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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.'"
I believe the students would learn some really valuable skills using Linux and other open-source software. Linux is, IMHO the best development environment and a Linux lab in a school would create a great learning environment.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
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.
While all that he posted is very true, as how they were going to save money if the local redneck tech people could maintain a Linux network at the schools properly, introducting technology was never the point of bringing PCs to every school.
The whole reason we even have PCs in schools in the US is just the fact that it is outright corporate welfare to computer companies such as Gateway, IBM, Dell, and sometimes Apple, due to shady deals with politicians.
Schools simply don't have the programs for technology education, and even in the high schools there is, at best, only a typing and a Microsoft Word class, and if you are extremely lucky and well funded, a class that will teach Q-Basic.
Most computers in schools just sit around in the science room, and are used only once per semester, and sometimes as entertainment devices for a public school system that's nothing more than a communist daycare center anyways.
However, PC companies, with Microsoft behind each one, get rich off our tax dollars, and hence we have PCs in schools. Putting Linux wouldn't ever fly, as it's purposefully $27,000 a year in corporate welfare to Microsoft.
I know of lots of educational software titles for Windows. How many titles are available under Linux? How many of the Windows titles will run under Wine?
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.
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.
Asking Slashdot to stop preaching to the choir is like asking your ass to stop taking a shit.
But not by using open source. No, instead, we use pirated software.
Clearly, this does make it possible for the BSA to close us down, but the fact is, that they will not get anything from us. We're a not for profit organisation. They know that if they sue us they'll suffer from so much bad publicity that it's not worth it. They'll not get any money from us. We have none.
It would be nice if they prosecuted. We would use as our defence that we have a licence since I clicked "I agree" when it was installed. We may then be able to prosecute them if they caused damage. Not that we'll get a lot of money. The BSA is a non-profit.
Isn't another roadblock that Apple, IBM, and Microsoft all offer significant educational discounts? I'm not sure if this is still the case. Maybe someone else can enlighten us on that. Also, isn't another roadblock that principals, administrators, and educators are really clueless about technology and that open-source really seems foreign a concept; ie, the adoption factor is inversely proporational to the fear-factor (tm)?
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
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!
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?
As somebody who has lived close to this area in the past, I must say that Harrisonburg City only has 4000 students TOTAL in only 6 schools (only 1 high school and 1 middle school). So I would think of it less as a city and more as a small rural community. This means there is likely only one or two people that would essentially be setting up and running this network. Perhaps it will indeed save them money when deploying their new infrastructure, but god forbid this guy move out of the area! I also must question some of the software packages and their "amounts" that he has determined. While I am not advocating Windows by any means, Apache, PHP, mySql, analog, and plenty of other packages he has listed run completely fine on a Win32-based system. I would be concerned about how well the teachers/faculty/students will be able to utilize the system efficiently (reminds of yesterday's kids on linux post), and be able to do trivial tasks. I'm just not sure that these costs are in line with the size of their school system, and whether or not the savings are actually going to amount to a better learning experience for the school community.
Dude, I don't know where you are, but when I graduated from high school in 1997, every school in the county had programming classes. The richer schools were using Borland C++, the rest of us had to do with some flavor of UNIX.
These are middle-class towns in Bergen County, New Jersey. Is this a "Northeast Elite" thing?
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. :)
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.
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.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
First and most blatant, the author does not list exactly what these commerical software line items are, he only compares them with what the OS application he is planning on using. Just as a simple example, he lists WU_FTPD and then assigns a cost of $50x3 for the commerical "equivilent". What is this commerical package? Can't he just use WU_FTPD (assuming the "cost" is the same for the Win32 version as the Linux). The ftp server that ships with Win2K doesn't require any licensing fees (though it's feature set is a bit week compared to other packages). Win2k also comes with a dns server and dhcp servers, so what are the costs that he is associating with these? I'm not saying that these are made up, just that his article is basically useless without it.
One other thing, why is Samba listed as an expense? Presumably if you were going with a Windoze solution you wouldn't need it? Do they have other non Windoze boxes that currently don't connect to existing Windoze boxes that going with Windoze with force them to purchase Samba?
All these things call cast into doubt the accuracy of his article. If he'd at least list the "commerical" packages, then one could make a truely educated attempt at determining the "real" cost savings.
We always had at least one geek teacher, and if your geek teachers were anything like mine I'm sure they'd have a good go at fixing the problem, or finding someone online who'd do it for free.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
they get the same support they get from windows and other commercial products..
/free software... and the support is there and easily found.
:-)
if ANYONE thinks that just because you bought a program form a store means you get magical free technical support they are disillusional mential cases..
Microsoft support is MORE expensive than redhat support. Qcad support is MORE expensive than eaglecad support (and eaglecad is not open source!)
support costs are equal or less for open source
I am so sick and tired of this lie touted by Microsoft Fanatics who have no clue.. Me? I can show you the invoices for 1 year of technical support from both microsoft and redhat... guess which one was cheaper...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Funny, I was never told to RTFM when I asked for commercial support.
No, you were likely just asked for a credit card number.
Trolling is a art,
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.
Uh-huh.
