Ditching Microsoft Could Save Education Millions

ElvenMonkey writes "The Times Education Supplement has published the results of a BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Association, the Government's ICT agency) study, to be published next week, into the TCO of using Microsoft products compared to using Open Source products. The report shows an average saving of 24% per computer in schools using Open Source over those using Microsoft systems. Now if only the government wasn't insistent on locking schools into using Microsoft in arguably illegal ways."

Comments

wow.

[PopeAlien]

Think how much they would save if they just got rid of the computers.

Re:wow.

[peculiarmethod]

yeah, no joke.. get rid of the computers and learn the hard way! I was raised without computers until late in highschool, and look at me! I mean, I am single, a musician.. alcoholic.. addicted to porn and constantly refreshing slashd..

nevermind.. keep the computers.

Re:wow.

[hsmith]

Agree 100%. When i was in school we only had a handful of them. We used them when it was necessary.

Now look at me, I am a software engineer, I think they are the biggest waste of money within a school, they are "super machines" that people think will make teaching go so much better.

Give the money to the teachers to higher a better staff, THEN you will have more well informed children. God if they paid $60K+ starting to teach, think of the people they could have instructing.

Re:wow.

[Excelsior]

yeah, no joke.. get rid of the computers and learn the hard way! I was raised without computers until late in highschool, and look at me! I mean, I am single, a musician.. alcoholic.. addicted to porn and constantly refreshing slashd..

At least it paid off in your grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation skills.

Re:wow.

[jmorris42]

> Give the money to the teachers to higher a better staff, THEN you will
> have more well informed children. God if they paid $60K+ starting to
> teach, think of the people they could have instructing.

If the same 'teaching establishment' were in charge nothing would change except pissing away a lot of money to the same semi-literate hacks we have now.

Education won't improve until the unions are broken so the incompetents with tenure can be sacked and people with a Phd in Math can teach without spending four more years learning how to 'teach.' (read jumping the artificial hurdle the unions use to keep their incompetents from competing with those with skill and motivation.)

Education still won't change until the massive overhead is slashed. Preferably by privitizing the schools because so long as they are government run they must be political instituitions. Not that private universities aren't also infested with PC bullcrap but there ARE private instituitions of higher learning out there that actually teach if one is motivated to search them out. WIth a virtual government run monopoly on primary and secondary education that isn't nearly as easy. Unless you are a rich Democrat congressman. (cheap shot)

Re:wow.

[Bert64]

But school computers are often setup in the most restrictive way the school staff could manage, and the holes in their security are furthur enforced by punishments if your caught breaching it.. The restrictive environments don't encourage learning about the guts of the machine atall, they may teach you the bare minimum of how to operate the exact word processing configuration present on the machines. People learn parrot-fashion how to use (not find) the options theyre told they need.
Me, i was banned from the school computer lab for breaking through their restrictions and accessing a dos prompt, now i'm paid pretty good money as a security consultant doing penetration-testing where i'm SUPPOSED to break security.

Re:wow.

[walt-sjc]

Yep. And one possible answer is LTSP. Cheap, thin clients. No local drives at all (maybe non-booting, automounted noexec,nosuid,nodev USB access for keyfob drives.) I've even seen netboot systems that re-image a small local drive each time they power up. Keyboards and mice are cheap to replace if needed. Kids don't need CD or floppy access. Lock em down hard. Use extended ACL's and capabilities. Monitored proxies for all external access.

If kids want toys, they can play at home - not school. When you are at school, you are on Mr. Taxpayer's computer and do NOT have the right to go in and screw with the system. Put video cameras in the labs and force the parents to pay for any damage their kids do.

Libraries too

[XanC]

I hope libraries take note of this as well as schools... If libraries aren't the standard-bearer for interoperable Web sites, document formats, and any other kind of information exchange, who will be?

This is the insidious thing about Bill's Foundation. Libraries get placed on the MS upgrade cycle, hooked by the initial free-ness. Then try doing anything with your machines without spending a whole lot of money...

Lobby your school district for K12LTSP!

[bardothodal]

You can save tons on licenses and expensive hardware. Also you can teach children how computers actually work instead of giving them what MS wants the PC to be ... a glorified VCR.

No!

