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Linux in High School Labs
lexbaby writes "The Salt Lake Tribune has a story about how Logan High School (Logan, Utah) is using Linux in their student programming lab. The main use is for robotics. There is the old discussion about if Linux is truly cheaper to operate in the long run. Is Linux a legitimate solution to school districts facing a financial crunch?" I hope some of the students involved post pictures of the robots they're building in class.
I thought M$ admitted that they couldn't compete with the Linux's TCO? They switched the page claiming a lower cost with a page outlining the benefits of windows over linux.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
There is the old discussion about if Linux is truly cheaper to operate in the long run. Is Linux a legitimate solution to school districts facing a financial crunch?
I dont know about schools in US. In India, an entire undergraduate programming intro lab (where we were taught Unix, C, C++, Shell Scripting and Perl) were 30-40 386 boxen used as dumb terminals for a behemoth running Linux. Contrary to what you would believe the machine was fast enough to support 35 students programming (in text mode) vi, emacs and running gcc.
The lab was cheap, the 386 boxen had a new lease of life we ended up being great C, C++ programmers. More importantly, learned to love Unix. Was Linux cheap for introducing C, C++, Perl and Unix ? Surely !
Too bad most school districts don't even know about windows terminal services and/or Citrix in the first place, and invest in hundreds of workstations that will be in use for 5+ years. Too bad that Linux and UNIX in general has fallen off the radar of K-12 education.
Too bad that those making the decisions on equipment are usually school board members who only know what their IT managers give them at work and what they have at home.
So you end up with the School Board deciding that Windows 98 is the current industry standard, and end up with a bunch of impossible to manage and totally insecure windows machines that studets will hack, install games, and generally make unusable and unstable.
Oh, and did I mention that anyone working IT at a public school is likely underpaid, or has training that warrents that salery anyway?
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Between the years 1993 and 1997 my own small business, with only three computers, spent several thousand hard earned dollars on Windows software.
From 1998 when I switched entirely to Linux our total software cost has been $0 ( I was given a copy of Linux For Dummies with Red Hat 5.2 as a gift).
No additional expenditures have been needed because of making the switch,
Nor has, at any time, any "privation" of functionality ever been felt.
Indeed I've been able to greatly expand functionality because software previously out of my reach on a cost/benifit basis is now readily available, at will.
Others may debate TCO all they want. I know Linux is free.
And freeing, because now all license issues have been slaughtered on a wholesale basis. Compliance is part of the TCO.
I'll make this offer to any school. I will come in for a few days and show you how you can do what I have done, and I'll do it at *half* the rate you're paying your MS person. I'll even train the poor sod if you'd like.
KFG
"One Linux operator can manage 45 computers while a Windows operator can manage only 10 because it's harder," Mello said.
/usr/local/etc/apache, get stuck? Dig through millions of irrelevant howto's and newsgroups posts to find the answer. Live support? Go into IRC and get called n00b by every facist l33tist in there. Try a suggestion, and it breaks something else, rinse and repeat.
FUD ALERT! That's just plain malarky.
I started off managing windows systems, and later moved on to linux. Mello is just plain wrong here.
Now as far as flexability is concerned, yes you can do all sorts of neat tricks with linux, but for day to day admin operations, MS has very polished tools that save a MS admin tons of time in implementation.
Let's compare services...
Web Server.
Windows, go to add/remove software, add IIS. Run the microsoft management console, and tweak it to your delight, if you get stuck the help file is right there, or burn a call on the credit card to MS support.
Linux, go to apache.org, download the source, make install, go out and have a cig, come back and see if the compile is finished, go out to lunch, come back. Ok now you have to edit your rc.d scripts to run apache on start, do a little configuring in
It took me a good 4 years of tinkering with linux before I became proficient enough to run a server, compile my kernel (which is m00t these days because of modules) and basically make it do the same things my windows boxes do. Most of this time was spent wading through useless irrelevent documention, trial and error, ect.
I charge for my research time, don't know about you other IT guys out there, but everytime I read a howto, or browse support.microsoft.com i'm earning.
As far as desktop management is concerned, group policies, netlogon scripts, and active directory makes it easy enough for a child to manage a MS domain.