Because you just know that Apple had Congress in their pocket when my school had Turtle Logo and Number Munchers on a bunch of Apple IIe systems back in the early '80s.
Show those fscking politicians "Oregon Trail", and all they saw was dollar signs.
Hell inna handbasket. Liberals! Liberals, I tells ya! And fluoride in the water!
fnord
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
He saved money using free software instead of commercial software? How's that? Can someone explain the math to me? Duh...
It's about a lot more than the up front costs. His pricing is simplistic and the writeup, pardon me for saying, but sophmoric, at best and doesn't apply to a number of other real-life situatins.
How much is support going to cost? Are you going to have in-house experts? How much are they going to cost compared to the people who don't have to be as smart to run the equivalent Windows software?
There are a lot of other fringe areas that need to be considered to come up with a true lifetime cost for software, and this doesn't even scratch the surface.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Open Source. I love my Open Office and I'm having a blast with Linux. But I'm a geek.
Someone else mentioned the fact that most real-world companies use commercial software and these kids won't have experience with it. Good point.
Sorry, but this is hardly a booster for Open Source. This is like saying, "People save money by shopping during a sale." Not exactly news.
Whaaaa?
In 1986 I took my first computer class in school. I learned how to program in BASIC on an 8086. We later got in several 286 machines, which was awesome. This was in a town of 3000 people, and our computer teacher was about 40 years old at the time. We obviously didn't have a huge budget, and there was no such thing as a network.
Are you telling me that today, in high school, they only use computers to teach typing? I find it extremely hard to believe that computer education has gotten worse in 15 years.
You can be cynical all you want, but don't project it onto the education system.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
".., the web server that served this web page to you is running on an old, retired PC that has been recycled after its lifetime as a Windows desktop has passed.
/. effect.
If you consider a dual MP with 2GB ram outdate I guess this could be true. That's about what it takes to withstand the
Jokes a side. The article fails to mention the anti OSS advocats main argument, TCO. I am a strong support of OSS, but I don't think anyone can claim that OSS has a $0 TCO. The article should have mentioned that keeping a healthy system for someone without a Linux guru or extensive IT dep. requiers outside consultans, and support is always useful. In addition training of personell requires relatively heavy investment. OSS stands out and is by many conceived as harder to learn than software that follow the MS standards that tey're used to. The $27,000 is therefor IMHO a bit to high.
On the other hand I believe this is outweighted by the (almost) $0 upgrade costs - user interfaces and basis funcitonallity rarely change - the more-for-the-money argument and the no-bloated-window-managing-for-servers argument.
A sound discussion on economical benefits of OSS should always include counter arguments. One angled articles are hard to take serious.
Look a monkey!
Cost savings of open source software
in the server room
An informal case study in K-12 education
1. What is open source software?
2. Listing of open source software used
3. Cost savings versus capabilities gained
4. Implicit savings in hardware
5. Other implicit cost savings
1. Security
2. Lower virus vulnerability
3. Upgrade costs
6. The roadblock to using open source software
7. A big thanks to OSS developers
1. What is open source software?
It is often difficult for people to understand that some of the most secure, reliable, and efficient software in the world is not owned by a company but rather is under an open license. Open source software is software that was developed with the source code freely available to the public. Anyone may download and use the software, and make changes to it as necessary, with the hope that any improvements made by individuals will be committed back to the main source tree so that everyone can benefit from the modifications.
While this may sound like a strange way to develop software, it is surprisingly common and effective. For instance, in October 2002, SourceForge.net (a site that offers free hosting for open software development projects) reached the milestone of hosting 50,000 open source projects with over 500,000 registered developers. Many people who, if asked, could only name two operating systems would be staggered to learn how many free and open source complete operating systems exist in the world (and that there are several free OS's that could run on the very hardware you're reading this web page with).
Although few people in my school division know what Linux is, every one of them uses it indirectly every day. Open source software has a particularly appropriate niche in budget-strapped public education institutions. This document aims to describe the benefits that Harrisonburg City Public Schools has reaped from the deployment of open source software in its server rooms.
2. Listing of open source software used
While certainly not comprehensive, the list below contains a large sample of the free software products that we employ in HCPS. I have attempted to estimate the cost of replacing these free software installations with commercial products. It should be noted that in some cases my estimations are really just wild guesses as to the cost of various commercial solutions. As a general rule I have tried to estimate on the conservative side. Another thing to note is that commercial solutions for a number of the products below often come bundled as one product, making it very difficult to assign individual replacement costs to the items. For instance, most commercial mail server solutions bundle an SMTP server and an IMAP server together while the open source community's philosophy is to create one product for each discrete function.
