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Ostrich Lessons In Oregon?
dalslad writes "Oregon Schools Prove Linux Saves Money, says the headline but this article says "One has to wonder if Northwest school districts took ostrich lessons; they must represent the biggest secret in the Linux community. If their successes occurred in New York, Microsoft would be fighting for 5% of the PC desktop share". Maybe so? I've seen a lot of sites with Linux success stories, but the K12 Linux projects show progress I never knew existed." Yeah, I don't think that the schools are going to prove to be the sole factor in Linux on the desktop, but it's a good step. More importantly, I think the success of the system depends on projects like the K12 Linux project and its like, especially for broader individual usage.
With Microsoft's desire to have complete market dominance, how long before they start offering schools free, or cut-rate discounts all under the guise of "charity"?
Get 'em hooked early, then they'll never be able to stop using it.
Mike
Yeah, I don't think that the schools are going to prove to be the sole factor in Linux on the desktop, but it's a good step.
Remember way back when, when Apple donated a bunch of Macs to the schools? Yeah, then the parents all bought Macs for compatibility and because their kids knew how to use them.
That was when computers were new; however, teaching them how to use Linux at a young age can affect how they decide later on. Now when they see Linux, they won't think "Ugh, I'm not going to be able to use it, so even if it is free..." - they'll be thinking "Hmm, I learned how to do this in school, maybe I'll try it at home."
This is a nice step...
I think it's well-agreed that most MS users are that way because of simple familiarity. Your run-of-the-mill user wouldn't port to Linux or another platform (even apple, as easy as it is to use) because they all seem foreign and counter-intuitive (this because intuition is based on repeated experience).
Because of this, it seems critical to catch kids early, before they become pigeon-holed into one particular OS (or any software package). Rather than using Linux exclusively, perhaps a revolving curriculum would be most helpful --Linux, MS, Apple, etc. Provide the variety of experiences that helps kids to learn the similarities among systems that makes for general intuition rather than intuition that is product-specific.
I was personally involved in pushing for linux use in school networks, and met with huge amounts of resistance - especailly immediately after that point at which MS threatened to audit Portland public schools with their gestapo license enforcement crap. I swear to honest god someone on the school board was getting paid off or some shit.
We installed linux at a few schools anyway, on their network cores, only to come back later and see that the admins had come around and installed win2k right behind us.
I wonder why MS isn't offering these cut rates to schools like they do to countries and organizations that are threatening to use OSS.
Fuckers.
It reads like a bad babblefish translation. I expected better from Linux Journal. While one of the headings in the article asks, "Can You Explain the Oregon Legislature?" I would ask of Linux Journal, "Can You Explain Who Edits This Stuff?"
Lasers Controlled Games!
This article includes references to educational linux software. Overall it's a great article.
You may also try looking at the Linux Journal topic Linux in Education.
In addition, there is a Knoppix remaster that's intended for schools.
Have you tried Wine?
I work for an educational software company... and I've never heard of anyone asking for linux versions of any of our products. If you want companies to make linux versions, you need to get on the ball and ask for them... hint hint...
With K12 linux, I found this especially impressive:
"On the server side, two Compaq servers--a 933MHz dual-processor ML370 and a 1GHz dual-processor ML350--run Red Hat Linux and support about 220 concurrent users. "
220 users! Thats 220 times the price difference between a thin and a 'fat' client, minus the servers.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
People will natually want to use the computer system they grew up with. My mom first used to learn about computers with a System 5 Macintosh, and she still swears by them even though she's been using a PC for the past 10 years. She still wishes it were a mac, she just knows they're far too expensive. Today's generation of people using computers really have only known MS products. There's comfort there, and better the devil you know than the one you don't.
I've always said that Linux on the desktop is not harder, it's only different. It's just different, so they complain. Linux is different so it's too hard. Mac is different so it's too dumbed down. It's just lame excuses from people unwilling to change. If kids grow up learning Linux they'll stick with it their entire lives. Just as youngsters in the 80's loved UNIX and when they grew up and got IT jobs they brought it into business. Truth is, people are sheep. They'll follow and do pretty much whatever they're told. The best progress into the world of home and business can be made in schools. If children grow up riding on a penguin they'll stick with it.