[guitaristx]

You mean our schools might actually promote learning, sharing, innovation, and playing nice with others? Say it ain't so!

It's amazing to me how rarely we see "academic" software like Unix & Linux in our schools. I'm fortunate enough to be assisting in setting up a private school's computer network, all Linux, baby!

Gotta love The Register

[TripMaster Monkey]

The Register is such a timesaver for Slashdotters...it has the anti-M$ slant built in.

School's Motive

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wondered why schools don't use Linux. If kids start with it, they would all be able to embrace technology to the fullest extent, where in Windows, all you get is annoying paperclips, error messages, and EVERYTHING spoon-fed to you so it's as bland as possible.

What's the difference?

[bechthros]

"Now if only the government wasn't insistent on locking schools into using Microsoft in arguably illegal ways."

So it was OK for my city's entire public school system and library system to lock me into using Apples all the way up until my senior year, but it's not OK to lock people into using Windows? Apple has long been known for educational discounts in exchange for school systems agreeing to use Apple exclusively and pressure their students into buying them. It happened to many friends of mine and almost happened to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the president of the MS fan club or anything, but I gotta say it was really really annoying having to be programming in nothing but BASIC on IIgs's in 1991. I was overjoyed when our school was the chosen pilot for the PC program - I learned a lot more about computers a lot more quickly.

That said, locking students into any one system is bad. I say, have a Mac, a Winbox, and linux box all running side by side and let the students decide which one they want to use. Let them, to coin a phrase, compete in the marketplace of ideas. Isn't competition the American way?

Re:What's the difference?

[3nuff]

Speaking as someone who started learning how to program on an Apple II at age 12, then moving to Mac OS, then to WinTel at 16, and arriving at Linux in my 20s, I can say that it doesn't really matter what is in front of the student.

What matters are the fundamentals that we are teaching. As an example, my sixth grade teacher would spend time after school with me helping me debug BASIC programs on the ol Apple II. What my teacher did was set the stage for me to grasp fundamental logic concepts. This knowledge allowed me to move freely in the computing world. That type of knowledge transcends making the font bold or creating that powerpoint slide. This is what the computer should be used for, not some silly test of which button to push, hell, you can tech mice that kind of crap.

Re:What's the difference?

[killjoe]

Locking people to Macs? Bad.
Locking people to MS? Bad

Locking people to Linux? Good!.

Students should learn on linux. They can really get to the guts to learn how computers work. They can even make contributions if they want. Finally you are not whoring your students to some company.

The Microsoft Mafia

[NatteringNabob]

At my son's school, there is a computer literacy test which students must pass to graduate. So what is the requirement for computer literacy? Writing a shell program? Creating a home page using HTML? Writing a business letter? No, of course not. The student must demonstrate that they know how to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel. I'm fairly certain that such a requirement would not hold up in court, but where did it come from in the first place?

Re:The Microsoft Mafia

[g1zmo]

The exact same skills are required of all college graduates (at least here in Texas). At my school (from which I'm graduating next week!!), it's up to each department within the university how those requirements are met, but most departments just created a 1-credit-hour class that's required before you can graduate. In the CSE (my) department, it was lumped into a very generic "computer ethics" course that hardly no one goes to except to turn in their "lab assignments", which are things like creating a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation (!), etc.

Re:After graduation

[Spy der Mann]

Can you use Excel?
Who can't?
Can you program Excel macros?
Sure! (Just lemme download that tutorial at the web)
Can you use windows?
AND tweak it.

Welcome to our company. See you next monday at 9.

(See? That wasn't so hard, was it?)

Re:After graduation

[steveness]

Now our high school graduate applies for a job (with better interview skills)

Can you use Excel?
I can use several spreadsheet programs, and can even develop complex math functions.
Can you use Word?
I have experience with several word processing tools, and can help the company by ensuring that documents transfer well between programs.
Can you use Windows?
I have extensive experience with windows environments and graphical interfaces, and can even use a computer when those interfaces fail.

Thanks, can you start Monday?

Skolelinux is the school linux distro...