Software Estimated cost of
commercial solution
Linux distributions
Red Hat Linux
Linux distribution for i386 (PC) hardware $150 x 17 = $2550
YellowDog Linux
Linux distribution for PowerPC (Macintosh) hardware $130 x 5 = $650
Web server software
Apache
The most widely used web server on the internet $500 x 6 = $3000
PHP
Server-side web scripting language $700 x 5 = $3500
MySQL
Structured Query Language database server $500 x 3 = $1500
phpMyAdmin
Powerful web-based database administration tool $100 x 3 = $300
DataMiner
User-friendly web-based interface for managing database content $50 x 12 = $600
ht://Dig
WWW Search Engine Software $200 x 1 = $200
Outreach Project Tool
Web-based group project collaboration environment $500 x 1 = $500
Phorum
Web-based forum/message board software $100 x 1 = $100
Mail server software
Sendmail
Internet standard MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) $150 x 1 = $150
UW IMAP
University of Washington IMAP/POP3 mail server $150 x 1 = $150
OpenLDAP
LDAP server for intregrated authentication and directory services $200 x 2 = $400
MailMan
Full-featured mailing list manager $150 x 1 = $150
Horde Groupware
Web-based email, address book, and calendaring software $500 x 1 = $500
Firewalling/Routing software
netfilter/iptables
Stateful IP filtering system $1000 x 2 = $2000
Cross-platform file server software
Samba
File server for Windows clients $800 x 4 = $3200
Netatalk
File server for Macintosh clients $500 x 7 = $3500
Other network server products
ISC BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon)
Internet standard DNS server $100 x 9 = $900
ISC DHCP
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server $100 x 8 = $800
WU-FTPD
FTP server software $50 x 3 = $150
NTPd
Network Time Protocol server for synchronization of computer clocks $50 x 4 = $200
Squid
HTTP caching proxy server $200 x 2 = $400
rsync
Incremental backup solution $50 x 12 = $600
Network management and monitoring
MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher)
Monitors traffic on switches and routers a lot x 3 = 3 lots
Nagios
Monitors servers and routers and notifies me of outages via email $300 x 1 = $300
Ethereal
Network analysis and packet sniffing tool $1000 x 1 = $1000
sntop
Monitors network connectivity $30 x 1 = $30
LanLord
Monitors leases on DHCP servers Bundled with
commercial products
Webalizer
Web server statistics reporting tool Bundled with
commercial products
Analog
Web server statistics reporting tool Bundled with
commercial products
The list above comprises about $27,000 of (roughly) estimated cost savings in software purchases for HCPS.
3. Cost savings versus capabilities gained
The commercial replacement cost of the free software that we currently use is obviously very high. However, if I were forced to deploy commercial solutions for all of the above, you could probably guess that I would trim back what we needed to buy significantly. For instance, if it cost me $1000 per web server for the server OS and web server software, you can bet that I wouldn't be running six web servers in my server room like I am now. Rather, I would cut back and only run one or perhaps two web servers. 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.
4. Implicit savings in hardware
Linux can do a lot with only a little hardware. Here in HCPS we have a number of Linux servers running on hardware that would be inadequate for commercial server solutions such as Windows 2000 or Mac OS X. For instance, the web server that served this web page to you is running on an old, retired PC that has been recycled after its lifetime as a Windows desktop has passed. If I were to use Microsoft's IIS server software or Apple's Mac OS X, I would not have considered using this piece of hardware as a web server, and I would have needed to buy new hardware. By enabling me to reuse otherwise useless hardware, open source operating systems have saved our school division a considerable amount of money in hardware costs.
To provide a very rough figure on these cost savings, I estimate that I am currently running 11 Linux servers with hardware that would be inadequate for doing the same job with a commercial solution. To replace those servers with new hardware could easily cost well over $25,000.
5. Other implicit cost savings
1. Security
Many companies put a lot of effort into monetary assessments of the liabilities of security risks on their networks. Such cost assessment is not as common in public education but nevertheless the possibilities for such costs exist and should not be ignored. If my installations of open source server software are more secure than a commercial alternative (and I believe they are, although a discussion of security issues is beyond the scope of this document), then we have a lower risk of losing data or productive staff time needed to clean up after a security breach.
2. Lower virus vulnerability
I am not qualified to provide a full analysis of virus vulnerabilities of various server operating systems, but I think everyone would agree that historically open source OS's have fared far better than... ahem... other operating systems. The HCPS technology staff spends a fair amount of valuable time combatting viruses on our client PC's but a virus infection on a network server can be devastating in terms of data loss, down time, and staff time required for reconstruction. Open source servers that are less vulnerable to virus infections provide cost savings in terms of decreased liability in these areas.
3. Upgrade or recurring licensing costs
The cost of a software solution is not merely the purchase price of the software. The usable lifetime of a commercial software product is rarely longer than 4 years, but where server software products are concerned I would contend that the lifetime is even less -- perhaps only 2 years on average. At this point one must purchase a newer product or an upgrade to the existing one. With open source software, updates are continually free, and I am able to keep my servers running the latest software versions without having to worry about whether I can afford the upgrade.
6. The roadblock to using open source software
So you're probably thinking, "If open source software saves people so much money, why isn't everyone using it?" Two words: learning curve. For people who are used to point-and-click administration of their servers, open source software is often bewilderingly complex to install and configure. I'll admit that you have to be somewhat of a geek to even try out an open source operating system such as Linux. The learning curve that must be followed by a first-time Linux user can be very time consuming and frustrating. For many, especially in public education, this difficulty constitutes a roadblock to the deployment of open source solutions in their district.
