2026-04-25 –, Fab8.C 204 Schulen Language: English
In December 2025, ten educators and ISOC‑CH members convened at Langstrasse 200 to explore the role of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) in Swiss schools. The discussion reflected classroom experience, technical insight, and policy concerns to identify practical pathways for adoption.
Key outcomes include promoting critical reflection, targeted teacher training, a culture of experimentation, developer requirements, political outreach, and sharing success stories.
This workshop aims to translate those pathways into hands‑on activities, ideally training modules (for educators), and a roadmap for locally controlled, FLOSS‑friendly learning environments.
Participants will leave with concrete steps to integrate FLOSS into curricula, school IT strategies, and community advocacy.
Motivation: December 2025 engagement with educators
In December 2025, ten educators and ISOC-CH members met at Langstrasse 200 to discuss the role of FLOSS in Swiss schools. The conversation combined classroom experience, technical perspectives, and policy concerns, and focused on realistic pathways to increase awareness and adoption of FLOSS in mandatory education. Attendees emphasized the need for both conceptual understanding and practical tools that teachers can use immediately.
From that session we found the following pathways that guide our suggested workshop and follow‑up work:
- Critical reflection: Encourage critical reflection of technology in schools
- Targeted training: See what ways exist to organiez special training for teachers on the social implications of digital tools
- Culture of experimentation: Develop a culture of experimentation and exploration of alternatives for basic digital services
- Developer requirements: Provide concrete requirements and needs to the developer community for a robust, easy‑to‑use FLOSS infrastructure for education.
- Collective political outreach: Contact politicians collectively to explain the problems of digitization in education and propose solutions.
- Share success stories: Share and replicate successful local projects such as FUSS (in Bonzano, Italy, cf. https://fuss.bz.it/) to demonstrate feasible models; watch also out for what the German country of Schleswig-Holstein is doing, emphasizing strongly on FLOSS in the whole public adminstration; this might also affecting schools
ISOC's interest in the school system
The Internet Society (ISOC) is committed to a free and open Internet, which from our POV should also be a topic in the mandatory school system of Switzerland, which is why ISOC's Swiss Chapter (ISOC-CH) wants to help organize and/or join forces for an educational approach which takes FLOSS into account. It can be observed that not only proprietary systems are the predominant or even only systems being used in the school system, but also that Free and Libre/Open Source Systems (FLOSS) are hardly even mentioned.
Making that school and understanding go together
Given that large parts of the Internet infrastrucutre are backed by FLOSS systems, it's vital to at least have FLOSS mentioned in the school system. In more specific cases and classes, FLOSS also allows to effectively show how software works and it can be thematized that it can also be modified and in well-curated cases the difference can easily by shown to (interested) pupils.
School system and the importance of privacy
A FLOSS system cannot automatically make sure that pupils' sensitive data (e.g., behavioural learning data, school marks, psychological assessments / psychograms etc.) is safe from unauthorized third parties, because also a FLOSS system can be run by a party interested in data exploitation; but, with a FLOSS system it's at least possible to have the freedom to run all the necessary tools for schooling in a digitally sovereign form, be that locally or regionally by designated entities with enough resources (e.g., OLAT or Moodle at the ETH Zurich or University of Zurich). This is not possible with proprietary software where an interested school doesn't receive any installable data to go for an approach where user-generated data can effectively be controlled.
Panayotis Antoniadis is co-founder of NetHood.org, a non-profit association that
combines research and action around a wide variety of
participatory processes at the neighbourhood level on
cooperative housing, digital sovereignty, alternative currencies,
and community spaces, among others.
His academic background includes BSc and MSc on
Computer Science (University of Crete), Ph.D. on network economics
(Athens University of Economics and Business), post-doc on federation policies
(Sorbonne University, Paris), and transdisciplinary research
between engineering and urban studies at ETH Zurich, where he
was a senior researcher both at the Information Technology and Electrical
Engineering department (2012-2015), and the Architecture department (2021-2025).
Panayotis has contributed to more than 18 collaborative EU research
projects (FP7, H2020, Horizon Europe), currently with a leading role in
the projects SINCERE, NGI0 Commons Fund, and YOU-DARE, and has been a
visiting researcher in top universities, like the University of Southern California (USC),
Princeton, London School of Economics, and Cambridge.
Panayotis serves also as the chair of the Internet Society
Switzerland Chapter (isoc.ch) and president of the L200 community space
(langstrasse200.ch), and is an active member of the associations
INURA, Neustartschweiz, and Cohab Athens.
