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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.'"
once again the known answer, you can get support from the community
;)
:)
i was the reponsible of the computer lab in a little school in mexico about two years ago, we ran linux, staroffice, gnome, kde, gimp, whatever you can name, aside from apache, sendmail, etc., and never run into troubles, nothing gets broked, no virus, etc, etc
oh, and the school owners where extatic about not having to pay a cent in licenses
of course, if you take a project like this, you need to know some things, but hey, isn't about learning and having fun with the process?
so, maybe it's just a case of knowing what resources you can get from the community, and use them
I have to disagree with this generalization. While I agree that many of the PCs in the school system are pretty much a waste of space and time, that doesn't mean they don't have a place.
At my high school (I graduated in '99), I took multiple classes about multimedia design and computer science. In fact, the Computer Science 1 class I took in high school gave me college credit which transferred easily to just about any major university in the state (Colorado).
At the same time however, there were 3 large computer labs at my high school and I recall being herded in there several times only to waste half of the class time learning completely useless software that barely demonstrated what we were supposed to learn. Given that, I think it's fair to say that computers in schools may be overhyped, but that doesn't mean they don't belong there.
From the article:
/Win2k. Then, he says most commercial mail server solutions bundle an SMTP server and an IMAP server together . That's all well and good, but then he esitmates seperate costs for an SMTP server and an IMAP server after just saying they are bundled together!!! I wouldn't read too much into his numbers, if I were you.
It should be noted that in some cases my estimations are really just wild guesses as to the cost of various commercial solutions.
Add to this the fact that he estimated a seperate cost for the OS and the web server, when IIS is included with NT
I really wish the Commercial Solutions whose costs he estimated for his comparison were listed. For all I can tell, the prices could be totally arbitrary. This takes alot of the impact away from such a comparison. I definitely wouldn't show it to management and expect a response in my favor.
Sig Sig Sputnik
I'm a high school student taking a computer repair class at my school, we are currently running linux and windows under vmware on linux. I spear-headed this movement and my teacher supported me fully, we are now in the process of teaching all of the students in the class how to use linux. I think that using linux is great, students are learning that they have a choice in which operating system goes on their computer
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
I just moved the desktops over to Red Hat (I can't remember the version, but the kernel was 2.4.x), and installed free development utilitiies. OpenOffice wasn't really "there" yet, so I used Star Office. With the ability to lock down the machines efficiently (something difficult to impossible to do with Windows), the Novell client licenses were no longer needed. OpenBSD became their server. Voila, absolutely zero dollars were spent on licenses or new hardware. I billed them a measly $475 for my trouble (I used to work there, so I cut them some major slack. Besides, I really wanted to win one for the Linux crowd).
The downside: my pay had to come under the table, because the state was so locked for funds they were not allowed to out source - even though they were still allowed to visit their local MS salesman and blow $30,000. Go figure. In the end, the manager just told the brass that his admin had thought it all up. :)
They've got these computers scattered all throughout the school, all running linux. The art dept uses gimp for photos, etc. But their core apps are really a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, email & web. The beauty is, their elementry school is connected to the same network. Students get their account & homedir in 4th grade and it follows them until they graduate.
They can do much more interesting things with these networks, offer better classes w/ more technical focuses with everything they have. They don't need to worry about forking out several $k for licenses for certain software just to teach programming concepts, administration, etc...
This is exactly the kind of school I want my kids to grow up in, and if I don't end up homeschooling them, I'll do whatever it takes to get them in this one.
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once again the known answer, you can get support from the community
Playing devils advocate here, that statement is a *very* hard sell to upper management. They want contracts, they want someone who can be charged back/billed/sued if something goes wrong. They want SLA's and the like.
At that level, its all CYA.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, but when we were growing up, schools used macs, when people in the real world were using windows. Now people in the real world (well, everything but servers, high end graphics, video editing, computer animation, web site design, programming) heh, that's a lot that's done on Linux. And Linux usage isn't going to get smaller, by the time these kids are in a good job Linux will be standard. Of course by that time they will have forgot it all anyway, so what's the fuss? :-)
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Excuse me! I come from a redneck tech area. I now run the IT dept for a Biotech, and I'm damn good at it. The high school I went to had old 386 computers and were peer-2-peered with twisted pair cable running Windows 3.1 when I attended. I learned BASIC, Pascal, AND C++ while attending there and I also maintained the network. We actually had a good computer curriculum and it wasn't because MS or Dell came in and just gave us a bunch of useless machines that weren't going to get used. It was because we had good teachers who were willing to teach us the things we wanted to learn. Tech education is EXACTLY the point of PC's in schools (from the school standpoint) even if the corporate standpoint on it is to gain a tax break. But I think it is deeper than that. I think tech companies are trying to increase what American students learn about computers partially to replace the people who work for them now but wont in the future and partially because many companies are tired of hiring below-par foreign workers and having to sponsor them in this country.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
My high school (not a big or fancy one) had a C++ course, a typing course, and a course over basic computer applications. There were also computers in the art lab and the journalism studio. I would say that there are plenty of legitimate uses for computers in schools. Basic typing itself being enough to justify at least one computer lab.
