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Has Free Software Saved Any Schools?
morcego asks: "I think
everyone remembers the case of PCs
for Kids, the Australian group that donates computers for the
poor children, when Microsoft asked them lots of money for the software
on the computers they donated. I am trying to convince schools to start
using free software, and I have heard arguments like 'all free software
initiatives in public schools around the world have failed.' I know this
is not true, but I need cases to show them. So, do you know of any school
(public or not), or other educational institution that has been saved from
paying large amounts of money (and closing its doors) by free
software?" For those interested in this topic, you'll probably
want to read up on the latest salvo in the Microsoft
private
antitrust settlement. It sounds like education, and Open Source, may
now have an official relationship, and things are now getting kicked
into high gear. While it's good to hear about the "SchoolForge" coalition
(no relation to SourceForge or
NewsForge), what educational resources
are currently available to schools from the Open Source arena?
It's used in Albion, WI. Redhat on older Gateway hardware. It sits right along side of the Win95 and Mac boxen. I'm pretty sure they're going to be installing it on the rest of the x86 boxen.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
you should check out OpenSourceSchools. it's a great site that focuses on Open Source in the education system
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
A couple guys I know of started an organization called the OSEF, or Open Source Education Foundation. They basically assemble machines and networks from spare parts, go out to a school and install the gear, free of charge. I know of at least one school they've helped, in downtown Tucson. About a dozen machines remotely administrated from a central server in the back room. Google for them, you might find a link or two.
Bowie J. Poag
Think about it for a second. There are three elements of the equation here: Hardware, Software, and Operations. If we are talking about computers to be used by a school, then first you have to have the boxes, then you have to have something to run on the boxes, and then you have to have somebody who knows how to make it all work. Of the three, the last is probably the biggest expense, and certainly the one that you aren't going to get for free. Even if its just a tech savvy teacher who maintains the things, its going to take a lot of his time to do so... time taken away from his primary job of teaching the kids. QED, it has a cost.
We're using RedHat 7.1 to host webpages here, which has saved quite a bit against the cost of a copy of W2k Pro. Also, if we weren't running Linux, our aging IBM server (60 MHZ, 64 MB of ram) would need to be replaced.
In addition to that, we use Linux in our Cisco networking academies classroom because we can't get any of the software we would need under NT (no doubt it exists, but it would be hard to find, possibly expensive, and likely non-standard). We can use the free FTP, TFTP, and HTTP servers on paticularly ancient PCs(one of our more powerful machines is a 75 Mhz machine with two gigs of SCSI drive!) without the hassles of running Windows (windows will now reboot...).
There was a plan a few years ago to turn the ancient machines on the network into X clients, for which they would be quick, but they are now sluggish W2K machines.
It's been a long time.
Here at Westminster College, Salt Lake City Utah, we have a dozen-or-so-computer lab where every computer is running linux. I'm not quite sure, but I'm pretty sure that it is also the only non-classroom computer lab on campus. No there are not any classes that teach/use linux, but there is a horde of geeks that are every bit as useful as the teachers.
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the University of Sofia is using Linux as the primary operating system in most of the computer rooms to teach students Operating Systems and to handle the internal info. they also use NT workstations for Java and C/C++ education (for C they use Borland C/C++ 3.5 but i really think they must move on to GCC)
so, it looks like this:
-Linux for advanced students and general management
-NT for beginners
Stuyvesant uses Linux for their shell machines, mail servers, web proxies and DNS servers. They also use Linux for a majorityof their lab computers. Many desktops still use Windows, but until office comes out for Linux, things will probably stay that way.
-sirket
This article on OpenSourceSchools.org relates how Australia's Northern Territory has just completed an installation of state- wide network infrastructure in all schools that is based on Linux LAN servers and makes wide use of open source software. I was very impressed with their accomplishment. They use SquirrelMail (PHP) for the mail, and the network infrastructure is Linux. The desktops are all Win 98 but they do include StarOffice as the productivity app so would save some more cash there.
My experience over the last 3 months of OpenSourceSchools.org is that while a complete takeover of Linux in schools is unlikely, there are many places where costly licensing can be replaces with OS equivalents to great savings.
several case studdies
sik
This movement is gaining ground. Here's a ton of sites:
Start with Why Use Open Source Software In Schools to answer your (and your superior's!) questions. Note that Microsoft is trying to keep a stranglehold on this and their salesmen are playing dirty; but we as free software activists have one thing they can not have: integrity. Teach the truth about Open Source, explain that this is the true American way, show how we need to use it in education to teach kids the right way to do things (and to share with neighbors) to make a productive world, and we'll go at it. Academia can't afford to lose itself in proprietary software; as this site explains, with free software we've got a chance for a blossoming in academia.
The K12 Linux in Schools Project
A good example is St. John's School in the UK (attention, USA education boards!)
Open Source and Education tells you how to do it, what you need to know.
Linux in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Minds, Social Justice is an important article in Linux Journal about this.