I'm not trying to bag on linux here, it's awesome to have a system that never crashes even on shitty hardware. If linux had gui based management tools that were on par with their MS counterparts, I would agree with the above quote. I've tried everything from linuxconf, to webmin and all tcl/tk tools in between, and yes they are quite good, but not nearly as good as what i've seen come out of redmond. None of these tools have anything even closeley resembling the functionality of creating a software group policy object that will install across 1000's of computers in an organization.
From a personal standpoint though, I would pick any *nix or BSD for running my mission critical applications any day of the week over a MS box. For managing a buttload of user desktops and apps, MS wins hands down.
I like the latin comparison even better. Learn latin would help you understand where just about every other European language comes from.
Here's a good example:
The latin word for Book is "biblio"
from that we have bibliography
library is based on that as well, which translates into other languages:
french as bibliothèque
spanish as biblioteca
german as Bibliothek
Italian as biblioteca
So one who was familiar with the roots of everything will have a much easier time understanding why things are the way they are.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
lately i've been thinking about teaching as a profession. (guess that means i'd need to finish my BSc first, eh? ;)) my mom was a teacher, as was my grandfather. Anyway. I'd probably end up teaching computer science plus some other science, and for the CS curricula I think open source is by far preferable. The setup that I think would be be the most advatageous would be a decent Linux server accessed by any pre-extant client machines running the appropriate client software, with accounts and groups as needed for the students in the various classes, semesters, etc. This means that the students could work from home, and that all data is central for security and backup purposes. Remote gui's are of course possible, but frankly for most of the kinds of programming that a typical high schooler will be messing with, the console is fine. The server could also be used to host web development/design projects in additon to the traditional AP computer science curricula. A real database could be exposed to the business students to learn SQL and data modeling on. Given a simple problem space and a relatively brawny machine, the server could even be used to add a computational supplement to the science courses (e.g. model these three molecules to get x, y, and z bond lengths as noted {water, ethanol, diatomic oxygen). The "one big server" approach also does not require any dedicated client hardware, so the client machines in the lab can also be used for other, non-programming uses such as an office skills class or art/design class (adobe toolchain). There's even no real requirement on the client hardware present, as even a 386 or ancient mac could be used as an ssh term becuase all the action is taking place on the server. If on the off chance that the curricula included, say, GUI java work... that's possible on most any client machine natively and with a vnc-server or remotely-fired X session as well. Sorry if this is kind of a brain-dump, i'm incredibly tired right now. It should be noted that this scenario is not choosing open source becuase it is free, but becuase it is more capable. Linux could work as a method to reduce cost but then you're on somewhat shakier ground. Yes, you save money on client licensing. BUT! This assumes you are able to get functional equivalents for all the proprietary software you need. (E.g. you're doing the design students a disservice if you replace Photoshop + Illustrator with the Gimp... Sorry, the gimp is a good program for some things but PS +Ill it is not.)
Also, you could just as easily use an Apple Xserve in place of the linux server i mention above, which would be extra good for most schools that probably already have an apple infrastructure. Or sub in some other free Unix for Linux... From the student's perspective the difference between an openbsd server and a linux server would be nil.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
It's already happened:
"Microsoft had us do an audit last year that took two weeks out of my schedule," Rugg said. "That's two week's work of taxpayers' money to satisfy Microsoft."
I wonder how long they've been using Linux. The timing of the audit is suspicious, unless it was the audit that got him to switch. (But knowing how long it takes to get grants, I doubt it.)
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
My school has been adopting Linux in many areas. First of all the forum server (where students get thier homework, and teachers discuss) runs Redhat (I wanted to put Debian on there but Redhat was a much better distro to teach the people who will be taking over when I am gone next year) which was migrated by me and another student from Windows 2000. Many of my friends use Knoppix instead of the Novell junk, and we are workign to get a few computers in the Senior Computer Science classes set up with dual boots so that other people can learn the ways of the penguin. Although I do admit that since I am the Linux guru of the school I have been the one to make the most difference in the degree of adoption that my school has pursued thus far, many students other than I are taking Linux into thier own hands
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
This is unfortunate, but all too common. Mind you, there are side-effects that are "beneficial". I was once asked to hack into an administrative box because someone had forgotten their password, and it was the weekend, yadda, yadda. Took me 3 guesses, no password cracking program ... full access to all accounts, downloads, lesson plans, mail, etc.
