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.

The reaching out to high school students is a second sign of increasing activity for Rosedu. Currently all of the about fifty members are either staff or students from the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers at the university. But for the first time since the group started in 2007, this summer they got together with a second faculty, of Foreign Engineering Studies. "It is at the same university, but it shows we're expanding", says one of Rosedu's members.

Rosedu is also increasing its type of activities. Since its inception in 2007, the group has been offering an annual eight to nine week-long extra curricular course on free software development. To this it added in 2009 the Tech Talks, a series of lectures on software development, security-related concepts, advanced concepts project management software, all involving open source.

This semester the group added two more courses to its roster. The first one focusses on the Android open source operating system, the second one on developing for the web.

Next week Monday the group will launch its latest open source activity. Contacted on IRC earlier this week, group members refrained from giving details. They hinted that it will include a competition for open source contributors.

More information:
Rosedu and Google's Computer Science for High Schools web site
Romanian open source education