Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Site Gives Students Web Access to Open Source Computation Tools

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/16/11

A small UK company has launched a set of free open source computation utilities for college students. The Bamboo Toolbox includes access to software developed by open source communities that runs in a Web browser hosted by Hughes Bennett Education. If a student wishes to save computations, he or she can subscribe to a "personal notebook" for a small monthly fee.

A dozen utilities make up the current offerings, including:

  • R Project for statistical analysis and graphical modeling
  • GNU Octave for numerical computations
  • Maxima for manipulation of symbolic and algebraic expressions
  • Objective-C for adding object-oriented features to C routines.

"A significant barrier to the adoption of open source software in higher education has been the cost of installing, configuring, and maintaining software. The result is that there are many excellent open source software packages for students, but, they are not accessible because students and higher education institutions do not have the money and staff in today's difficult economic climate," said Chi Nguyen, editor of the site. "Bamboo Tools removes that barrier by eliminating the cost of installation and maintenance. Now, students and higher education institutions can instantly use the Bamboo Tools software collection with their studies."

A subscription of £2 per month grants the user access to a single notebook for one utility in the toolbox. The notebook works like a wiki, allowing the subscriber to save work done through the software, including previous iterations. Further information can be found here.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • abstract glowing circuit patterns

    Microsoft Reduces Copilot Integrations in Windows 11

    Microsoft is dialing back its aggressive Copilot push in Windows 11, promising a sweeping quality overhaul that puts performance and reliability ahead of AI feature expansion .

  • silhouette of business person facing wall of data

    Why AI Strategy Belongs in the President's Office

    Institutions that are succeeding with AI share one thing in common, and it is not a better committee, a larger budget, or a more sophisticated technology stack. It is a president who never handed off the steering wheel.

  • Profile silhouette of a person thoughtfully touching their chin, overlaid with transparent data visualizations and digital interface elements suggesting artificial intelligence and analytics.

    The Institutional Knowledge Shift Is Reshaping Higher Ed IT

    Higher education IT leaders are navigating a quiet but consequential transition: Experienced team members are retiring or leaving for private-sector roles, and the teams replacing them are smaller, newer, and often stretched thin. The result is a structural shift in how technology decisions are made, executed, and sustained.

  • large cloud icon on the right in an abstract world above a polygon with a dark blue background

    Cloud Security Alliance Expands Focus on Governance and Assurance for Agentic AI Systems

    The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recently announced a series of CSAI Foundation milestones aimed at securing what it calls the agentic control plane, including a new catastrophic risk initiative, CVE Numbering Authority authorization, and the acquisition of two agentic AI specifications.