For a project at my son's school (I ws a parent mystery guest) I demonstrated to the kids how easy it is to install Linux over a Microsoft laden box and what you could do with it.
For the most part the kids loved it, and they were so curious what the software was that could actually replace the great beast. Some of them thought it ran ontop of Windows. BTW - the kids are in 4th grade.
So I left them with the disks for RH7.3 and now they get a kick out of installing RedHat over the XP disks they had paid for, and vice-versa. It's quite funny, but now they're learning how to replace the OSes back forth (for practice I 'spoze). I'm thinking of going in to show them more - dual boots, other things they can do w/ it.
The real funny part is that my son said that a couple of kids got in an argument over what OS was better than the other, available s/w, games - etc. I think it's quite funny. Good think it didn't come to blows!
I posted anonymous to save moderators from wasting points on something so trivial, but if you insist....
ok, non-anonymous, with karma bonus.
here's a study
here's another one just to make sure.
both are google caches of the pdf's (1,2)
the bit about the windows admins is my own 2 cents- that's completely based on my biased opinion.
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I went to college in Harrisonburg. It is the home of James Madison University. JMU's CS curriculum teaches people on the UNIX platform. Most all of the programming assignments are submitted via one of the Sun boxes there. There are a couple programming classes for MS applications but they are by far not the most popular. Also, they teach simple networking based on UNIX and linux as well. So if the city really wanted someone to support the infrastructure they built in the public schools, all they would need to do is form some sort of joint program with the college to have students come over and support it. Maybe give them Internship/CO-OP credits for it. The reality is that if more schools would work with colleges in a format like this then there stands the great possibility of major advancement in technology curriculum on BOTH sides.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Interesting choice of pejorative statements just because their population density is different that the, obviously backward, town where your school computer was not used in your presance.
I graduated from highschool in 1980, attended 2 different schools in the Knoxville, TN area and both had computers maintained by the students way back then. Not sure what my first school had, since I did not take a computer class until 1977, but it did use punch cards. The machine I was familiar with was a DEC machine hooked to 3 teletype terminals and paper tape memory.
Even years later, rural highschools in the area were using microcomputers to enhance the football coach's play-calling ability and defense coordination. How do I know this? One of the coaches was a helicopter pilot in my National Guard unit and told us about the setup during a bad weather day. BTW, the coaches were the ones setting up the computers and programming them. So much for the stupid hick jock theory.
In the same area, my son received his CCNA through his highschool during his Junior year. All of the equipment and instruction was provided by Cisco, free. The networking cable was surplus and installed by the students in the networking classes. The T-1 line was provided, free, by the local phone company. So much for the the direction of "welfare cashflow".
The only thing holding back computing in schools is people like *you* that assume just because *your* school was full of helpless, clueless dolts that a smaller school *must* have a lesser level of ability, be it their accent that you do not like or some other non-issue.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I went to JMU which is located in the 'Burg and let me tell you this should be good. There's nothing the townies love more than their Walmart and SuperWalmart so this should work out quite well. Kids go to school and use Linux in the classroom. Kids go home and use Linux on their Walmart PC to do their homework.
I'll have to contact the JMU CS department and find out if the students and the LUG had anything to do with this.
One guy in particular single-handedly killed an implementation of the Linux Terminal Server Project at the high school with a relentless barage of FUD..
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Maybe its just me. Whenever I had problems, I asked on IRC (this was several years ago) and always got the "RTFM" when either there wasn't a manual, or one written so poorly that didn't have any answers. If I didn't have friends to help me out, I would have been very disenchanted with Linux. Maybe the times have changed, and you can ignore me, but you won't see me back in IRC asking questions.
;-)
Sidenote - I love it when people call me a troll at the end of their long critique of one of my posts. Isn't the point of fighting a troll not to reply to them?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Nonsense, the decision to hire someone has a lot more to do with than what software they're famaliar with.
COMPLETELY dependant on the HR person in companies big enough to have those, which I think the original poster probably had in mind.
