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Has Free Software Saved Any Schools?

Posted by Cliff on from the putting-the-non-educational-software-myth-to-bed dept.

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?

54 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Here's One by ScumBiker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 ---
  2. Hmmmm by seanmeister · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "what educational resources are currently available to schools from the Open Source arena?"

    How about "source code"?

    1. Re:Hmmmm by SoftwareJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If there is a shortage of sysadmin resources then Linux is probably an even better answer compared to Microsoft. One central sysadmin can usually maintain a lot more Linux boxes remotely than Windows boxes, at least that has been my experience where I've worked. The only problem I can see is that schools are not as networked as they should be, which means that sysadmins may have to make more personal appearances than is typically necessary in a business environment. But the fact that Linux is generally more secure(able) than Windows or Macs (Macs are fairly network secure because they provide almost no inbound services - but as a broad generality they aren't as secure from the console as Linux is because they aren't designed for multiple users), and more reliable should also make it a win in reduction of need for sysadmin resources as a whole.

      As for it supposedly being more difficult to hire a good admin that knows Linux, it just doesn't seem to hold true. There are just as many good admins out there who know Linux as there are that know MS. Chances are it will be difficult to hire a good admin for what school districts pay, but it shouldn't be any more difficult for Linux than for MS. Look around at salary surveys -- experienced admins don't get paid that much differently based on platform.

      I think you need to examine your light again because you are buying into too many of the MS marketing promises that don't hold up. They want you to believe that any idiot who buys a bunch of "Exam Cram" books and gets a little certificate (after paying them a nice chunk of change) is qualified to administer your network. But it is a false economy to hire an idiot to administer your network because -- you then have an idiot administering your network.

    2. Re:Hmmmm by spudnic · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      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 ;) 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.
      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
  3. an interesting site by MoceanWorker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  4. What about foreign schools? by alsta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it would be interesting to hear what schools in other countries have done about this. Not because I doubt that American schools have done it, but because it would show how universal an Open Source solution could be.

    --
    Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
    1. Re:What about foreign schools? by KjetilK · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Norwegian Skolelinux has worked hard and has been tested on some schools, and has received some money in governmental grants, but I guess has yet to really go mainstream.

      --
      Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
  5. One blessing.... by ZoneGray · · Score: 3, Funny

    One thing working in your favor, ironicly enough, is Windows Product Activation. The more difficult it is to use bootleg commercial software, the easier it is to see the value of free stuff.

    1. Re:One blessing.... by Bonker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The more difficult it is to use bootleg commercial software, the easier it is to see the value of free stuff.

      This is an important point. Most of the grade school teachers I've ever met who deal with computers have the attitude that anything short of organized for-profit software piracy is okay because they're teachers. They *have* to teach students on a limited budjet, are used to stretching any school supply just as far as it will go, and see copying software they've bought for home use, or ordering only one copy of windows to install on every computer in a lab as a necessity.

      This is the same thing as making xerox copies out of a book to hand out to their students, as far as most of them are concenred.

      Now, I'm personally inclined to agree with the morality of this little ethical short cut. I have a lot of problems with software licenses, and I think it would be a wonderful thing if being a teacher really meant you were exempt from copyright law for educational purposes.

      You can bet that Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, and the other members of the BSA don't agree with me, however.

      If you start stressing this fact, Free Software just starts seeming like a better and better idea in the classroom.

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
  6. I'd say so, yes. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 5, Informative



    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

  7. It isn't just free software by meckardt · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:It isn't just free software by Syberghost · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When you have servers that have uptimes of two years (or more), something tells me that some of those servers are, more or less, a fire-and-forget system. Anybody who sets up a server right WON'T need to maintain it much.

      As long as there are no users being added, no programs being added, and you only have a handful of systems, you might be right.

      But let's say you have 200 systems, with a mean time between failures of 56,000 hours each.

      That's one failure every 12 days, more or less.

      A school has dozens or hundreds of systems, with much shorter MTBF on the physical hardware, and has hundreds of students using those machines. They require security monitoring, hardware replacement, software configuration and upgrading; near-constant attention, if it's larger than one server and a handful of clients.

      If I take any one of my servers and point at it and base my manpower computations on that server alone, the numbers will look deceptively like I can do it all myself. When I broaden my sights out to all of the several hundred large servers I manage, I instead get a 7-man team rotating on-call duties between 3 production and 5 test projects, and the thought of doing it all myself becomes laughable.

      A typical school is somewhere in the middle if you want to use computers for education, instead of (as I said) sticking a few PCs in the physics lab and letting the brightest students do WTF the want with them.

      If you just want to stick a file server in the secretary's office and put a PC on each of the administrator's desks, you're probably right. But I'm talking about a school using computers for educating the kids, not a school using computers near the kids.

    2. Re:It isn't just free software by Jason+Earl · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually this is precisely why Linux has the potential to be such a big win. Rolling out software to Windows desktops requires a ton of work, maintaining each of those fragile beasts requires even more work. Have you ever seen the systems at your typical school. They are a mess.