7. A big thanks to OSS developers
As you have seen from the informal analysis on this page, I (and indeed my school division) owe a huge "thank you" to the thousands of developers and other people involved in open source software projects.
Copyright 2002
Rob Lineweaver
Last Modified: Friday, October 25, 2002 Product names on this page
may be copyrighted by their respective owners
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
I have to plug Openchallenge as this is one key part of the message to the schools & teachers: if you have some specific need for educational software - submit it to Openchallenge - maybe it builds enough effort for making that software a reality. I believe there is lots of "niche" software needed in education too - atleast I remember crafting a few pieces of software for my mom who was a teacher - there just was not the software for these purposes, and it was possible for me (with no magic skills) to craft it during a few evenings, when I was around 14-16 years old.
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.
I sit in my little /. world wandering if anyone else gives a fuck, I see a story like this posted and I see that others do. I feel content and have more drive in my religion.
I can now say, look other people are doing it, I'm not a freek any more.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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 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
Lest you think I'm complaining, I don't think we needed anything more. I don't see why schools are on the upgrade treadmill when the primary applications -- typing, web browsing, basic programming -- can be done perfectly well with old systems. Every time I hear that a school has spent another half-million dollars on computer equipment, I wonder why they don't get to the important stuff first. (Did anyone else attend schools where the same textbooks had been in use for 25 years?)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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...
Could somebody please provide a brief definition of what "k12 schools" are?
K-12 means Kindergarten thru 12th grade which is schooling for kids, roughly, from ages 6 thru 17, or 7 thru 18, depending on what part of the year you were born. Many schools consider the 7 years of K-6 (K, 1-6) as elementary school, 7-8 (or 6-8) as middle school, and 9-12 as high school.
A lot of schools outside of the US don't have middle schoool.
Ever wondered why you have a lot of younger foreign classmates in college here in America? Or how an immigrant with all their degress is under 22 years old. Now you know a possible reason.
If you hit any roadblocks in the MS install, then you have to pay EVEN MORE MONEY. So yeah, in the cases where the linux install hits roadblocks but the windows doesn't then you won't save as much money.
I also say that, drooling idiots who don't know anything about computers, should probably hire a professional to do their job. Let them figure out the best solution if it be windows, linux, solaris, or Macintosh. The general consesus seems to be that linux requires a good deal of knowledge to administer.
How many people are willing to come up and state that they are both an idiot and administer 30-40 PCs running windows? And also think linux is 'too hard' because they tried it.
Open source software is great, it's free and easily modified. Now that I've given the Open Source movement the usual hurrah, I'm also pretty sure that most real-world companies that use computers use Microsoft products. I'm also reasonably certain that this isn't going to change, due to both monetary and support issues. Even though Linux is free, it isn't free to pay someone to convert your Windows network to a Linux network.
This creates a problem in the public school system in that public education is supposed to teach individuals useful skills. Unfortunately, if kids are taught open source software, they are going to be at a significant disadvantage entering the job market than individuals who have been taught how to use Microsoft products. As nice as it would be to see these individuals converting companies over to Open Source solutions, it's not terribly likely.
So, in my opinion it would be reasonable to teach kids both, but if you're only going to use one type of software, use what The Real World (tm) [No affiliation with MTV] uses. Teaching software, languages, and other things that the average joe never uses in the Real World gives the public school system a bad reputation from the very people who attend it.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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.
Alright I'll bite.
I went to 10 grade in technical magnet West Virginia. Where deer hunting was more popular than computers. This was back in '86 we had dual disk drives IBM pc's. First year was BASIC second year was pascal. Third year was advanced PASCAL. There were probably 15-20 people in programming class.
My parents moved to New York I went to a elite public HS where the CS classes sucked(CS was a vocation class???) while the engineering classes (yes, pneumatics,etc) and JK Flip-flops were considered the best in the nation(at least the state of New York).
May want to rethink your rant
Yes, but with closed source software -- eg Microsoft Word, Encarta, Word Perfect, Windows networking, etc -- your average $25,000 per year study hall monitor can install and use the tools pretty well. That's who used to maintain the network at my high school. In my elementary school, we had one clever Ombudsman teacher who horded the original floppies for the C64s, most of which sat unused unless the kids knew what they were doing because the teachers didn't know the first thing about the C64. And typing "LOAD 'BANKSTREETWRITER',8" was MUCH simpler than your average linux isntallation. I've only met one elementary school teacher who I would trust not to freeze up like a tandy the first time he was prompted for "partitioning options." Most are liable to think of shelving units.
Sure, it's easy to learn Linux if you care. Most of teachers won't -- they don't have the time, nor the economic incentive to get into Linux administration. Maybe if you promised to channel that $27k into 100 raises for every employee...but then again, $100 isn't much of an incentive, either.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I work at a community college, which is not that different from K-12.
:P
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
The purpose of the general education system is to teach students to think and understand the world we live in. The point of school is not, and has never been, to train our youth to join the ranks of the working. That is the purpose of trade schools. If you teach a child how to learn then they will be able to tackle whatever work most interests them. Same goes for teaching programming languages in schools. Stop trying to teach Java to high school students; instead focus on something like pascal or better yet some kind of functional programming. These may not be used in the "real world" as much, but they sure do make you think.