Actually I think exactly the opposite is true. A large company with hundreds (or thousands) of staff can say "that's our Word guy and that's our Excel guy". Having worked for and ran my own small company I know that you can't afford single speciality people in a small group, everybody has to much in a do a bit of everything, therefore the wider their knowledge base the better.
I'd go as far as to say that if I was employing somebody to work in my 10 person company and they said they only had experience of a very small number of specific programs the interview would be over there and then.
This true in all industries, for example take a carpenters. If you have a hundred staff you can have one carpenter who specialised in door frames. If you have 5 carpenters you need them to be able to do more than the one specific task (unless of course your company only makes door frames!)
I've personally been witness to one Oregon school district that has switched over to K12LTSP. Over last summer, we built a hundred of those thin-client computers. Let me be the first to tell you, walking into that computer lab today and seeing all of those kids on those computers with Linux and enjoying it would put to rest any concern over the need for Microsoft. Who needs PowerPoint? They've got the OpenOffice equivalent. Why pay thousands for a site license for Adobe Photoshop when The Gimp is free? The whole thing is basically free, of course, which means saved cash in an already strapped sector of the government. In this district alone, over $20,000 is saved annually. That's $20,000 that could be used to keep class sizes small, hire a new teacher, or update textbooks. In this economy, particularly one where schools are complaining everyday about lack of funding, every dollar saved is worth it. I see these other school districts with their pricy Dells and shiny iMacs and wonder just how much cash they blew through that they didn't need to. I don't insinuate that they didn't receive a steep discount, but I would be surprised if their technology spending for their labs was lower than this district. A thousand here, a thousand there - all of those little expenses lead to our state's current financial crisis. Based on the success of Linux in Oregon schools, open-source proponents had moved to pass a bill by the Oregon legislature that would mandate the state consider open-source solutions prior to spending the big bucks for Microsoft. Alas, despite widespread support, the representative from Wood Village shot down the bill and refused to let it be heard, citing verbatim the same reasons the huge tech firms - adamant in their lobby to stop the bill - had argued. The bill eventually died. Proponents mourned. Personally, I didn't see it as an open-source "power grab." I saw it as a way to hold the government accountable for its technology spending. The government should choose the most economical means of getting the job done and not waste taxpayer dollars on extravagant operating systems when all they need is simple word processing or whatnot. If that economical approach is open-source, so be it. If Microsoft decides to just hand over their wares for free, so be it. But always keep them on edge. It's clear this sort of thing scares Microsoft and a bit of fear is always a good thing if it means getting cheaper rates. The fact that the bill died showed Oregon's government is not ready to be held accountable for its decisions when it comes to technology spending. Consequently, I hear the same legislature is trying to up our taxes again in November. Go figure.
That's one of the reasons you may think we're being very quiet--we're not talking directly to you! But if you're interested in what's actually going on with open resources in education, go to any of the websites above, or to Schoolforge and look around and follow the links.
Another reason is that whenever we've submitted links about such things to /. (I asked Paul about this a minute ago, and his experience has been the same as mine) they have been rejected. If you're not interested in telling people about what's being done, don't expect them to know about it! We've stopped submitting our stories here, since they're never used. We try to use our energy more constructively now, but submitting our stories to educational journals, etc.
In this context, may be it is the introduction of tools to youngsters is more important than the underlying OS. For instance, compare xemacs with wordpad or textpad or the latest $29 shareware text editor with obnoxious alerts about registering. May be show how it is better to write a "structured document" versus highlight and the standard way of selecting a font size and strength of some text in a document. May be show how tabbed browsing in mozilla or opera is good... Most of the die hard fans of systems such as emacs/mozilla/perl/latex are fans because these tools do things "better" in some way... If kids are shown that "there is more than one way to do it", they may really be ready to experiment with new software.
S