      Now imagine that the school took their money and bought one commodity Intel-based server and a great big pile of inexpensive thin-clients (like the ThinkNic). Adding or updating the software for your system now is a snap. You upgrade your server and the clients have immediate access to the new software. No CDs to lug around, no reboots, no problems. Heck, the administrator wouldn't even have to be on site. One quick "apt-get install foo-package" and it's done. Accounting, security, and other user management tools have existed for Unix forever. You can easily set quotas for nearly every resource that is available to end users and you can monitor your Linux server to the nth degree without leaving the comfort of your bedroom.

      Thin clients have been seen as the systems administrator's Nirvana for years, but it wasn't until Linux came along that there was really any useful software that would run on these systems. However, the combination of StarOffice + Mozilla is starting to look like a compelling combination. Especially in places like schools where money is tight and where it is important that the computers both allow easy collaboration and tight security. All of the students would essentially be sharing the same machine (making it easy to work on projects together), but none of them would have write access to any system files (much better security than Windows PCs).

      The trick of course, is in removing the PCs. That would leave the school with one server and a pile of essentially disposable devices. If you think replacing Windows PCs with Linux PCs, then you are almost certainly correct, the Linux solution would be more difficult to administer (or more expensive anyway as it would require a much more savvy administrator). However, if you replaced the hordes of Windows PCs with a single Linux server then even the slowest Windows admin could probably find the time to learn to administer Linux.

  8. An anonymous school in Ontario, Canada by Sj0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  9. Computer Lab by fishybell · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    ><));>
  10. Stuyvesant High School by sirket · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  11. link to several case studies by einreb · · Score: 5, Informative

    several case studdies

    --
    sik
  12. Open Source In Schools NOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...)

  13. Free software + education == BAD IDEA! by SumDeusExMachina · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I think I could speak for many people when I say that using Linux along with other free tools like gcc is one of the best things that a developer can do. I personally use RedHat at my job as a developer, along with the whole development team, while most of the rest of the company uses Windows. You just get more done in Linux if you're programming.

    However, I think it would be wrong to try to foist Free Software upon unwitting schools before they knew what they were getting into. There is a very important reason that Linux has stayed at about .25% of desktop market share: it makes a crappy end-user desktop. Sure, you can use it on your network servers for Samba and mail and the like, but I would hesitate to train children on a system that will be ultimately useless to them when they get out into a world dominated by Microsoft software. Because, like it or not, high school is, for most, valuable job training before they leave high school and enter the work force, be that as secretaries using MS Office or accountants using Excel, etc. When you teach them to use software that is completely irrelevant outside of school, you are crippling them for life as they have to retrain themselves on all the applications that school had taught them in order to use something as commonplace as Office.

    Not to mention the numerous administration headaches that would result from your everyday highschool computer teacher trying to figure out Linux, let alone teach it. I personally could not imagine my glorified typing teacher in high school comprehending file permissions, much less understanding something as arcane as TeX or vi.

    All in all, its probably a better idea to stick with something like Macs which have a proven track record in education as well as most of the common office applications that can be found on Windows computers as well. Free Software has its place, but it certainly isn't on the desktop.

    --

    Is your company running tools written by ma
    1. Re:Free software + education == BAD IDEA! by Chuck+Messenger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you teach them to use software that is completely irrelevant outside of school, you are crippling them for life as they have to retrain themselves on all the applications that school had taught them in order to use something as commonplace as Office.

      Crippling them for life? By teaching them something? Kids are smarter than you give them credit for. So are adults.

      What kids need to learn about computers is not what keystroke combination does what in Application X. Teach them the principles of computer operation.

      Open source, in my opinion, is of immense use in education, precisely because it is open. Students can not only learn to use apps, but can delve as far into the system as their curiosity takes them.

      Schools should not be vocational training centers (for the most part). I mean, sure, there could be a Microsoft Office class, to learn how to use that software suite. That would be a vocational class, and it could have its place. But it shouldn't be the focus. Schools should not be fundamentally vocational.
    2. Re:Free software + education == BAD IDEA! by RedRun · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Because, like it or not, high school is, for most, valuable job training before they leave high school and enter the work force, be that as secretaries using MS Office or accountants using Excel, etc.

      How horribly untrue. For many, if not most, high school is a path to college. We shouldn't be teaching kids the ins and outs of whatever is the hot topic of today, because that can change quickly. When I started high school (1992), we were still using DOS. Not terribly valuable today. We should be teaching them how to learn. This would involve exposing them to as many computer interfaces as possible (Win, Mac, Linux), so that they learn the basin functionality of an interface and can learn a new interface relatively quickly. By limiting them to one single interface style, they have trouble understanding the difference between the operating system, the interface to that system, and the software that runs on it. Not to mention the numerous administration headaches that would result from your everyday highschool computer teacher trying to figure out Linux, let alone teach it. I personally could not imagine my glorified typing teacher in high school comprehending file permissions, much less understanding something as arcane as TeX or vi.

      There's no reason a teacher would have to use TeX or vi. StarOffice would do quite nicely as a word processor/spreadsheet combo. It has all the functionality a school could want. All in all, its probably a better idea to stick with something like Macs which have a proven track record in education as well as most of the common office applications that can be found on Windows computers as well.