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.
Most companies ARE in deep trouble when it comes to effectively dealing with technology.
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.
HR people don't care. Many don't know much themselves about the ins and outs of computers, and generally don't assume anyone else can learn past what they know.
I tried using a headhunter agency once to find me a job. I didn't have 'CGI' on my resume, just Perl and Python and PHP and a few others. He said I wouldn't get hired anywhere. I took 30 seconds to explain that CGI was effectively shorthand for someone who knew Perl or something like that. Didn't get an interview, didn't get called back, never returned calls, etc. I'd insulted him by showing him up, even though I was trying to help him more effectively do his job, which was keeping up with technological buzzwords.
creation science book
Web browsers? For 95% of what 95% of people do, there's no difference. Type the URL in the address bar, click on the links, and hit the Forward/Back buttons. Anyone who is kind of familiar with IE will understand Mozilla pretty well.
Word processors? OpenOffice behaves much like MS Office. There are quirks, of course. But to say that someone who has been using OO will be "unable to compete" with all those knowledgable Office users, or that an OO kid will fall on her face when presented with Office, is absolutely silly.
We can also claim to be effectively at parity regarding mail clients (Outlook/Evolution) and desktops, if you take it to mean that a person using one would have a pretty good idea what to do with the other.
You could argue that, when you get into the power user range, there's a lot of knowledge that just doesn't flow freely between the proprietary and open software worlds. So what? Teaching such skills to anyone prior to the 9th grade is a waste of time anyways.
My firm opinion is that teaching computer skills to youngsters (excluding strong typing skills and a few "this is what the mouse does" basics) is a horribly ineffective proposition. For example, for the cost of about twenty middle-of-the-line computers, you could fully fund a music program. The only difference is, half of the instruments will still be usable in five years.
I've also got strong reservations about most of what passes for "education software" these days. Aside from mostly being poorly conceived, poorly written, and badly matched to the end-user's skill level, when a kid is playing on it he's not getting the human interaction that should be a vital part of his education.
Agreed. Indoctrinating kids to any particular agenda is bad. But we do it all the time. If we provide a "Windows only" school, we're promoting a Microsoftian agenda. If Coca-Cola or Nike pays to place banners around the school, we're promoting their agenda. If we teach evolution in schools (or refuse to), we're promoting the agenda of one entity or another.
In the case of computer software, it shouldn't be about teaching "computer skills" which most adults could pick up in a one week crash course. At best, we should be looking at ways to use technology to aid learning about other subjects. We should also be open to the possibility that the technology is actually interfering with education. More below.
My response: Teach neither. Get technology out of the classroom.
The year I got to Junior High (1989) was the first year the "Channel One" fiasco started. Our already terminal attention spans were ratcheted down a couple more notches by all the fast, pretty pictures, vacuous (but good looking) "reporters," and manipulative commercials. Plus, thanks to the suddenly ubiquitous classroom televisions, it became much easier for teachers to integrate "multimedia" into the curriculum. Trust me, for every hour I spent in high school watching something intellectually mind-blowing, there were a good three or four hours of questionable videos.
Oh, and don't even start me on the number of hours I spent cooling my heels while the teacher tried to figure out what was wrong with the blasted equipment. I remember a geometry class (the hour before mine) where the teacher spent literally a third of her time fussing with cranky "telecourse" equipment. She didn't have the choice not to, because she was responsible for teaching a group of twelve kids located a hundred miles away.
In order for technology to be useful in the classroom, it has to be reliable and intuitive enough that it practically blends into the background. It also has to be cheap enough that we're not dipping into other, more important resources in order to obtain it. At the moment, many of the things people are trying to do in the education field are too intrusive and too expensive to be justified.
Okay, I'm probably being too harsh on many points. But thanks for letting me rant.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
i find this completely irrelevant. in 20 years when these children are in the "business" work force i doubt that windows (as it exists currently) will be around. sure Microsoft will probably be, and they're products may still be as prevalent, but that they're little GUI menus will still be set up the same? i doubt it. most of us grew up using Apple II's. did that seriously affect our ability to use a computer today? most of the non-tech savvy people working today didn't use a computer at all in their youth. sorry, you can argue OSS in the classroom in a lot ways, but not this one.
most educational software sucks. period. it does absolutely nothing for students. it is designed to be sold to teachers too f***in lazy to be worried about whether their kids can read, write, or think. they just say, "golly, look at them on the computers, isn't it wonderful". adminstration grew up without computers so aren't tech savvy, and "we're using technology" sounds great and makes great PR in the school newsletter.