K12 Linux Terminal Server Project for Schools is just one of the things you can do.
K-12 Linux, another good site about this.
A good technical primer on Linux in Education
If you use free software in schools you will also need free documentation and training materials. Here is a list of the best of it.
(Pls mod this up guys, I'm posting anon...)
We've installed Linux to save us money. We're involved in a charity program that sends computers to developing countries (called C4W), and we usually install Windows. To set up a Windows OS that would run on the latest batch of them would require that we purchase XP for each of them then buy a license to downgrade XP to 98 (they were too old to run XP). Instead, one of our resident Linux experts installed Debian on all of them. I don't know how it turned out for the recipient, but it saved us a lot of money.
It seems nobody has mentioned www.seul.org, the section education. There is a lot of software and some (for you valuable) testimonies.
OSEF has a great article from a feature story the Arizona Daily Star ran on them. URL below, but here's some quickie quotes from the story....
i zkids.html
"As such, they're entirely unimpressed that Corbett is among a mere handful of primary schools around the world with a computer network that runs Linux, the flagship of the fashionable free software movement. They probably can't appreciate the amount of money the school is saving, or the thousands of hours that Linux devotee Harry McGregor has donated to transform a collection of PCs past their prime into a Net-connected laboratory that's ahead of its time."
"A lab similar to Corbett's could cost the district $100,000 or more if it were set up with new computers and commercial software. Instead, the school spent just $12,000 to convert its donated PCs into a Linux network that offers similar access to the Net and educational programs. Moreover, Corbett's pupils will gain experience with an operating system that's becoming more popular every day."
http://www.osef.orgarticles_and_letters/azstar/wh
www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/ good linux info there also
"I drank what?" - Socrates
I am part of the back room "bench tech" team at my high school. It is part of the tech research class. We set up new machines when they come in, service broken ones, and install new software while we aren't working on our research projects. The only thing we aren't allowed to do is open the cases, the county techs have to do that. Of course, I don't do much work because Windows and the Mac OS confuse the hell out of me. I am so used to just popping in, editing a text file, and reloading a daemon that pressing graphical buttons (the fun part is finding the buttons you need to click) and rebooting five or six times before it works is impossible. The other people (that actually use Windows at home) do a lot of "bench teching" though.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Oh dear.
I learned to use a word processor on a very strange old Amstrad. Then I worked on macs for a while. Then I had to switch to Windows when I went off to university.
Now, I am comfortable using basic office software at an intermediate/expert level under mac, windows, linux, and am confident that I could learn to use basic office software under any given OS.
Teaching to one set of office software is pointless. Eventually it will be outmoded, whatever it is. Teach kids to be comfortable with computers, and comfortable teaching themselves to use new software. It'll do them much more good than harm in the long term.
So, we arrived at a compromise: although I wanted a straight FreeBSD shop, we settled for Linux on the desktops and FreeBSD on the servers, provided that the Linux USB support and stability improved. We still use the 2.2 kernel series with backported USB support, and are running FreeBSD 4.0-STABLE on all of the servers (which, by the way, have not been rebooted since they were installed).
When the numbers came in, we found that we were able to afford 20 extra computer systems (!) by not paying the Microsoft tax. Also, we were able to hire a sysadmin very cheap who works remotely (he has been banned from the school grounds), and found in our analysis that we would have needed to pay about three times as much to get the MCSEs that it would have taken to keep an NT shop running smoothly.
So, the school board wins and the kids win with Open Source. That is the way it should be.
freebsd guy
It's kind of funny how SourceForge and NewsForge were linked to... But the site that I've never even HEARD of before was completely omitted.
SCHOOLFORGE
I am a brazilian Computer Science student. Don't
know very much about schools, but I can tell about
universities.
Government here in Brazil do not care very much
with the public Universities, so they're always
short of money. Federal University of Parana,
where I study, is one of these. Years ago the
Computer Science laboratory used Windows on most
machines. Besides the blue-screens and security
problems, Microsoft made some obscure legal
actions that implied in heavy charges. These
became just too heavy to pay as the computers --
mostly Pentium 100-150, even 486's -- became
too weak to run newer versions of Windows and it
software.
Then, we installed Debian GNU/Linux on all machines.
With a few expensive X-servers, all the other
machines are now X-terminals (many of them
diskless), thus saving those old computers.
Debian give us all the software we need to study,
and is far more fast, stable and secure than the
old Windows "solutions". And it's all free.
I believe there are more cases like this in other
brazilian public Universities. A little research
will help.
Federal University of Parana is at
http://www.ufpr.br
Computer Science department at
http://www.inf.ufpr.br
Prof. Marcos Castilho, the person you should send
e-mail about our experience with Debian:
marcos@inf.ufpr.br
The Networked Writing Environment would probably exist without free (freedom or beer) software, but the applications available to students would be very limited. We have 150 seats in five classrooms, using thin clients (SunRays, NCDs, etc) with Solaris servers.