Yep, their password system was as clueless as they were :-) That's why they don't change - most of them simply aren't capable of investing the time in learning something new, when they can "get by" with what they know.
Before I get modded down as flaming, this is the same sort of situation as last week, when people were posting about that "we're going to get a bunch of developers together to code a game, and if it sells, we'll all make money" crap. It's happened (more often than I would like) that people have approached me with their "great idea that will make us a lot of money - it just needs to be coded".
When I offer to teach them how to code for free rather than waste my time developing their wet-dream financial fantasy , most go "what the ..." They don't want to invest the time required, either.
In summary, schools won't switch to Linux because too many people in the school system are just putting in their time, w/o any real zeal for what they do. This is a real shame.
The only thing preventing this from being a viable alternative in ALL schools is the expertise level of the teachers. Usually people with the expertise to configure and run *nix in a school lab aren't going to settle for a teacher's salary - they'll be working somewhere else.
I was with you until your last statement. Learning on *nix will not give you a better understanding of how to program on Windows. If you're talking about generic non-OS interfacing C/C++ code, then sure, but then the same claim may be made for those who learn on Windows.
With no MS software, who knows, maybe MS would audit anyway. But all you'd have to do is say, "take a look--no MS software", and the audit would be over.
As an LHS alumni, it's exciting to see that my alma matter has made Slashdot, especially since they did something GOOD to earn the honor.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
I agree with what your saying, you have paid your due's and now your probably being compensated well for it. After four years of trial and error, your probably quite proficient with your craft.
Seems that getting things setup and working is only 20% of the task tho, and keeping things running is the other 80%
I wouldn't be surprised if someone who has 4 years experience in Linux really 'knows' the underworking of the OS and the critical components much better than someone who has been admining a NT server for four years. I wouldn't be surprised if that same person has ability to easier manage more servers because of the profound skill and knowledge he has of the environment than a shallow understanding of how high-level gui's work.
I am sure that as distributions get more and more advanced, not as many Linux users will know how to write their own custom init scripts, watchdog monitors, runlevel options, boot into single user mode, etc.
I can't believe that just because Windows is easy to use that these same tricks of the trade are any easier. If anything, in my experience, getting things going in windows is quite easy, but when something goes wrong, really wrong, is when I seem to get quite frustrated. Now, the only experience I have had managing windows software was a small NT server at a company I was at that used it for exchange and file serving. I admit, I am a programmer and not an admin, but small companies.. you do what you have to do
I have spent about 4-5 years myself working on linux.. VERY long nights of hacking and playing, twiddling and recompiling.. endless greps through uesless mailing lists, etc. But in the end it has paid off BIG time, I am landing more a year than any windows admin I know and am using a tool set that I control and understand.
Your much better off having taken the harder path my friend, I am sure when something goes wrong you understand the problem, and not just the symptom. You will be much more effective in solving problems when shit really hits the fan. I dont think you keep 1 NT admin per 10 servers for when things are going good... or getting setup, but going bad and having problems. Maybe thats why you don't need so many people to manage linux boxes.. not for deployment, but for post deployment trauma.
Enjoyed your post tho.. I agree that Linux does need a standard base for configuration. But don't worry, we will get there
Cheers
Attitude is the hardest thing to change. Our school board equates "Free Software" with "Pirated Software", thus it is banned as "unauthorized". It's hard to change someones mind when they won't even listen to what you have to say. Score one for Microsoft here....
There are lots of those old machines around, but it's not an idea that I have seen take hold.
My uncle-in-law is pastor at a church that has an associated K-12 school, and I am thinking of proposing to set them up with a Linux or BSD computer lab. There's a auction site (a 'real world' auction site with real people bidding, etc.) that I go to weekly, and not long ago there were pallet lots of Dell machines, about 50 per pallet, and they went for $120 per pallet. I scarfed up the two good machines out of the bunch (a dual PPRO-200 box and an IBM RS/6000 workstation) for $40 for the pair. I am not sure what the salvage guy buying the rest of them had in mind, but they sure went cheap.