      It's that kind of attitude that keeps our schools impoverished and our kids learning-impaired. If we showed them three different word processors, they would realize that they all do pretty much the same thing. Suddenly, they learn that change isn't scary. They learn how to adapt, and become more dynamic students. They learn that computers are just machines that follow instructions, and can be changed to suite the user's need. Those skills are way more important than knowing how to set a page break in Word XP.

    3. Re:Free software + education == BAD IDEA! by DrCode · · Score: 4, Funny

      By your reasoning, I'm only qualified to work in jobs that require a sliderule.

  14. StarOffice is being used! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where? Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada.

    For those of you who don't know MJ is a city of about 30,000. My girlfriend's little sister (gr 3. I think), needed to write a letter one day when she was over visiting. I said I don't have Office, but I have staroffice which is pretty much the same. "Don't worry that is what we are learning in school". I was shocked and thrilled.

    I am 99% sure that they were using a windows version of StarOffice, but it is still free.

    ~S

  15. Although... by Anixamander · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the arguments (which I consider fallacious) against Macs in the schools is that kids need to be prepared for the "real world," one that involves a Microsoft OS and Microsoft applications. As Linux has yet to be embraced on the desktop to a great extent in the business world (still largely relegated to server duties), does Open Source hinder their abilities to function in the business world? Furthermore, are the support people in these schools equipped to deal with the support issues of a new platform? Linux may indeed be easier to support than its windows counterpart, but without the appropriate training (which is always hard to come by when delaing with public school funding) it may be difficult.

    Ideally, schools would shift their software budget to a training budget to bring their support gurus up to speed. And the children would gain a comfort level with technology, though not necessarily the technology they will be using in the real world. Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers here.

    I'd be interested in hearing a reasoned response to my questions. Dogmatic zealots need not apply.

    --
    Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
  16. Wrong question! by bluGill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is the wrong question. The right question is why computers in school.

    Learning is universial, not applied. You need to learn to reading writing, and arithmatic. There is no need for comptuers in that. Sure there are some good computer programs to help there, and typing is a skill that needs to be learned, but computers are the implimentation detail, not the meat. Until you have something to do with the comptuer there is no point in having one. Young kids need to learn to write things out by hand.

    Yes computers are important to the world today, but comptuers change fast. when I first started with computers wordStar was the big program in industry. In High school they braged that we were learning the latest word processor that industry is using, wordPerfect 5.1 for dos. And at the time it was the biggest, but today everyone is using Word 2000, and looking at an upgrade to that. Teach the kids to think with whatever tool is avaiable, and you will be fine, but teach them that the tool currently in vogue is the only one to use and you do them a disservice.

    Yes I know industry has a lot of obsolete, but fast enough comptuers they would love to donate to any charity that will take them, but that doesn't mean you have to take them. A computer is a means to many good ends, but do not allow a computer to become the end itself.

    1. Re:Wrong question! by dillon_rinker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is no need for comptuers in that.
      You are wrong. Computers are a force multiplier for teachers; rather than one thread of instruction at a time, there can be many. For $30,000, you can get one teacher or 20 computers...do the math. (Warning - minor parental boasting ahead). I have a child in kindergarten who is learning to read. Most of his classmates are not. Why? Because the school has reading software that paces itself to the student. This is a supplement to the curriculum, not the main curriculum. The kids can learn at their own pace; those who can progress farther faster have an opportunity to do so that they wouldn't have before.

      So, this is nice and all, but why do I think it's necessary? Most of the world will work for pennies on the dollar compared to US workers. The only advantage future workers in the US will have are in the educational opportunities offered to them. The more opportunities my kid has, the more likely he'll be able to compete against coders in India.

      In High school they braged that we were learning the latest word processor that industry is using, wordPerfect 5.1 for dos.
      I assume this was in a class designed to give you a job right out of highschool; otherwise, you're correct - the curriculum designers were morons. You should have been using a multiple free word processors to study concepts common to all word-processing systems, such as cut, paste, format, etc. You should have been considering information as a stream of bytes, as in Word Perfect, or a collection of objects, as in Word. You should have learned timeless concepts, not rapidly obsoleted procedures...

      do not allow a computer to become the end itself.
      Hear, hear. I knew of a principal who bought computers for his school because he'd promised parents that their students would spend an hour a week using computers. As much as we all enjoyed playing Oregon Trail, I never learned anything from it. I certainly didn't learn anything by playing it week after week. On the other hand, I learned a great deal that remains with me to this day (though I'm not sure of its immediate applicability) when my science teacher had us spend an hour running a simulation of the process that seismologists use to measure the distance to epicenters of earthquakes, and using that information to pinpoint the epicenter of a quake. That one hour solidified in my mind everything we'd learned about earthqukes during the previous two weeks.

    2. Re:Wrong question! by GMontag451 · · Score: 3
      Disclaimer: All three of my parents (father, mother, and stepmother), as well as two of my grandparents, have been teachers. So you might say I am kind of biased.

      For $30,000, you can get one teacher or 20 computers...do the math.

      One teacher is worth infinitely more than 20 computers. COMPUTERS ARE NOT TEACHERS, period. And I find it sad that $30,000 can get you one teacher anyway, teachers are paid way too little.

      As for your earthquake example, your science teacher could have done a simulation of that same process with a couple seismograph readings, and a class set of compasses and maps. This would have saved tons of money, or at least freed up the computer lab for some other class that actually needed it.

