Software Monoculture in Schools?

The World Is Not Microsoft asks: "I've been worried by changes my school has made over the past year or so to the general computer setup we have. The school is a City Technology College, and as a result of this there are an abundance of computers around the building which everyone is free to use. When I first started there (almost six years ago now) there were approximately even numbers of Windows and Mac machines. As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements. What I'm bothered about is that when they did this they completely eliminated the Mac population, and by the time school starts again in September the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000. What's the situation like in other schools? Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?" "There have been security problems with these systems in the past (mostly IE toolbars which requested content from sites which were blocked by the content filters, which caused problems for everyone), and with all the recent IE security problems I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems (I know Linux would be too much to ask, but rolling out some OS X machines would be good). In addition to this, those who actually study ICT are required to use MS Office for spreadsheet and database tasks; no OpenOffice allowed."

Comments

needs to be said

[adamruck]

You need a hobby, or a girlfriend, or something. I cheer for non windows alternatives as loud as the next person, and I use linux at home. But what OS my school uses doesn't really matter to me.

Re:Why is Linux too much to ask?

[KZigurs]

You are way back there.

Basic linux installation (popular distributions) now requres much more than comparable windows XP installation - both CPUwise and memorywise.

As for "optimising" - yeah, ok, you can do that with XP too, after all...

And add sluggish user interface with inconsitent usability, incompatibility between applications on the same computer, etc, etc, etc...

(yes, it will be a flamebait again, I guess, but DON'T you see the shit linux promise is delivering? And why nobody cares?)

Re:Be a rebel! - Or not...

[gui_tarzan2000]

"If they do this, fight for the right to demonstrate that you are not doing damage to the computer or its existing OS"

Obviously you don't understand... schools aren't a place for you to experiment with Linux, they are a place to learn the computer (and other) skills you need so you can get along in the world when you graduate. Any school that would let kids bring bootable CDs in to use is just asking for trouble. School techs are not idiots, most of us use Linux at home or even in our offices for certain things. We are probably more tech savvy than a lot of business techs because our knowledge base has to be more diverse because of our environments.

I am a technology director in a K-12 school and I can promise you there won't be ANY users on our systems booting up with a Knoppix disk thanks to BIOS passwords and lock-down hardware and software. There are no good educational reasons to do so on the classroom or lab workstations. However, we have a handful of machines that are not protected that only computer team kids can use to do individual projects on. These are the only machines the kids can experiment with (with my permission) and they have to have a classroom assignment or be in an independant study program to do so. The rest are off limits for experimentation. And suggesting that you would do what you mentioned on a lab machine just to prove a point is dumb. We already know Windows is not the best system out there. There's nothing wrong with having an old system laying around for things like that, but that machine should not be connected to the network. Maybe you have lots of time on your hands, but I know I don't have time to sit and babysit someone that's playing around with something that could potentially bring our network down. Sorry, not happening. Play at home.

School computers are not yours to do whatever you want. They are property of the institution, paid for by taxpayer money to be used by EVERY student and staff member, not just for those who want to do whatever they want. The script kiddies and jerks are the reason they are locked down and firewalled. We don't allow program or zipped downloads either. This may sound harsh, but since we started with these policies our downtime on workstations is down to almost none and productivity is high.

Go to work for a school system some time and maybe you'll see what I mean. Coming from business and retail into a school system really opened my eyes. Altough I'm a certified (or is that certifiable?) tech and network administrator and have been building and maintaining PCs and designing, building and maintaining networks for almost 15 years, I need to keep up with things to help me stay one or two steps ahead of the kids that want to damage our systems. As much as people think we might be too strict, the vast majority of our kids and staff appreciate what we do.

Having said all of that, we standardized on PCs with Windows about 7 years ago and phased out the Macs because the quality of the PPC was crap, and the cost was not justifiable. Couple that with the fact that at the time hardly anyone in business used Macs, it made no sense to continue buying them. I almost regret supporting that decision because when Apple came out with OS/X I wished they had done so 7 years ago. I would never have supported the decision to go to Windows. I would actually love to switch our entire district to Linux but the software is not there yet. It's not arguable, it's the truth. The Linux world still can not compete with the Mac/Windows world for educational software. I've checked out lots of them. As much as I'd love to get rid of Windows in our schools I can't justify it financially yet. The handful of new Macs we have now were purchased for video purposes and they are great. Nothing on the PC side comes close.