.plan!! what plan?
It wasn't so much that I was 'Doing something with the computers that I wasn't supposed to'.
You have never been the one who has to clean up after those sort of antics, are you? It's all about doing something you aren't supposed to. I bet if you had asked nicely first the teacher would have helped you do it. Any student in the bios or any command line without prior permission is automatically in trouble. Not too many of the kids who want to see the bios messages do so because of mere intellectual curiosity, eh.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
Or slightly better. Microsoft onsite service or other 24/7 support options for Microsoft products likely is more expensive than a RedHat service contract, RHCE, or something else due to the lack of competition.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
How will someone be able to get a job when they lack such basic skills as using a Windows based machine.
Uh....look around you. All those people using Windows and Office now, 98% of them have never had any training whatsoever. Most of 'em can't even type, though significantly more of them can type than can, say, use fdisk or regedit. They don't know the first thing about how to actually run these programs. If they need to learn an unfamiliar program, they co-pilot it with an experienced user, who probably did the same thing to learn it themselves.
I spent 30 minutes setting up screensavers with a user yesterday. Part of it was fun, but the other part was helping her become a little more familiar with the UI.
I do think it would be nice if people got some training in Microsoft products. But then Microsoft changes everything aroudn with each major release. Look at the XP desktop compared to the 2000 desktop; they're so different. The taskbar behaves completely differently now, etc. etc. So even if they do learn it in school, that knowledge will be semi-useless in two or five years.
Oh, wait, you were joking. Ha ha. Nevermind.
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?
I have noticed many posts that are claiming Linux will save money, or Windows has better support, or that the kids need to learn reality (Windows-Office), or that kids need to be exposed to all kinds of software. The truth is, regardless of which way a school district goes with their technology, they are likely to get it wrong. If they go with Windows, they may have cheaper support, but still don't bother to support it anyway. Hardware breaks and they cannot get it fixed because they "saved money" by skipping support contracts and doing it themselves with one or two people for 20-30 schools.
In CA in 1997, the state legislature passed a bill to put a computer in every classroom by 2001. Most high schools took advantage of the program only to have the supplemental money for support, training, and licensing (ie: tithes to the church of MS). Of course there are no warranties on the hardware, the support staff has been let go, and nobody has any plans to fix it.
There is nothing wrong with teaching and expecting someone to know more about what makes the tools they use everyday work (and I shudder to think what it would have cost me to get a new booster and master cylinder installed in my truck at a shop - I did it in about 3 hours last Sunday, for the cost of parts - pretty simple job, actually).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I agree with that thought. However, I know a few non-technical people who would argue the opposite:
I am sure these same people would think it was a good idea that the kids learn to use m$ office because that's what everyone else uses.
My kids are going to learn on UNIX!
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
It'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 doubt a child moving from KDE to Windows or Mac, or visa versa, will be particularly traumatized.
... the kids are neither qualified nor equipped with the knowledge necessary to even begin to make such a decision.
... except in price, and in the opportunity they are afforded, at least theoretically, to look under the hood and see how things really work, and in the variety of different applications (and possibilities) available on a budget. In all these areas a school on a budget gets vastly more return from free software than it ever will from proprietary products, Microsoft spin and corporate politicking, not to mention slashdot astroturfing, aside.
What an utter load of crap.
First, I work in the "real world" and make a very acceptable living doing so. We deal with real money (millions of dollars) in a high risk environment (trading various products on various exchanges), and we cream our competition in no small part because of our use in free software.
So: myth number one - commercial software isn't the only thing used in the "real world" (as your statement disingenuously implies), free software is deployed very widely, and very successfully, throughout the "real" world.
Myth number two - education is only valuable if it precisely mimicks a trade school. It isn't particularly important if kids are tought literacy by reading Mark Twain or by reading A Corporate Yesman's Training Primer (except that the latter may preclude them from ever becoming a functioning human being), what is important is that they learn the skill of reading. Likewise, it makes no difference whether a child is taught Macintosh and OS X, Windows and Microsoft Office, or GNU/Linux and OpenOffice, so long as they learn the basics of computer literacy and how to use basic word processing applications. Indeed, the latter will allow the gifted children to excel beyond anything the proprietary offerings could (for they will be able to look under the hood and see how things work), while the average to challenged student will benefit from learning basic concepts they will have little difficulty applying to a different envoronment.
Indeed, kids once moved from Apple IIe to Atari, to MS DOS, to Macintosh (in any order) with little difficulty
Myth three: kids should decide what is best. Nonsense. Parents and educators should make that decision
Kids should be exposed to computers. The more capabilities they can be exposed to, the better, and the more equipment and software available for them to explore and learn from, the better. It makes little difference whether that is Linux, Windows, or Mac
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Wise up, assh*le.
You're paying for Micro$oft's monopoly, even though you're probably too dumb/self-focused to understand that simple fact.
So you're happy with your tax dollars being wasted on Micro$oft's overpriced crap?