    3. Re:Wrong question! by The+Cat · · Score: 3, Funny

      For $30,000, you can get one teacher or 20 computers...do the math.

      Or the administration can renovate the conference room in the elegantly appointed downtown offices.

      Given these choices, I think that the newly-retired teacher will be starting a computer sales business while the administration decides between the walnut or mahogany paneling.

  17. Kabul elementary by junis+from+afghanist · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just wanted to let you know that Kabul Elementary school, which operates out of my neighbor Mustaffa's barn, has been running the new version of ISLAMIX. ISLAMIX is a revolutionary open-source operating system which Mustaffa and I developed recently for our Commodore computers. The kids at Kabul Elementary think ISLAMIX is the greatest thing since sliced camel! We will have a website soon with more information about ISLAMIX and it's many features (including Beowolf clustering in order to download and play movies from the Internet.) We are also working on porting the Katzbot to ISLAMIX, but we've not had any luck getting things to compile. It seems that our copy of endlessramblings.h may have been corrupted during the modem transfer. -Junis from Afghanistan

  18. h3llz y3ah! phr33 s0ftwar3 sav3d my sk00l! by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We were gonna have to shell out MAD DOLLARS ($$$) for windows XP until me and my friends found a L33T 0-DAY KRAK for it on IRC!!!

    Now the entire library network is running XP Server!!!

    Free software r0x0rs!!!

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  19. our high school uses apache by madmancarman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    After having tons of problems with NT 4 and IIS crashing our high school's web server on a daily basis, we switched to Apache on RedHat 5.2 (about 3 years ago). Since then, we've switched machines a couple times (as better machines are hand-me-downed to us) and upgraded the Linux distro, but we've had great uptime.

    The success of our web server allowed us to push for a perl/apache/linux-based attendance system that let us get rid of scan-tron sheets to be filled in every morning. Now, our teachers open up their web browsers in the morning, log in, and they check off their absent students 1st period. In the afternoon, they can check who was here and who wasn't, and it saves us about a ream of paper per day, since we don't have to print out attendance bulletins any more. Most of the work for the attendance program was done by one of my students who was learning perl on the fly.

    I also teach a class for A+ and Network+ certifications, but we cover Linux both semesters (especially when we do network security in Network+). I'm hoping that next semester, we'll be able to use Linux as the primary desktop OS for most of the networking stuff, but we'll have to see what happens.

    There are two major problems, in my opinion: businesses want students who are proficient with Windows and Office, and schools don't have the resources to hire people who are competent Linux admins. If the demand for Linux users starts going up, then maybe the number of computers running Linux in schools will increase, but for now, it's probably limited to servers.

    One funny tidbit - earlier this school year, Code Red and Nimda running on local districts' NT/2000 IIS web servers took down the WAN access for most of the schools in Southwest Ohio. Seems that the servers weren't patched or maintained as well as they should have been. Web servers running Apache, of course, didn't have this problem.

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Ghandi

    --
    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
  20. Corbett School in Tucson by r_j_prahad · · Score: 5, Informative

    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....

    "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/whi zkids.html

  21. My experiences by James1006 · · Score: 5, Funny

    My school district currently uses a mixed Microsoft/Linux environment. Until last week, our primary www server was Linux. However my boss got grumpy and decided to switch it to Win2k+IIS w/FP Extensions, so that he could update it easier via Frontpage (I'm gagging too). However, within 30 minutes of him installing Win2k and IIS, it got Nimdaed. Nice job! Right now, we have: A secondary Linux www server, for PHP/MySQL things. A SMTP/IMAP/webmail server in Linux. This is one area where Linux paid off. MS wanted thousands for Exchange, Win2k with the necessary hardware. Old machine (We don't have a ton of users) + Linux + exim + uwimap + Apache/PHP/MySQL = total new costs of $0. We are also implementing a Linux firewall to segment the network into DMZs (Something thats never been done, because as with most projects it is "Lets get it done and up as fast as possible". sigh.)

    --

    - Nothing is true, everything is permitted
  22. Programming by finity · · Score: 3, Funny

    My high school offers programming classes, but we do all our programming on windows machines. I don't know why we don't switch over to linux and GNU, it being free and all. It seems like it would all be a better learning experience if we could easily see the source for more complex programs. My friends and I have setup a Slackware box, but the school system doesn't know yet and we don't plan to tell them. Last time we did, the next day we came to school and the power cord, monitor, keyboard, mouse and network cords were all gone. They thought it was a "virus" ;-)

  23. My story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was involved in a project to donate computers to a middile school in the mountains.

    We had computers donated from Goodwill and managed to get our university microsoft rep to donate Windows.

    Or first thought was to use Linux, but the schools ruled it out since none of the teachers
    would have been able to use it.

    We did manage to get them Office 2000, though, and
    I thank the people at Microsoft that helped us with that.

    Moral of the story though -- many schools are too afraid to learn new things, and that prevents free (and often better) software from taking hold.

    Linux developers do need to develop a more integrated desktop. Should there be a "X-with-training-wheels" we'd see a lot more Linux users!