If we spent only $100 per seat on software, that would be $15K -- and I bet replacing StarOffice, The Gimp, our HTML editor, tkMOO-lite, exmh, Xplore, and other applications would cost a lot more than that. Not to mention that Solaris is free (beer) for educational use.
I'm sure there are also cost savings from using the client/server model instead of 150 workstations. We have two system administrators and one half-time graduate student, and a few hangers-on like me who poke stuff around when time allows. :)
The NWE has been around since 1995. With education budget cuts in Florida reaching into the hundreds of millions this year, and maybe more next year, I don't see the Solaris/free software setup being replaced with a non-free model anytime soon.
cbd
DO college's count, becuase here at The Cooper union most of the stuff we run is Win95 and Red Hat Linux. Mostly becuase this school does not charge tution, does it see the value in running Free software like Linux. They've made it work rather well. and espcially since all the computers are at least 5 years old.
Sun is Warm, Grass is Green
When I was in high school, my school had 6 or so labs of Windows 98 boxen. In especially the writing lab, during any given 90 minute class period there would be at least 5 or 6 BSOD's. There had to be a semi-admin in each room, plus one overworked guy over the whole school. I recall hearing numerous discussions about threats from the SPA to shut down the school's computers if they couldn't produce a license for each computer, etc. Viruses were a major problem as well. They had some insane security system set up using Novell Netware, and because Windows 9x is inherently r00ted the moment you install it, there are bound to be places they missed (and there were, trust me -- I know). There were many a day when my buddies and I would play Starcraft instead of work, simply because we could. In a Linux system, you need a third of the people, and they can administer each computer from a remote location. Most of the school's admin's time was spent running from one end of the maze-like structure to the other. Tools like ssh, and even basic UNIX security principles (with a more granular system such as SELinux even better) would've saved a lot of time and money. Even though a Linux admin costs more money usually, they need fewer of them.
A solution to the problem with music today
It works, it's fast, it's free, we like it.
Last I knew, Grand Valley State University, in MI,USA used a number of Linux distributions in it's classroom environments; including Debian, Red Hat and Mandrake.
Granted, when I witnessed this it was in 300 and 400 level classes. However, it was the entire development/workstation environment.
Springfield High, in Springfield Illinois./ in dex.html
They have a student organization, Students for Integrations of Technology and Education (SITE),
and have established the first high school chapter of the AITP. Everything has been done with donated hardware/software/linux, by the students.Check it out:
http://www.shs.springfield.k12.il.us/clubs/site
GNU skole is a project, working to bring free software (GNU/Linux) into elementary school in Denmark. Run by admins for admins.
They do an effort to get educational software translated into Danish, and they're writing guides to other admins wanting to integrate free software in their school network.
SEUL.ORG has some educational experiences that they have been gathering up. I am also working on starting one in SouthEast Michigan. I also know of a few others in this area that have gone well. Contact me for more information if you need to.
You are correct about the use of images in schools, at least at the ones I was at. I worked as a consultant for 13 small to medium sized school districts for 4 years, so I have some insight into this.
;) for the schools required us to allocate for the purchase of OS and application programs or the proposal would be rejected. I'm sure we could appeal if this where the case, but schools don't like to risk it. Every t must be crossed, every i dotted, and the staple has to be in exact right spot.
School district admins wouldn't even listen to a suggestion of putting Linux on desktops. The rational? Well, I've listed a few:
1) "The kids need to learn on the types of computers that they will be using in a typical office. They need to know how to use Word and Excel."
- I know they could develop the same skills by using an alternative, but the name recognition thing is really important. Parents would be up in arms at the next school board meeting if they heard their kids weren't going to learn about spreadsheets using Excel.
2) "We can't run Accelerated Reader and the other programs that are essential to teaching on Linux."
- This is a huge argument. AR is used a lot in most schools. It helps teachers not actually have to teach anything. If you're not familiar with it, it's a pretty simple program that tests a students understanding of a book after they have read it. There was some chance of using the old DOS version on Linux, but we haven't been able to run the Windows version under wine. The program would be trivial to duplicate, but the real value is in all of the thousands of tests that are available for it.
3) "Windows doesn't cost that much money for us, and most of our grants specify a certain portion of the funds for software purchase."
- This is true. I know we where spending like $21 for a Windows 98 license, $45 for NT. And, the federal grants that we where writing (and helped spend the money from
4) "We don't need to worry about maintaining desktops. Each teacher has a boot disk for all of the machines in their room that will automatically reimage the system if there is some sort of problem. Network apps and updates are provided via NAL or something similiar based on the user logged in, so we don't even have to touch a system to allow access to new programs."
- The same system could be used by Linux, but because the same thing could be said about Windows it doesn't help the argument in their minds.
Now I want to be clear that every one of the school systems that I worked in had at least one, usually quite a few, Linux boxes performing functions behind the scenes. After talking to some of the IT directors recently I found that these boxes where all just running perfectly. And they loved that, they just run.
load "linux",8,1