Slashdot Mirror
An Informal Study Of K12 Classroom Software Costs
PGillingwater writes "Rob Lineweaver has written a concise summary of how much it would cost (and the savings that can be achieved) to set up the (almost) complete infrastructure in the Harrisonburg City Public Schools. He estimates that using commercial packages instead of open source would have cost the K12 schools an extra $27,000 in software license costs.
More interestingly, he states that this is not only about cost. He says: 'This makes it apparent that not all of the benefit of open source software deployment in is the form of cost savings; much of the benefit is in terms of capabilities gained. In other words, through the use of free software, I am able to do more within my budget than I could if I only had commercial solutions available.'"
Getting the software for cheaper (free) is one thing, but what kind of "costs" are you going to get for using this software. Sure you may save $27k but what happens when something break? Will you need to hire someone capable of handling open source software and how much will he cost per year? What if something breaks and a service is down for a while, there will be no company to hold up their software and support it, it is now up to you.
Apologies to those who don't like this idea, but it seems like there have been a lot of "we saved x dollars by switch to linux" or "we lost x dollars by using commercial software."
So it seems kinda pointless to keep stating the obvious over and over again.
Just my $.02
neurostarIt's a great idea, but out in the real world, people use commercial software. If kids aren't educated in how to use it, they won't be able to compete. I think introducing free software and its concepts into the education system is a good idea, but we shouldn't forsake the kids' futures for the sake of indoctrination. Teach both, and let the kids decide what's best.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
The title of the report is "Cost savings of open source software in the server room." If you let the kids back there, you might be in trouble.
Of course, this will probably just have the effect of freeing up $27,000 for windows machines in the classroom.
Do you automatically get support with closed source? Not usually. Just about every time I try to get ahold of a 'real person', you still have to pay for anything if you want more than what they happen to have already on their website.
The open source community typically provides much better online support than closed source, and you can still purchase support from RedHat et al, if it is needed. So support is really a non-issue, at least in my book.
And equally important, what kind of computer skills are these kids going to leave the classroom with?
Facing the facts: 90% of those using these computers are not going to be software developers, engineers, or sysadmins. Most of these kids are going to go out and work for relatively little money. They're going to need basic computer skills, and for corporate america, this means familiarity with MS Office.
Putting "Familiarity with Open Office" on a resume is fine if you're a sysadmin, but it won't get you very far if you're trying to work for a company that uses MS software, as most do.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Why? simple.
1) because it saves time and work in keeping track of windows licenses.
2) because it actually teaches children about computers, rather than just about GUIs and what can be done on them. When all the low-level things are done in the background, its no wonder the average american doesn't know what formatting a hard drive does aside from kill all their data.
3) teaches troubleshooting. Using nothing but windows, you'll never realize how much easier it is to use a command line tool for something simple.
4) provides compilers and development environments for those who are adept enough to care to use them
5) difficult for learning students to bring down the whole computer from a user-class account
6) it's free, and provides alternatives to almost anything that can be done under windows that they'll need to do in anything but very specific areas (which will catch up with time anyway).
7) UNIX is time-tested as a style of environment. Windows is controlled by the whims of the market.
There are others, but that pretty much covers the basics. Anything I missed, besides:
8: PROFIT!!!!
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The kind of money they're talking about is not that much in terms of the total cost of having all the computers. The big costs have nothing to do with Windows licenses. They have to do with network infrastructure, paying people to maintain the hardware and software, and keeping the hardware current.
The other problem is that the faculty and administrators want the machines at work to use the same OS they're used to using at home. That means Windows for 95% of them, and MacOS for 5%. I don't know a single person besides myself on my campus who uses Linux at home. It's hard enough to convince them to support MacOS.
There's also the problem of unavailability of the relevant applications.
Find free books.
not only that, but when little sally asks how a webserver works, instead of the Microsoft answer that is "it just does" you can show her the sourcecode to apache and watch her little head explode.
seriously.. having the ability to look at the nuts and bolts makes better students... teaching the kids the normal click and drool is not computer science... it's office machines / secritarial. It's about damned time that computer science classes MEANT computer science.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
school children are failing at the basics, I say we are spending to much money on computers/software.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
>but it won't get you very far if you're trying to work for a company that uses MS software, as most do.