  24. riverdale school by McVeigh · · Score: 4, Informative

    www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/ good linux info there also

    --
    "I drank what?" - Socrates
  25. Also in belize. by Malcontent · · Score: 3

    see here

    --

    War is necrophilia.

  26. Not Saved...but aided by Luminous · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know of one school in particular, the school my boss sends her kid to, that has benefited tremendously. My boss is a Microsoft devotee and has scoffed at the Free Software movement, until she went to a school meeting and realized the computer lab that was donated (just the systems and OS nothing else) wasn't up and running yet. The reason was the school didn't have the money for Microsoft Office.

    Long story short, she told me, I pointed her to StarOffice and a few other apps that are readily available. It wasn't a difficult sell, because it was the difference between getting use out of the computers or just teaching Windows. The school wouldn't have 'collapsed' without the free software and they would have gotten the money for the applications next year, but now they can use that money to implement a replacement program for the systems they already have.

    All of this goes back to the fact that there is a bias against Free licenses on software. My boss always considered them to be amateurish, less reliable, than the NAME BRAND software. Not anymore.

    --
    This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
  27. Depends on the level of the student by Mr.+Fred+Smoothie · · Score: 3, Insightful
    They teach auto shop in high school. Of course, fixing cars is not as "essential" as reading, writing and math, either. However, not *all* students will go on to college. Most will probably own a car at some point. For some, getting a job fixing cars out of high school may be an attractive option. So knowing how to do simple repairs on a car is a very *practical* thing for *many* high school students to learn, and I think that a lot of people would argue that therefore it's a valuable addition to the curriculum.

    Many kids will either own computers or work with them daily after high school. Some may want to go on to work in an explicitly computer-oriented career, which however doesn't require much specific post-secondary education (hardware repair in a small shop, for instance). To the same degree as auto-mechanics (and probably far more than say, wood shop), computer education in secondary schools is a valuable addition to the curriculum.

    For primary education, heavily computer-centric instruction may be overkill. But at the high school level good arguments can be made for it.

    Of course, it won't be too useful to students who just want their school to subsidize their bong-building activities, but that's what metal shop is for.

    --

  28. Re:Political reality by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!
  29. European schools (and a mini-rant). by Hiro+Antagonist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You'll have better luck looking at schools in Europe, especially Germany, France, and the U.K. The U.S. public school system moves about as quickly as a lowered Honda Civic in an off-road rally race; and, in my experience, most public school IS/IT administrators know less about computers than John Ashcroft does about electron field dynamics. This is why few high schools have local area networks or decent internet access, and why fewer still have classes in things as simple as programming in Basic.

    Since U.S. schools aren't adeqately funded by the government, they gobble up as much of the private-sector "technology money" as they can possibly gorge themselves on; a signifigant chunk of which comes in the form of discounted licenses for Microsoft software. Kind of ironic that the school still has to buy the computers to run the software (and keep them updated); but I guess by reducing their profit margin from 99.998% to 98%, Microsoft has done their part. Those computers have to be upgraded pretty regularly, of course, and some of the money for that comes from "less worthwhile" programs -- like English, Art, Music, and History.

    We are raising a generation of Americans that won't know the difference between a verb and a posessive pronoun, but they'll be able to use the Word grammar-checker, so it all works out in the end, right?

    These, among other reasons, are why the U.S. imports its computer engineers from Europe and southeast Asia.

    By contrast, European schools don't get the same deep discounts, and the foreign-language support in Windows is pretty horrible (although W2K has made some signifigant improvements in this area). European schools (at least in the three countries mentioned above) are supported wholly by the state, and as such don't require outside funding. This means that, for the most part, the software and hardware are chosen to fit the needs of the instructors and students, rather than to fit the discounts, freebies, and funding-with-strings requirements assigned by the technology companies.

    This is why you'll find SuSE, Mandrake, and Debian pretty heavily used in many European schools (and thus, businesses).

    But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

    --

    --
    I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy .sig.
  30. Well, my son's grade school, for one... by freebsd+guy · · Score: 4, Informative
    About two years ago, my son's grade school upgraded their computer lab and, as a concerned parent, I was on the advisory committee for that. Originally they had planned to do an all-NT installation for security and usability reasons, but we did a cost-benefit analysis and found that the licensing would have cost us an arm and a leg.

    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

    1. Re:Well, my son's grade school, for one... by Morgoth_Bauglir · · Score: 3, Funny

      >> (he has been banned from the school grounds)

      You can't just say that and not tell the story.

  31. While free is good... by hether · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see plenty of problems with implementing Linux in schools, especially when I think about how it would go in my local district.

    1. All the teachers know Windows. My bet is that even many of the computer teachers do not know Linux well enough to run it in their labs. They can't teach it if they don't know it and teacher training could be expensive and take a lot of what's probably considered unnecessary time.

    2. They would have a lot harder teaching a completely new OS AND classes on how to use the programs than to just teach the programs. You'd probably have to have a intro to Linux class before you could ever teach whichever programs you choose to use - and that's another issue in itself.

    3. Students probably have Windows at home. Would they have problems with converting documents between systems? Say you create your report in Word at home, could your bring it school and use it there?

    4. The local tech support and computer stores would not be able to help them if something went wrong. 99% of the techs around here don't know anything about anything other than Windows. Who would know enough about Linux to help them??