[Compunerd]

Take a look at http://skolelinux.org/ to see what can be done to create an elemtary school distro. It's installation friendly, somehow userfriendly (KDE 2) and has nice setups for thin-client environments.

roy

No kidding

[Gabey]

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but this would be a tremendous move for schools. Having computers in the classroom is an enormous waste of resources -- teachers rarely know how to use them, students don't use them productively, they're a hassle to maintain (especially if you allow web browsing on them, regardless of the browser you use -- kids will be kids), they're a waste.
Computers belong in labs and specialized situations in schools (we had a pretty successful mac lab for a media production class at my high school, for instance), and rarely anywhere else. If it makes sense to use a computer for a lesson (typing up a paper, a research day, etc), the teacher can sign up for the lab (that is easily maintained, and can often be staffed by students).

Re:Not in Kansa (anymore)

[Locke2005]

There is a theory the Microsoft software was created by Intelligent Design, but so far scientists have not been able to find any evidence to support this theory.

Re:After graduation

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, if I were doing the interviewing, i'd ask them why they were evading the questions, and probably file it in the round filing cabinet for being dishonest.

academic software???

[big-giant-head]

Every corp I worked for in the last 12 years:

AVIS Rent a Car,
Red Sky Interactive (Dot Com failure so maybe they don't count?)
Mens Wearhouse
Hertz Rent A Car
FAA

All of the big app servers have been Solaris or Linux or AIX..... Granted they had windows desktops, windows servers for Peoplesoft, but all the Oracle/DB2, Java App server, Transaction management, Messanging etc.. Everything I actully wrote code on/for was some kind of *nix box.

So I keep hearing about the importantance of knowing Office etc.. I could see that it has some value, but I have NEVER hired anyone nor been hired myself based any kind of m$ office skills....

If somone is smart and can learn Word perfect or open Off or m$ off, then they can easily learn another package.

What We'd Need

[ThisIsFred]

In order for this to happen, I'd need the following to happen first:

* All other agencies that communicate with my district would have to settle on a common, open document format, and stay with it. We need to read what the state sends us.

* Our student information systems would have to support something other than Microsoft products. Tell NCS/Pearson to port SASIxp/IGPro/PCXP to something other than Windows. Follet Software did it with their media circulation software. It's far from impossible.

* All other agencies need to hire something other than web developers who took a half-semester ASP programming course.

* Our accounting systems need to be ported to something other than Windows. There are no cost-effective systems that run on Linux (it's not just initial purchase, it's the support availability).

Where I could substitute with Linux, I did. It's not just Internet access and games for kids, either. Many districts are computerized from top to bottom, so the answer to "why do we need computers in schools", is "because it saves labor costs and gets the job done faster." You also might want to consider that many schools don't have full-time IT staff. Most of the available contractors are MS Certified Reset-button Pushers.

Re:After graduation

[YukonTech]

And now the interview of a student who didn't have access to computers in schools. Can you use Excel? Sure, I just pop it out of the wrapper and start to chew. Thanks, we will let you know...

Use computers APPROPRIATELY

[davidwr]

Some schools buy computers for the mere sake of having them. They think the mere presence of a computer in front of a student will make him learn faster or better. The reality is computers change the way students work, but not always for the better.

If you are going to have computers in schools - and I think you should - do the following:
1) make sure you have the electrical and networking infrastructure in place ahead of time, or at least concurrent with hardware delivery
2) train the teachers on how to use the computers in the way they and their students are expected to use them. Train them well enough so they can teach the students what they need to know. But wait you say, students will used computers in unexpected ways. Expect that to happen and train accordingly.
3) have an appropriate software infrastructure. This means a suitable operating system, suitable security software, device drivers, etc. Infrastructure is the "under the hood" software, it does not include tools, applications, and educational software.
4) use hardware and software that is appropriate for the task at hand.
5) use the applications you need for the task at hand.

In addition, you need policies and procedures in place to prevent abuse, recover a machine that's been downed due to accidental or deliberate damage, etc.

All of this costs money. If it's not in your budget, the right thing to do is to either scale down sensibly or perhaps scrap the project entirely. Leaving out key components because you didn't have the money is like building the first 99% of a road that connects two points and leaving the last 1% unbuilt - it's not very useful.

I for one would rather have the entire computer budget moved to the student materials budget than have it spent on a system that, because it was poorly implimented, is being way underutilized. On the other hand, if it's properly implimented, computers can improve the breadth, depth, and overall quality of education, particular for research-intensive classes like history and for projects that require non-local collaboration.