You might also want to see Mike Surran's article in Linux Journel, Linux from Kindergarten to High School. It is a good read about the specifics of his journey in switching over to Linux. He brings up some good points in the article, for example he talks about how he had to buy a whole bunch of Linux books to prep himself for the switch. That is one of the hurdles of implementing Linux, learning how to use it. But of course that can be said about any new solution. Anyone know if Redhat or others have support options for schools? -Jonathan Hughes
Linux In Education Portal
http://linuxineducation.org
Connecting educational professionals with Linux.
My first langauge is spanish, then english, then tagalog, and now I'm learning Japanese. Japanese is the first language that I'm learning in the classroom and it's amazing how much harder it is to learn this way. I'm used to just being thrown into the culture and "sink or swim" were the only options. Now, I can decide to not do my Japanese hw and it doesn't hurt me in any way.
So what's my point? That the style of learning is more important than the depth or number of languages learned. I think the same could be said for programming languages, unless you have a reason to start learning them, you will not be a truly effective learner.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I used to be a technology purchaser for a school district. In Texas, school districts can purchase the latest edition of Windows for somewhere around $26. Office goes for somewhere under $30. SMS (to do system management) runs $118.
RedHat Network is $60/"entitlement" (retail) or something like $50/"entitlement" (bulk purchase). Plus you have to retrain the entire population of the school who have used computers at home or other places of business, then you have to find state-approved curriculum that is generic enough to work well with Linux (it's much more difficult to teach a business applications course when all your textbooks cover Access and Excel and you only have mySQL and Gnumeric).
If school districts are honest up front about paying for their licenses, it is indeed cheaper to go the Microsoft route - hands down. When we Open-Sourcers start volunteering our services at our local schools, then their might be a competition.
This setup makes administration of software/network related issues a breeze. This is the model School District 73 in Kamloops, BC, Canada is using. 37 elementary school labs running over 1500 desktops, all running Linux. Most of the hardware was donated from the governement or purchased used via Computers for Schools.
:)
Remote administration via SSH and VNC/remote X is a snap, and most problems are solved interactively with the teacher in the school, reducing downtime. Updates are a matter of scripted SSH sessions afterhours.
The only downside is that it is all done using Linux. But, that's a personal bias, as I find Linux to be horribly disorganised, disfunctional, and a royal pain to work with compared to FreeBSD. That's a discussion for another time, though.
The students all love the system, the administration loves the system, the software techs like the system more and more as they use it, and the teachers love it as well. And it does save money in the long run: $10-20,000 in Novell licenses, $10-20,000 in MS Licenses, per year. And the time savings are enormous.
-Jonathan Hughes
Linux In Education Portal
http://linuxineducation.org
Connecting educational professionals with Linux.
Times are changing, however. There are several school district in BC, Canada that are moving toward an X Terminal setup in school computer labs. For instance, SD73 has implemented 37 Linux labs in elementary schools, and is piloting a CAD lab in a secondary.
:)
There are also school district in Oregan which are moving Linux into secondary school labs.
Sure, these aren't super-huge districts in super-huge cities, but the movement has begun.
Now, if only we could convince them all to drop Linux in favour of FreeBSD. Then we'd see the administration costs drop even further as sysadmins no longer have to fight dependency-hell, illogical filesystem, incompatibilities amongst distros, and all the other "niceties" that come with Linux.
It doesn't matter if Linux is cheaper in the long run to schools. Why not? Because the cost of Linux vs. Windows on paper is clearly going to favor Linux in terms of the up front costs. Since those are the costs which get line items on the budget, that's what matters.
Once it gets in the door, it's game over.
It's arguably true that having computers in classrooms doesn't add a lot to education anyway. The long term benefit of computers in the classroom may be more a result of having students set up, maintain, and program those systems than from any so-called educational software.
Frankly, I don't understand why vendors like Microsoft aren't tripping over themselves to give away software to school districts. They can't be making much money from schools anyway, they don't get good press for sticking it to school districts, and having students see that software in use is good advertising.
Whatever...
Of course, all of the above assumes that school districts start evaluating software based purely on cost instead of the "pain in the ass factor". This subtlety is pretty much the only reason Apple still gets chosen above all others in many school districts. Of course, savings on PITA factor also translates to money, but I don't see how most school districts care about that anyway since their IT departments are grossly understaffed anyway. It's not like they budget for "PITA time" anyway.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I am a Senior Network Administrator at a magnet high school in Austin, TX (LBJHS). I am in my junior year (Class of '04) and I (along with three other guys) manage nearly all aspects of the network at the school - from servers to workstations and infrastructure. Our organization, Student Technology Administration Council (www.stac.org is our website), has been managing the network at our school, independent of the school district's network since 1994.