    5. The students would learn programs and OSes that would different with what they would have when they go to college, go to work, etc. Since there are very few offices and colleges using entirely Linux, they would be at a disadvantage right away.

    Of course there are a lot of plusses too, but these negatives sprang to mind right away. Of course they are all refutable. I think that the schools would choose easy and expensive over difficult and cheap any day. If they didn't have a choice and were nearly out of money, my guess is they would let the computers sit/

    --

    Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
    1. Re:While free is good... by Jason+Earl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Let's take a look at this point by point.

      1. All the teachers know Windows. My bet is that even many of the computer teachers do not know Linux well enough to run it in their labs. They can't teach it if they don't know it and teacher training could be expensive and take a lot of what's probably considered unnecessary time.

      What you really mean to say is that all of the teachers know how to log on and fire up Word. Most teachers don't really know anything about Windows administration. That's why the computers in most classrooms work poorly.

      This simply means that whatever Linux front end was offered would have to be similar to Windows. It would have to be at least as similar as Windows XP is to Windows 95. For the simple things both KDE and Gnome can be set up so that the teachers wouldn't miss a beat.

      2. They would have a lot harder teaching a completely new OS AND classes on how to use the programs than to just teach the programs. You'd probably have to have a intro to Linux class before you could ever teach whichever programs you choose to use - and that's another issue in itself.

      Once again. The teachers aren't teaching the students to use the OS. Most teachers don't even know that right clicking on objects gives them a different menu. Teachers are teaching students to "click on the Word icon" and then word process. If you created icons for the StarOffice programs you would be 90% of the way there.

      3. Students probably have Windows at home. Would they have problems with converting documents between systems? Say you create your report in Word at home, could your bring it school and use it there?

      This is already a problem. Even if you have Windows. Many students who have computers don't have MS Office (it's expensive), and if they do have MS Office there is a good chance that they have an older version like Office 95 that won't open the newer formats (easily). With a switch to Linux the school could easily (and inexpensively) hand out copies of StarOffice for Windows or Linux (it's free).

      4. The local tech support and computer stores would not be able to help them if something went wrong. 99% of the techs around here don't know anything about anything other than Windows. Who would know enough about Linux to help them??

      This, in my opinion, is the one legitimate point. However, the answer to this is to not roll out Linux PCs but instead to have one Linux server and a pile of thin-clients. That way all the local tech would have to do is throw out the old thin-client and plug in the new one. My guess is that the current Windows administrator could easily learn to be a fairly competent Linux admin if they didn't have to worry about all of the failed client PCs. He/She would have a whole lot more time on their hands with only one machine to administer.

      5. The students would learn programs and OSes that would different with what they would have when they go to college, go to work, etc. Since there are very few offices and colleges using entirely Linux, they would be at a disadvantage right away.

      Anyone that can learn to use StarOffice will have no trouble using MS Office (and vice versa). These applications are nearly identical.

      Of course there are a lot of plusses too, but these negatives sprang to mind right away. Of course they are all refutable. I think that the schools would choose easy and expensive over difficult and cheap any day. If they didn't have a choice and were nearly out of money, my guess is they would let the computers sit

      And that's precisely the information that is needed to sell schools on Free Software. Demonstrate to them how much easier it would be for them to administer one Linux server and a pile of disposable ThinkNics and you can bet that they will sit up and listen. At the very least public schools should be giving StarOffice a look. It would save them a bundle in licensing, and will even run on their existing Windows systems.

    2. Re:While free is good... by dR.fuZZo · · Score: 3, Funny

      3. Students probably have Windows at home. Would they have problems with converting documents between systems? Say you create your report in Word at home, could your bring it school and use it there?

      That's nothing, sonny. Why, back in my day, we had Windows at home and Apples in the schools. We had to pay for everything, we couldn't work on the same document at home and at school then either, and we liked it!

      --
      -- dR.fuZZo
  32. Making old system last longer... by sterno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In reading some of the case studies on this, it looks like the biggest use for Linux is in two realms:

    1) Servers - file sharing, web servers, e-mail, etc
    2) Making old machines useful again

    A lot of schools have old 486's and Pentium lying around which are pretty much useless as a Windows desktop, but set these systems up as X-terminals and throw a sub $1000 server behind it, and suddenly they are rejuvenated. This also has the benefit of making the management of these systems much easier.

    I know I've seen a number of initatives where some politician gets the bright idea that the secret to making schools better is to buy a lot of hardware. This usually helps for a little while, but then in 3 or 4 years the hardware becomes nearly useless and nobody's throwing more money at it. By going with Linux, it seems like they can extend the value of that initial investment a lot further and thus save hugely in the long run.

    --
    This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
  33. **volunteer** by Erich · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think that most of us that use linux on a regular basis know that given a good setup (reliable server with a bunch of diskless netboot clients, all running KDE or Gnome or whatever with SomethingOffice installed, and doing an autoRPM or apt-get upgrade every few days automatically, and a nice fast postscript laser printer) know that a good setup can require basically ZERO administration after setup (and not too hard to set up for someone who knows what she is doing).

    The problem is that when someone in the education system goes to CompUSA or their local Mom and Pop computer store, they don't get someone who will set them up with that sort of thing.