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
On /., the rage is always "Look I can replace this proprietary setup with Linux/OSS/FSF/whatever." While this can be an excellent idea given the right personel, what about a solution that is more feasible for a successor who is not necessarily a Linux guru to maintain. Given the list of what this guy wants/needs, he could get it all set up (other than the x86's) for under $3,000 using Apple hardware and software. For $2,500, a K-12 school can get an XServe that comes with an unlimited client license for OS X Server. All the server software he lists either comes with OS X Server (usually with a nice GUI) or can be compiled under Darwin. For the 5 Macs, he can get OS X for 70 bucks apiece (education discount again) for a total of $350. So aside from whatever he chooses for the x86 desktops, he could have everything else set up for $2,850. So rather than having a setup where it would require someone with a pretty hefty knowledge of Linux to administer, for a few grand more he could have a setup that is able to take advantage of all that open source software while providing a much greater ease of use.
Any student in the bios or any command line without prior permission is automatically in trouble.
That makes sense if they are running an operating system where the only userid is root. If there were multiple userids, and the userids had different permissions...
I was a TA in university in the CS department - and we had a variety of Sun and IBM UNIX workstations. I can't imagine that K-12 students being potentially more dangerous in a multi-user environment than some inquisitive CS students trying to get root...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Who said that the students necessarily had to use open source software? The author specifically mentions the need for Mac and Windows Networking capabilities.
The article is a cost-benefit analysis of Open Source usage in implementing infrastructure, not for pedagogical use.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Sorry man but I disagree...
/s" that isn't teaching me? It doesn't matter if its pc windows linux mac or nextcube black, if a person doesn't know what formatting is and they nuke their hard drive the OS they're using has no relevance to that. Next point..
1) because it saves time and work in keeping track of windows licenses.
While this may have been true in the pre win2k server days, using group policies you can really keep a handle on both OS and application licenses. Don't want a student installing that warezed copy of photoshop? Make a group policy, Only want the art computers to have photoshop? Make a group policy.
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.
So if I use a dos boot disk and type "format c:
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.
From my experience on the corporate lan, %85 of all trouble tickets go to outlook/exchange issues, %10 to network issues, and the other %5 go to hardware issues. So if you took outlook/exchange out of the loop and just dealt with the other %15 your troubleshooting methods would be the same on a windows machine as they are a linux box.
[on the network]
Open up a shell/dos prompt. Ping that router, ping that nameserver, do a NSlookup.
[hardware]
jiggle that card, make sure that ram is seated correctly, make sure cables are plugged in where they supposed to be, smell for smoke
So basically you learn the same either way. The most basic networking tools exist on both platforms.
4) provides compilers and development environments for those who are adept enough to care to use them
You mean GCC? Here you can get it for windows too http://gcc.gnu.org/install/specific.html#windows
5) difficult for learning students to bring down the whole computer from a user-class account
I'll go back to my first point with group policies on that one.
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).
I spent a month on RH8, i've got to say, it sucked for a desktop. Sure I love using it for a router and the website im in charge of uses it (check my sig) for a desktop it just plain sucks (didn't we have a discussion on this last week?) Sure there is open source alternatives (Read GIMP) but gimp isn't professional grade yet, it doesn't do CYMK seperations. Kids need to learn whats in the real world, real world desktops use windows.
7) UNIX is time-tested as a style of environment. Windows is controlled by the whims of the market.
So unix is like a stubborn child and windows does what the parents want?
Like I said before, i'm not trying to dis linux/unix in any way, but it's still not ready for primetime. If you wanted to give kids an insight into unix, get a bunch of macs with OSX. Then that way you can give them the best of both worlds.
Not every contractor has knowledge of Linux and even so many that do don't INSTALL it. Your average company isn't going to support something like that and someone who does will probably charge more.
Sure, you save $27k/year in licensing, but how much do you spend in training? Most kids and teachers aren't going to be used to mounting drives and troubleshooting hardware when things go awry in linux.
Microsoft-based OS's are just familiar to them, it's easier to use for the most part and something that they can relate to.
Cost savings != efficiency.
How freaking sad
The learning curve that must be followed by a first-time Linux user can be very time consuming and frustrating. For many, especially in public education, this difficulty constitutes a roadblock to the deployment of open source solutions in their district.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
I remember leaving the grade 8 classroom at the ripe age of 13 and how horribly difficult it was to find a job, because I couldn't use MS Office. Now that I have that out of my system, do you really think we need to worry about kids not finding jobs because they didn't learn MS software in grade school? If they're going into any sort of field where they'll be using a computer all day, chances are they'll be doing at least some college / university, where they'll learn the job skills needed for their field. And if not being able to utilize clippy to his fullest extent is the biggest hurdle between you and the corporate world, you may need to rethink your career choice.
do not read this line twice.
People are criticizing the method and means. I have read posts that say "It isn't 'Real World' experience" or "You haven't taken into account the SUPPORT" and several other attacks at what, IMHO, is an OUTSTANDING effort.
To those that say it won't provide "Real World" experience, I argue that NOTHING I work with today existed 4 years ago, much less 8-10 years ago. Yet I have worked with computers for 30 + years. If I had not had the opportunity to use one as a kid, then I would probably not have wanted to make a flounding career out of this obsessive hobby.