We now have 300-400 workstations (mostly W2K except one Slackware lab) being served by a small army of linux servers on our own campus T1. This program is an incredible and unique learning experience for us - being able to manage an entire building's network while still in High School with little to no aid from outside adults.
I like to brag that our network's stability is significantly better than the network that the rest of the school district is on.
German certainly isn't a romance language. However, there is still something to be said for gaining understanding of a language by studying another related one. German and Latin still branch off from some common point in the past. Also, the cultures that used both have influenced each other.
Then, you have grammar/structure versus syntax. There is quite a bit that you can learn from Latin in this regard to apply to German or even English. In US schools, any foriegn language instruction is quite often the first exposure that one gets to certain grammatical concepts.
Although, all modern operating systems in common use today are essentially "romance languages". They are all more similar than dissimilar. (C, C++, Java, VB, perl)
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Here's a sad little story. A few years ago, when my daughter was in grade school, she decided to run for student council president. She asked me to help with her campaign. I noticed that her opponents, while usually well-financed, had failed to come up with any campaign issues. So I suggested that if she won, I would come to her school and give lessons on HTML, so the various classes could have their own web pages.
She incorporated this into her campaign posters, and won, to my surprise and horror. So, in order not to make my daughter a liar, I was forced to go to the school and meet with the principle and the "media person," a woman who knew almost nothing about computers, but who was fiercely protective of her turf. After much reluctance, I persuaded the principle to allow me to teach a class on simple web-building. Two students from each classroom would be allowed to attend a class lasting 20 minutes, once a week, for the remainder of the semester. As you might imagine, this was not enough time to teach anything of any significance to 5th and 4th graders.
It was a depressing and frustrating experience, which I stuck out only for my daughter's sake. Everything had to be approved through several layers of bureaucracy, even the installation of simple freeware HTML editors on a few of the school's machines. And we never got so far as getting approval to host the class pages on the school district's servers.
So, at least at this otherwise fairly good school, even free instruction wasn't cost-effective enough for the administration to accept. I expect this sort of proud ignorance is widespread in American schools, which now seem obsessively consumed by the desire to do well in comparative testing. Actually teaching kids stuff they can use is of secondary importance.
As far as making third and fourth languages easier to learn, for English speakers at least, learning Japanese may be more beneficial as a second language than say, French.
I say this because, since learning Japanese, I have found non-germanic, non-romance languages much easier to pick up, and languages that I was doing poorly in have since improved. I believe this is due to the grammatical structure being reversed and the nearly complete inability to guess at the meaning of most words based on previous language experience (loan words not withstanding). In some ways, learning two very different languages requires the brain to reorganize in such a way that language learning becomes more generalized, more efficient, whereas with languages that are similar, you are merely constructing and adapting to the exceptions and differences.
Who knows?
-Hope
Here at Harvard they just replaced all the old Macs with new ones running OSX, and in the computer labs half the windows machines were just replaced with Red Hat! This was pretty easy since Harvard's (as well as most Ivy League's) networks are run on Unix and have been since forever.
-Typhon
This is a long tale of woe, but it does get to the point eventually. Bare with me, I suspect other school tech folks have had similar experiences.
I am a District Technology Coordinator. Last summer our small district (3300 students) in the Mid-Atlantic paid Micro$oft over $100,000 in license upgrades. The state had a number of sessions scheduled with the MS Reps who came to explain the new licensing agreement. The company was moving from Upgrade Advantage to Software Assurance pricing schedules.
We were in the process of our Win2K rollout and we were confronted with MS retiring the ability to upgrade certain licenses. Our state contracts with a "Select" vendor who we are required to purchase all MS software. The vendor had conflicting upgrade paths than what MS had explained in the meetings.
At a later meeting when I asked about this they suggested the "School Agreement" as an alternative which is an annual subscription that allows schools to use any number of licenses but you must resubscribe every year.