    So here is what you need to do: volunteer your time. Set up that computer network for your school, especially those of you with children in it.

    You can also help the school with find good deals on businesses wanting to get rid of equipment ... those old PII 233's that they don't want to use anymore can be a big tax writeoff for them, and would work fine as a diskless workstation.

    But the problem is that most school teachers don't have much of a clue in the realm of computers. They don't know how to make a dozen half-broken computers into a lab. So volunteer your time and help them get set up!

    --

    -- Erich

    Slashdot reader since 1997

  34. Come see a 4th grade Linux Classroom right now... by pnelson · · Score: 4, Informative
    http://k12ltsp.org/classroom.html

    It works, it's fast, it's free, we like it.

  35. Linux & Open Source by jcuzzola · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We have been successful in installing three Linux labs (approx 35 computers per lab) with Open Source software using the computers as thin clients (see LTSP.org). The system has been received very well by students and teachers. We were even able to give 486SXs with as little as 12Megs ram internet access - these systems are now in the classroom. We have approx. 10 schools scheduled for conversion to Linux by the end of 2002 with the goal of having all our elementary schools (60+) switched over in three. It's always an uphill battle but I feel we're fighting "the good fight". When they(Microsoft & others) tell you every open source initiative has failed tell them otherwise. I equate Microsoft with the movie "The Matrix" in which everyone goes on with their everyday lives while only a small liberated few no the truth. Our Linux Labs have worked better than anything Windows has ever given us for a cost that can't be beat.

    John Cuzzola
    jcuzzola@sd73.bc.ca
    1383-9th Avenue
    System Analyst/Programmer
    Kamloops, BC V2C 3X7
    School District #73
    Phone: (250) 374-0679

  36. Re:My boxen are haxored but I'm still l33t by flacco · · Score: 5, Funny
    Can we please stop saying 'boxen'? It's just one more reason for a non-geek to want to punch you in the face....

    Yeah, well I'd punch you back, and then we'd be boxen.

    --
    pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
  37. An open source elementry school by tyrani · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am the system administrator for a moderatly sized private elementry school. When I started, the school had very few computing resources at it's 2 campuses. After making a list of what I wanted to accompish in 2 years, I added up the costs and found that they it would be beyod my budget to buy new workstations and build a dedicated server all based on commercial software.

    Here's what I've been able to create for the school:

    1 workstation for every 4 children
    So when a class is in the library there is 1 student per computer. They all run win98.

    I am working towards 1 laptop for each teacher
    So far there is 2, they are wirelessly 802.11b connected to the network.

    A dedicated Red Hat 7.2 server
    Squid proxy, web page filtering and monitoring Squirrel Mail IMAP web based e-mail, samba, LDAP student/teacher contact and vital information, a MySQL powered bookmark database, Apache Web server, and a digital picture gallery.

    Everything on the server is open source and works flawlessly. All of this would have cost a fortune to buy and maintain on a NT server.

    I am very interested in what software other people are running if they are doing the same thing that I am. Reply to this comment or e-mail me with what you run, I'd love to share tips.

    --
    rejected (19) accepted (0)
    Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
  38. Re:MS Academic Software is cheap by Hiro+Antagonist · · Score: 3, Interesting


    My company provides IT support to a small-medium sized K-12 school district. They have 5 NT servers, and approximatly 250 workstations running Windows2000/Office2000. I can see no scenario where it would make sense to move them to a free software platform (Linux). MS academic software is not that expensive to start with, so there's not much money to be saved here (approx $50 for Win2k and $50 for Office per station.) Most of the software used by the district would not run under Linux anyway. Aside from the webmail app and their web based library system nearly everything else they use is written for Windows. They couldn't run any of their current educational software packages, including those provided by the state! I love Linux and see that it has a place on the server, embedded in devices and running on hobbiests' machines. However considering the realities of IT today, it just doesn't make sense to roll out Linux on the desktops of organizations either commercial or educational.


    Commercial, no.

    Educational, yes.

    I can see no reason that students can't be taught to use a word processor rather than just Microsoft Word -- learning basic concepts instead of "monkey see, monkey click."

    Educational software is, for the most part, a complete crock; and, with the exception of grade-keeping software, doesn't belong in schools. Teachers are paid to teach, not to sit a student in front of some so-called "educational" program and baby-sit them. Some of the computer tutorial software, like the programs that teach you to use Word and Excel by visually showing you what to do, are effective; but these aren't the types of things schools are trying to teach.

    The hardware costs make it much more expensive to run Windows in a school environment; Windows and Office 2000 require fairly high-powered workstations which cost the school real money to purchase; comparitive systems to run OSes like BSD and Linux are often donated en masse.

    Having all of the computer equipment donated to a school by a business that wants the tax write-off can save even a small school tens of thousands of dollars; which, in turn, can go into things like art programs, improving science education, and hell -- even keeping the school in sporting goods. Go and ask a local principal what they would do if they were given an extra $20,000 to spend at the school on anything but salaries or computers.

    As far as not being qualified for anything but "hobbiests", what do you think students are? A hobbiest is someone who is interested in learning as much about something as possible; and a student is someone who is supposed to be learning as much about the subject material as possible. Students aren't like employees -- there is no bottom line to watch, and no such thing as wasted time as long as it's spent learning.