Nonsense, the decision to hire someone has a lot more to do with than what software they're famaliar with. I know that sounds crazy to some geeks, but if you're doing hiring based soley on whether Jane knows Outlook, Notes, Pine or just Hotmail then your company is in deeper trouble than any commercial software package can fix. Your post also ignores the fact that most office software can be learned in an afternoon and the user can be brought up to the level of intermediate user if not expert in a couple weeks of real use.
You can't have it both ways. Either commercial software is easier to use than OSS thus making learning easier or you're admitting that commercial software has no real benefits over OSS.
Secondly, being exposed to a typical office app or a browser regardless of brand is more than enough to teach someone "computers." If you can use Moz you can use IE. If you can use Open Office you can use any office software.
Your post sounds like another justification to do whatever the market is doing regardless of costs. "So what if we have to cut the arts and science budget, people are using MS!!" There are priorities in education and teaching the latest and greatest and most expensive is simply unrealistic.
Even in CS this problem is pretty non-existant. A school can teach new CS students Java for nothing or they can open their pockets, raise tution, etc and buy a copy of VB for everyone. If you know Java then learning VB is cake.
eSchool News just did a recent story on Linux in schools. Nice read.
For us, we are so locked into MS right now - the licensing fees are unbelievable. Servers, Cals, Office, Mail, etc cost us around 30K per year. In one recent example of price schemes - Office 97 and Pub 97 were separate packages (we didn't get Pub). For Office 2000 MS combined them and you got Pub for free. Office 2002 - they yank Pub back out (nice bait and switch!) and it costs an additional $5 per seat (5x1000+ pcs) We opted out and decided not be jerked around like that. We are a very technologically robust district with a computer at every teacher's desk and 1 to 5 computers in each classroom for student use, plus labs, libraries and tech ed rooms. In addition to the MS licensing, we have a huge investment in educational software and various databases to run the district. Our student pop is around 4000. Our anti-virus alone runs us 10K a year, plus firewall and citrix 10/10. There's more. I am stunned at how much we spend, versus starting with a meager 100K budget for everything, several years ago. We need our enterprise antivirus and firewall. We need our student information database and electronic libraries. But we were sucked into the MS spiral out-of-control licensing. We have invested years of training students and staff and administrators. It is very difficult to switch now. If I were starting fresh, I'd switch to free/open in a heartbeat.
Who do you call when commercial software breaks? Unless you're paying additional monthly or annual maintenance fees, chances are the vendor isn't going to want to talk to you.
Someone pointed out the third "free" is free as in market. With commercial software, only the vendor can support you. You pay their price or you get nothing. With free-as-in-speech software you get free-as-in-market software support: you can pay as much or as little as you'd like, for varying levels of support, and presumably varying levels of expertise.
--
E_NOSIG
First the rebuttal:
... that wierd kid with the three earrings and rave-green hair just MIGHT be the next Dennis Ritchie or Nicholas Wirth.
... that's sorta like telling Albert Schweitzer that he can't go to Med School because there are so many doctors that he'll never NEED to practice medicine ...
... but there is a VERY limited job market for web designers and graphic artists, so they probably won't. Let's not offer them.
... very few subjects make a better tool for teaching critical and/or analytical thinking, as well as project planning skills and attention to detail.
> Many, many students will never program anything
> in their lives.
But it is not the school system's place to PREVENT them from learning to do so
> They'll never want to, and they'll never need
> to.
But, unless you are prescient, you'll not be able to know which will and which won't
> They need word processing.
WP takes about three months worth of daily use to learn as well as 99% of the people need to know it. Most K-12 kids learn so quickly that they will have adequate WP skills to last most of their lives after writing two ten-page reports.
> They might need graphics tools.
Oh
> The vast majority do NOT need compilers, huge
> bloated developing environments, or editors
> with obscure keystrokes.
And since only a few might benefit from them, NOBODY can have them? I'm certainly glad my children did not attend schools you administer.
Then, my points:
Kids need to be challenged, pushed beyond the limits they impose upon themselves, forced out of their "intellectual comfort zones." I sort of halfway agree that programming and systems administration aren't really appropriate core subjects in the "mainstream" curriculum of the public schools, but consider this
Programming and/or system administration suck as subjects taught for the subject matter skills they provide. Those skills become obsolete VERY quickly. However, as a vehicle for developing the mental skills that form the core of intellectual power, they are hard to beat.
Regards,
utter rubbish