To those that say support will be an additional cost...what better way to teach ALL aspects of hardware and software but to instruct the kids on how to maintain the machines themselves
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Many companies offer huge educational discounts on software.
I'm at a private university. If I want to buy a single copy of LabVIEW for a computer in my research lab, it will cost me roughly 50% of the retail price. That's not uncommon.
If you have to call M$ $upport, you are *fucked*
A friend of mine in high school told me about someone he knew who decided he just HAD to go straight to MS support when something wasn't working. He spent 2 hours (to the order of $99-199) on the phone with MS, and they weren't able to help him a bit.
He later mentioned the problem to my friend. My friend found the solution to the problem.
In 2 minutes.
FROM MICROSOFT'S OWN WEBSITE!
M$ support techs aren't even intelligent enough to search their own damn knowledgebase...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The art dept uses gimp for photos, etc.
I have never heard of any company that would hire a graphic designer who didn't have practical experience in Photoshop. As much as Gimp is similar, you wouldn't get by human resources with Gimp in place of Photoshop on your resume.
:P
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.
The author seems to be says that this switch was more than cost savings b/c they got more capability. Isn't that more of a side-effect of cost savings. If I have $10 to buy lunch and I only spend $5, I can either pocket the $5 or else buy a bigger lunch.
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
I think that this is the big barrier to the use of Linux in K-12 schools. The IT group usually wants to standardize on one desktop OS, and has to choose Windows because that's the OS that Apps for all grade levels will run on. Provide an enabler (such as Lindows) that let's them run the existing commercial Apps on Linux, and Windows will begin to loose it's appeal.
You make a good point. Like I said in a response to another post, unless the kids are actually learning to use computers as computers, it's nothing but a white elephant appliance. Windows doesn't need to be taught. Real computing does. But that doesn't mean that every kid is going to learn it.
Now that I think about it, specialization at earlier ages needs to happen. I remember being frustrated at how easy everything was in elementary school, and was teaching myself to program by 6th grade. If schools had given me classes in C, Assembly, and so on, I'd have gotten an awful lot more out of junior high school and high school than what little I managed to distill from the politically correct fluff and the trite details of their requirements.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
However, as far as Linux and open-source are concerned... it's not there year. They are no where near as easy to use as they need to be to serve an educational function.
Excuse me? When I was in high school, we had Apple IIs to program on, and nobody complained about them being "too hard". Hell, they didn't even have man pages, and we still figured out what to do with them.
By the way, learning to program C on a Unix box is WAY easier than learning to program on a Windows or Mac (pre-X) box, because the concepts of "editor", "compiler", and "executable" are kept separate. If you're going to write a groupware suite, then a GUI IDE might be helpful, but it's just a confusing distraction for a newbie.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
He saved money using free software instead of commercial software? How's that? Can someone explain the math to me?
You grew up in the American public educational system, didn't you? I can tell.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Funny, I was never told to RTFM when I asked for commercial support.
I doubt anyone offering commercial support of closed or open source software would tell you to RTFM.
With the free support you get online, you are just as likely to get a "RTFM" from a Microsoft newsgroup/IRC channel as you are from a Linux one. Such is life with unmoderated public forums.
The open source community direly needs to lose the punks for it to be reliable for education and commercial support.
Yeah, because those "punks" are the same ones running companies who charge for commercial support of open source. Get real. Have you ever paid for commercial support of an open source product? It works just like closed-source support - a professional providing a support service for a fee, not some jackoff in an IRC channel.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
wait for it...having more money in the budget.
Um, that's the same thing, dude!
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
Actually, it was more than that. The school was really small, around 150 students total. All the kids looked fairly clean cut. Everything about it just looked nice, comfortable and safe. I wouldn't worry about them getting lost in a sea of 2k+ students, and the odds of violence, gang crap etc... looked very small. The IT infrastructure just let me know the guys in charge were willing to think outside the box.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
If students are using computers at home, why do we need goddamn classes in it? I mean, its not like we have classes in "Defeating Mother Brain and finding all the missile upgrades." Using windows because its popular at home is self-defeating at best, and insane at worst.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Of course the answer is that you go to school to learn things you can't at home. "What's the point of learning French at school when we speak English at home?"
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
This is a perfect analogy to computers; people don't know about Windows Update, auto-launching email viruses, how to clean up their start menu so that it's not a horrible mass of garbage, not having 80,000 programs running in the systray.
The problem with Windows is that it has as a design assumption that the end user should understand how to do these sorts of things. Even where the end user is a child or computer illiterate office worker.
Even with the NT line of Windows you can easily run into situations of an administrator installing software which won't work for a regular user.
Windows doesn't need to be taught.
Actually it does, e.g. it's counter intuitive that you log off a Windows machine by going to a place called "start".
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.
This is at the core of the argument over specialist educational software. How often is it actually useful and how often is it being used more for political than educational reasons?
I don't see why schools are on the upgrade treadmill when the primary applications -- typing, web browsing, basic programming -- can be done perfectly well with old systems.
With "commodity" applications, such as web browsing, email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc (as well as programming) being well supported by open source.
We upgraded to MS-Office 2000 recently. Did I mention that it cost over $40,000 in licenses and required purchasing an additional $20,000 worth of RAM because some of the older PCs couldn't run it?