    --

    --
    I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy .sig.
  39. Donated computers generally don't help schools by John+Murdoch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hi!

    The scene: "Public Comment" time at a school board meeting. The previous speaker, a senior citizen, has spoken at length about the burden of school taxes on the elderly in the community. He has particularly emphasized his opposition to the blatantly gold-plated technology proposals in the school budget (including the 4--count 'em, 4! PDAs for the district IT staff). Then the school board's self-designated Taxpayer Advocate clears his throat, and says, "Y'know, I was talking to our IT director at work the other day, and we're getting rid of a bunch of computers. Some are 486s, but a lot are Pentiums--we could provide a lot of those machines to the district at little or no cost....

    ...And another dumb IT decision is in the offing. Lots of people want to donate their downstreamed equipment to the schools. Sometimes they genuinely think they're doing good: most of the time they're trying to claim a tax credit for the contribution, and will "suggest" valuations for each machine that they drop off. All too often those donations cost the district actual cash--because you have to pay a HazMat hauler to take the monitors these days.

    Linux and other free (as in beer) software may well have a place in education. There is a very powerful argument, for instance, for creating an Office-type suite with extensive classroom management tools. Given that school environments can be extraordinarily hostile (think of the kinds of behavior that occurs in a middle school classroom if the teacher steps out into the hall) there is a persuasive argument to be made for a robust platform like (ahem) FreeBSD.

    But. Please please please do not even think of saddling the poor, overworked techs at your local school district with your worn-out, leftover, good-for-nothing junk. You are doing them no favors, you are doing no good to the district, and you are probably preventing adoption of a well-thought-through technology plan by "donating" your scrap equipment.

    Computers in schools
    I'm on the Technology Committee of the Nazareth (Pa.) Area School District. We've played out that scenario at the top of this post several times. We have had several area companies offer to donate their scrap to us. We have had several board members get positively indignant that we have spurned those offers. We did spurn those offers, and if I have any say in the matter we will continue to spurn those offers--here's why.

    This is a hostile environment
    Suppose your employer decides to install a new computer system. And suppose a computer-phobic customer service rep decides that he doesn't want to use the new system. Your employer has a simple remedy: fire the CSR. Doesn't work that way in American schools: if you want the teacher to use a computer, you have to persuade her/him.

    This is a hostile environment #2
    Teachers (no surprise, right?) don't want to look stupid in front of their students. But the kids are substantially more adept with computers than the teachers--so the teachers have a built-in ambivalence (at best) about computers.

    So we have to persuade teachers to use a device that potentially can humiliate them in front of their students. How?
    From hard-won experience, the district IT staff has to offer absolutely bullet-proof reliability. They have to be able to guarantee--and deliver on that guarantee--that the computers will be there, working flawlessly, whenever the teacher wants. No reboots, no network hassles, no video driver conflicts (elementary teachers probably use more video games than CmdrTaco), no need to get an MSCE in order to teach 3rd grade. In other words, the district IT staff has to provide Service Level Agreement-style functionality.

    But...
    do you think this means that anybody is willing to pay for a district IT staff? Funny boy--the school board will fund an extra assistant to the wrestling program in a heartbeat, but they won't spend a dime for a part-time LAN geek unless you do some major politicking. So what IT staff you have (4100 students, 450 employees, 7 buildings over 80 square miles, 3.5 IT staff) have to make do with what they have.

    Which means...
    They have to standardize, standardize, standardize. Every elementary classroom has to have the same video cards; every machine has to have the same network adapter; every machine in the high school has to have the same monitor. They have to develop a formalized bug-tracking system to identify recurring problems, and they have to take a systemic view of the entire IT picture in order to maintain 100% uptime. Because if they provide less than 100% uptime the teachers will stop using the system, and the parents will start calling the school board. And so forth....

    So please...
    Don't "do the kids a favor" and ship them junk. If you want to make a meaningful donation, call the school district and ask if you can give them the money to buy another one of their reference desktops. If they're running Windows, hold your nose and buy Windows. If they're running a bunch of out-of-date kiddie games, hold your nose and buy the out-of-date kiddie games. Do not make their lives miserable by sending them leftovers, or by going out to Circuit City and buying a $399 special. (God save the IT staff from the enthusiasm of the PTA.)

    If you want to champion Open Source in the schools
    Don't go preaching Linux as religion. Get involved, go to meetings, be prepared to make a reasonable case, and be prepared to argue for a complete replacement of the entire district IT infrastructure. And be prepared for war from the elementary teachers and the PTA: elementary school software runs on Windows, period. If you want to replace it, you'd best have a bunch of kids games tested and ready to go.

    Bottom line:
    Computers are crucial to education in the 21st century. I teach in a graduate program, and I'm constantly amazed at the number of MBA students with only the faintest glimmer of understanding about computers and technology. But the route to learning about computers and technology is not with leftover junk--it is with a carefully-developed, meticulously-managed, (and yes, sometimes rigidly enforced) IT plan that promises a "100% school time up time" service level, and delivers it. If the users can trust that the computers will be there, they will learn. If they can't trust the computers, they will learn to hate them.