most ed. software teaches the kids to sit blanky and stare at the freakin screen, gaze at some gaudy shockwave/flash GUI, and then print out (maybe) the right answers from a multiple choice quiz. BFD!!!
i teach seventh grade history. what do i do? well, i have had the kids do lots of work, from creating editorial newspapers, researching curent events and doing analysis, creating web pages, and using powerpoint (i know, i know) but not the bells, whistles, and chrome crap, no the two text boxes, compare and contrast, pro and con stuff (so it would show up on tv in class to present). as well as internet research. i also had them get three different web sites on a single topic, evaluate them on content, clarity, and validity. try that with some ed. software.
i have been trying for years to get our district to adopt FOSS solutions. in fact last night, i demonstrated to school site council how to turn 30-40 old pentiums into X clients. in the school library, with parents, teachers, admin, and students, i had a p133/32mb running
GNOME2
OpenOffice writer, impress, calc
GIMP
Mozilla
Gvim (not emacs, he he!!)
Evolution
simultaneously, remotely from my classroom. that is the type of ed. softwares they can use. by the way, principal is very interested. she is clueless tech-wise, but loves the idea. she also loved how my 4 year old box i use in class class has a 55 day uptime. (mandrake 8.2/ximian) now on to the district technidiots!!!
</rant>
in case you think i'm fullof crap, my school's website is Arroyo Seco. don't netcraft it. it's iis. i had no say. and yes, the webmaster's email is mine.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
If you really want to edumicate your kids, do it yourself.
Actually, while I don't know what kind of studies there are for it, the best way of "having a child learn", is when they learn for themselves.
Teachers necessarily can't know how to talk to a brick wall effectively, yet that's exactly what we bring generation after generation up as.
In com sci classes at least, the people that require tutors, generally don't do well; requiring spoon-feeding and "can't you just do my project for me". Those that get deep into the material on their own can often ace at least introductory course-work (com sci can definitely be a mind bender, especially when dealing with number theory).
The key is motivation. If you are unmotivated when you meet a person, you may remember little about them. Names are most famous: Many people (myself included) are already pessimistic about being able to remember hair/eye-color, names, etc. so I don't bother paying much attention when I meet someone.. Sure enough, it's a self fullfilling prophesy.
People going to computer or math classes with such pessimism have little chance of succeeding (regardless of their background deficiencies).
In my life, I've found that having desirable projects that happen to require learning a lot about a given topic affords an ample amount of motivation. In science, I crave sci-fi concepts; I want to understand them so I could possibly invent something new. With computers, I develop overwhelmingly complex goals (on the MRPG scale). Thus virtually every aspect of science, math and computer skills have been on my "I need to know" list.
Conversely, I haven't found such motivators for history, art, music, literature, so I only give those subjects a necessarily passing glance. (Though at some point I developed an appreciation for the story-telling nature of history).
While being totally non scientific (effective sample pool of 1), I still see such trends, and believe that inspiring your children in the single best way to teach them.
The trick is of course, how to inspire. And how do you avoid making a project obviously contrived to the point of frustration.
-Michael
It wasn't Windows that got MOST of our juices flowing.
.029 $US)
Unfortunately in MY case it was from Microsoft.
It was Xenix, and it was during school. While learning CPM pascal and COBOL (anyone?) on Control Data hardware and assembler on 80286s (when I could actually get one) and XTs, I discovered an odd machine at the end of the lab (Control Data Institute mid 80s)
That machine changed my life, and this was during the DOS days 3.12 if memory serves me.
Now, I have over 100 Solaris/linux/OpenBSD boxen under my care. Add to that 50 WinNT/2000 boxen and you can see why I would prefer more emphasis on UNIX(like) skills in schools.
just my $1 Jamaican (or
The problem with all this is that for the people that read /. using open source software is fine, they can figure the problem out themselves or enough of their geek friends are good with linux and will know the answer. They fufill their own prophecy that OSS is cheaper because they can get past the installation issues and and subsequent problems.
But for people who don't know much about computers and really don't want to, or have the time to, is it really cheaper? Do they know how to use a newsgroup? do they know how to use IRC? Are they going to use these resources that for the most part are unstructured and not dependant? The community support for a product is only good if _a lot_ of people use it and _a lot_ of people have a the time to read newsgroups etc... Ever post to one of the CVS newsgroups? A lot of questions go unanswered, and it's not alone.
I'm all for OSS, but no one thing is an end all. OS's, applications, programming languages, etc... are simply tools. Use the one that is best for you, what you need to do, and the resources you have.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson