we can offer free use to anyone within our network, which we can both with Qato and the webinar room (as the offer stands through LearnCentral's "Host your own"). This invitation is definitely open to Sugar and IAEP communities! Cheers, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:00 PM, Edward Cherlin <<a href="mailto:echerlin@gmail.com">echerlin@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> Does anybody here know about Qato? Does anybody know of a Free Software alternative? Math Future has some interest in the Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks project, but has not grasped the importance of Free Software in all phases of the work. <div><div></div><div class="h5"> --------------------------- <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/</a> I am happy to announce Math Future received a corporate sponsorship offer from DZone, a technology publishing company. We will now have an instance of their new, enterprise-class platform for knowledge sharing, called Qato. This answers to the needs of Math Future as a network of communities. Consider the network structure of Math Future, which I won't attempt to diagram because of multiple dimensions. It consists of groups with dense connections (everybody talking with everybody), but also more loose and distributed conversations among the groups, as well as some communities with distributed conversations within. Between groups formed by projects, communities and topics of interest, there is much overlap, as people participate in multiple threads. Groups may be long-term, such as the math game group, or short-term, such as School of the Math Future courses that run for a few weeks. The are also "flash mobs" that get together around a one-time topic. It is frustrating trying to have that sort of communication through a forum structure, such as email groups, as many of you noted. When people communicate, they need to subscribe to multiple groups and topics, but not all of them: following a book making or a book review group, a seminar, a presentation discussion, a brainstorm about a math game, and so on. Larger topics and groups need to form sub-topics and sub-groups, which in turn may not involve everybody. Some of the groups involved with Math Future use our webinar room for their one-time or regular meetings, which any project organizer is welcome to do as long as meetings are open. This is supported by Web 2.0 Labs and LearnCentral (Steve Hargadon) sponsorship. During the events, as we ask project leaders The Question, "What does your project need and how can people help?" their answers involve spreading the word and aggregating communication. Some of the projects don't have any social platforms, or only have email lists, though leaders usually participate in other projects' communities. Currently, Math Future members help with such needs by hand, so to speak, through email or their blogs and microblogs. This is better than nothing, but it does not scale well. Qato supports Quora-like interface, but also groups and subgroups within the community. People can follow particular groups for ongoing collaborations, and tags for inter-group communication, and individual topics for one-time discussions. This architecture will allow us to support the book projects, conferences, and mathematics education communities much better, because it matches the way Math Future rolls. Excited and hopeful, Maria Droujkova Make math your own, to make your own math. </div></div>------------------------------------ Each letter sent to Learning From Each Other enters the PUBLIC DOMAIN unless it explicitly states otherwise <a href="http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org" target="_blank">http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org</a> Please be kind to our authors!Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/</a> <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/join" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/join</a> (Yahoo! 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The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. <a href="http://www.earthtreasury.org/" target="_blank">http://www.earthtreasury.org/</a> _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a></blockquote></div>