I explained that I did calculations on purchase upgrades and compared the numbers to this "subscription" license and discovered that it was more expensive. I surmise that conflicting purchase information and random threats of audit in the education community makes choosing the school agreement a no brainer. If this was a marketing decision it is extortion.
During the course of this licensing process I went to the CIO of the district informing him that we could save nearly $40K by using Open Office on student only machines. Even after giving him a copy, and showing the software around to key individuals, he didn't feel that he could support Technology against the inevitable backlash from staff members.
He recommended a pilot before implementation. Since there was a deadline, we bought MS Office licenses. BTW we finally got resolution on the correct upgrade paths.
Now to the Linux in school stuff.
After this experience, the fiddling I was doing with Linux became a higher priority in the investment of my Tech Learning Time.
There is lots of great stuff out there for schools. The Linux Terminal Server Project http://www.ltsp.org/ gets around the windows legacy app problem. Or perhaps Linux Educational Apps could replace windows edutainment titles. A wealth of titles can be found at http://k12os.org/.
Personally I believe that what is best for our district is to get away from managing the desktop. So many rogue initiatives bubble up from the class room.
Example:
Mrs Jones goes and buys "10,000 Handouts Galore" CD-ROM ; ) at the grocery store and then expects technicians to not only install this buggy code from heaven knows where, but also expects poor frazzled "Fred" to divine the arcane structure of how it works, train her on it, and continually fix the pathetic workstation that crashes because the software is not totally compliant to windows standards. All this effort just so she can print a worksheet for the kids to sit and fill out.
How does this fundamentally change education? If you take the computer away can she still create a handout? I suspect that manually she could probably do it in less time with more focus on content and far less frustration.
In my opinion, district administration, curriculum leaders, principals as well as tech coordinators, network folks and programmers should work together to identify what problem really needs to be solved.
The direction we are going in is interactive web applications that provide collabortive opportunities to respond to various activities or projects.
One such Open Source package is the Authenticated User Community -- http://auc.sourceforge.net/. It is essentially groupware for education. Students can review and submit assignments, check email, post comments on a forum and store files. Teachers can track student activities retrieve assignments and initiate discussion. Mom and Pop can see what's going on from home! We are piloting this now.
Our TechTeam is using software called Tutos (http://www.tutos.org/homepage/index.html) to manage projects. This is useful software and since its on the Web it is transparent and ubiquitous.
Imagine if other useful software was converted to the web. The connection of Apache with MySQL (or other DB) could allow us to link every student activity with state standards and some sort of performance evaluation. This would give teachers the ability to make day to day teaching decisions based on DATA that will have real impact on High Stakes Testing.
We also using some network based diagnostic software packages. They are called Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math and are published by Renaissance learning (http://www.renlearn.com). These programs allow students to interactively and dynamically record their performace on-line.
Unfortunately these programs are Windows apps. They are written in ToolBook and are not even 32bit compliant. Consequently there are frequent network issues since they are being used in manner contrary to their design. I wish there was a version of this software that ran on Apache and MySQL.
If a clear vision of curricular problems drove the purchase/solution implementation decisions rather than random marketing (ed conferences and journals) and individual (rogue) initiatives, resources such as technician support and capital funds for equipment and software would not be caught up in this merry go round of assumpion, consumption, no function and blame.
Micro$oft products give users just enough ability to use computers to be hugely expensive to larger organizations. Products running on this platform are sold as solutions to users problems, but not necessarily one that needs to be solved.
Users devise their own rogue initiatives with the grand ideas sold to them, but rarely are successful without technical help. The minute a technician provides that help they become responsible for the outcome and the initiative becomes sanctified by the organization.
Linux can solve this problem. It forces decisions to be made that focus on the problem. Since every teacher, administrator and student is not familiar (or "Expert" because their nephew works at CompUSA) with this platform they are not dreaming of a panacea like solution where they take off the shrink wrap and all their problems go away with no hardwork or learning curve. District leadership has time to focus on their curricular objectives and devise a plan that has a scope and sequence of events and a series of check points to evaluate progress.
Once the problem is defined and the objectives are spelled out there is lots of stuff in the Open Source community that can be selected as potential "off the shelf" alternatives. But what is even more exciting is the notion that through collaboration with others with similar objectives solutions start to move closer and closer to the needs at hand.