That's with educational prices on the software and quite probably a nice volume discount on the RAM.
I spent less time on that server in over two years AND it's replacement than I did just tonight trying to get MS Organizational Charts to work in MS-Office 2000 under Win-NT and Win-2000. (By the way, the fix is to give all your users change rights to the c:\WINNT directory and some of the files in it. yeah.. security by design.. sure.)
Is that information common knowlage? Would MS support know the solution, especially since it involves 3 different MS products in combination?
The software or hardware you're using might be inadequate now, and change even more before you enter the workforce. That's not a problem. Basic & apple IIc's aren't used anymore but I still use skills I learned there.
That's the difference between "training" and "education".
One argument for using MS software is that it will train students in skills they can use to get a job: MS usage is what employers want. Well there is no guarantee anymore that in 4 or 5 years when students get a job that MS software will still be in use, or if it is that it will be like what the students use today.
Considering that Microsoft likes to change their current software every 18-24 months it's unlikely that schools will be able to have the "latest and greatest" for that long without spending lots of money. Of course commercial companies are also reluctent to spend their hard earned cash on software as a fashion statement. It's entirely possible that someone could get a job which involves using an older version of software than that they used at school.
Using open software allows students to learn the inner workings of computers that MS will never allow. Hopefully they will learn from basics and could apply the skills to any system,
These arn't quite the same thing. Being able to learn the inner workings is like being able to become a motor mechanic. Learning the basics and able to apply to other systems is more like someone learning to drive any car as opposed to only a specific model of car.
The major item I see missing is the educational discount. This is a school afterall! I set this sort of thing up for a private school that my kids were attending a few yers ago and _we_ would have paid far less than the costs quoted here if we would have used M$ OS, M$ Office or Corel Office. Sigh! When we called M$ about DO$/Window$ it was going to cost us $40 as an educational cost.
Another part of this, that those of us who have set up infrastructure (profe$$ionally and privately) will note, are things like the inclusion of SAMBA (last time I checked SAMBA WAS free!!! so quoting something like SCO's VisionFS would have been more real world) which wouldn't be necessary if this were an all M$ and/or Mac installation.
With a backgrounder, some creativity and a bit of consultation with some real-world IT infrastructure types (to get it more real world), this could have been better but admittedly, much lower in costs!
I'm glad this is going to be noticed mostly only by us nerds :) and not the majority of the other world :(
I agree with what you're saying.. And I was in no way putting down literatures et. al. I was merely saying that I was never inspired in those fields, and so I never excelled. Thereby being evidence of the importance inspiration (given my attributes in other inspired fields).
More-over, I never said to home school. I merely said that teaching has a definite limit; you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I guess I neglected to add the value of a mentor; someone that can answer frustrating questions.
The best way I can summarize my intentions is to say to simply be a role model for your children. If they want what you are and have, then they may have inspiration to follow in your tracks and take on the passions that you have. If your passions are TV, video games and socializing, then you can't get too upset when your children don't do well in math. If you obsess over software programming and don't portray a practical benifit to them, they may simply ignore you; writing you off as an eccentric.
As a youth, my father could work wonders with electronics and cars. We had propaganda about how great Einstein and Benjamin Franklin were and what they were able to do in their lives. There were the stories of rags-to-riches by various people throughout American history. These things provided me inspiration; and being an introvert, I wasn't AS distracted by the social aspects (though there was a lot of TV). My point is that it's a delicate balance. Tiny things can influence monumentally for better or worse.
I guess one active thing a parent can do is to keep ready track of who their children's mentors/idols are. They're generally open about them/ willing to discuss them. Course, when they fall in love with a rock-star or other such hard-to-reconsile idol, I don't know what one can do. But as you said, you have to let them be their own person.
-Michael
Many companies offer huge educational discounts on software.
Thus changing from extremely expensive to very expensive. Remember that schools do not typically buy software for one computer they buy for a large number.
I'm at a private university. If I want to buy a single copy of LabVIEW for a computer in my research lab, it will cost me roughly 50% of the retail price.
The full price is?
please read the parent...
"It is basically preaching to the choir"
The response I made would be an analogy, or more accuratly an analogue.
Taking the saying "preaching to the choir" in a literal sence to provide a general answer to why "preaching to the choir" isn't pointless.
Technically a religion needs a 'GOD', and since there is no God in OSS it would be better to call it a philosophy or Doctrine.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I'm sure it's not, and based on my experience with MS tech support I highly doubt they would have been able to be of any assistance.
One problem, IME, with MS support. Is that the tend to have people who specialise in a specific piece of software. Even though MS frequently produces "sphagetti code" where it isn't always obvious which is OS and which is application.
I just know from experience that a lot of apps (including MS apps) require unreasonable rights to the \WINNT folder so eventually I tried that and it fixed things.
Just hope it didn't break anything else.
I'd love to know why a regular user runing a user-space appliation needs write access to a system folder and some system-folder files.
Because some of the code might well have originally been written for 95 (or even earlier) and the "monkeys" do the majority of their development work logged in as administrator.
Another problem is where an app refuses to even open a file it can't write to