Slashdot Mirror
UK Schools Told to Dump Microsoft
kubla2000 writes "The current issue of the Times Educational Supplement is running an article in which they cite a report by the British Educational Communications and Technology Association telling primary and secondary schools in the UK to dump Microsoft Operating systems and products in order to save millions. In a report to be published next week, obtained by The TES, Becta will highlight schools which have turned to free software instead of the market leader's products. Becta does not name Microsoft in its analysis. But almost all schools use some of the company's products. Their conclusion? Schools running OSS are saving 24% on average per pc versus those running proprietary systems."
I bet they're are looking to get a sweet deal from Microsoft by threatening this...
Wow, this will be a great oportunity for OSS to snap up another user base. Not only will it save a lot of money for the schools, but this will more than likely result in more users seeing the wonders of free software, and converting themselves. Would be good if they openly condemned Windows though :P
Anonymous Coward
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/06/133233 &tid=146&tid=109
Just recommending dumping one supplier of software simply to save money is a worry.
Is our school's education all related to money? do we just want to make it cheaper?
Or make it truly better. As much as I don't like Microsoft maybe there are situations where their software is best.
Just saying to dump them because of cost to save 24% sounds appealing at a first glance, but then replacing teachers with babysitters at half the wages would save 50%.
But it's not doing much good for the kids. Maybe a less broad "Microsoft is 100% evil" attitude would help the kids. Their the ones learning
Once schools are teaching how to use Free software, then businesses will no longer be able to use the bogus argument "but that's what they teach in schools" as a reason to stick with Microsoft.
Schools should not be Microsoft training centres anyway. We pay for schools with our Council Tax, and this particular Council Tax payer resents having my hard-earned spent on consolidating a foreign monopoly.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The issue at hand is really a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" question. Though some may argue otherwise, schools exist to educate young people and prepare them for their eventual dilbert-like status in the the cubicle. So if these student all learn linux and open office and who knows what else the schools might be offering instead of M$, then what will they do when their prospective employer asks, do you know how to use word, access, powerpoint, excel, xp, the list goes on. Is this a safe bet, and who should adopt what first.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Another Dupe from a few days back.
Same article and all...
When will slashdot editors use the search button?
wot no sig
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/06/133233 &tid=146&tid=109
[insert witty remark about slashdot editors, education and OSS]
BECTA don't recommend dumping anyone, let alone naming Microsot. They instead recommend that savings can be made by looking towards Free (as in beer) solutions.
If the objective is simply to teach kids the basics of how computers work, what an operating system does, and what can be achieved with a word processor, a spreadsheet, or a database program, then OSS is perfectly adequate to the task. Given that Free software can easily at least match the basic capabilities of proprietary non-Free offerings, it is surely pretty obvious that there should be no real need to spend large amounts on licenses for proprietary software.
However, don't overlook the wider politics of the matter. To some degree, what employers want is a trained workforce (as opposed to an educated one), and in that case it makes lots of sense to train them with the exact same tools they will be expected to use in employment. Which means Windows, MS Office, etc.
Also, don't forget that it will surely be so much in Microsoft's interest to get those youngsters to equate software with Microsoft that they will provide exceptionally deep discounts to education purchasers - probably as far as giving the stuff away.
It will take some principled political leadership to enforce an OSS policy on education in UK, and I really can't see much prospect of that coming from the current government.
UK Schools will be Microsoft dominated for a long, long time to come. Whatever this report says its likely to be wishful thinking. Speaking as someone who has left education in the UK recently, don't get your hopes up.
This is pretty cool, I like the idea of kids coming into contact with OSS at an early age, but I can't see this as saving money. All the IT teachers I have come into contact with in primary/secondary schools (the last seven years - I just left school) have very little technical knowledge other than how to use MS office, so surely there will be training costs.
Lately I was absolutely amazed how much my 14 year old cousin associates 'Windows' with 'Computer' and vice versa. He had absolutely no idea that there even is a company called Apple and that there are other operating systems like Linux or *BSD.
Computer is PC and PC is Windows.
This is actually a really bad sign, since one tends to like what you are used to. If you learn on the one OS and get into computers only on this road, than everything else you cross by later will only be 'Not as you know it.'
We hear that argument ever so often, especially in the context of Office programs. People dislike OpenOffice not because it does not do the job for them, but because '...it is not like MS-Office'.
'In Word I can do this and that...'
Using MS Products in schools cements their Monopoly in a way that no other marketing campain could achieve.
-jsl
Dyslectics of the world, untie!
I don't know about switching from Windows, Linux certainly isn't usable on the desktop yet (ducks) but OpenOffice and Firefox are, and they are drop-in replacements for Word and IE, there's no reason not to switch.
This is my tax money being wasted, this governments IT department is given as much money as they want and told to waste it on everything from buggy new medical record systems, to notebooks that get used for solitaire and 'new age' recognition software that really shouldn't have left the lab yet. Meanwhile there are so many useful projects that would cost next to nothing for local councils to do - how about linking the Bus tracking system to the net/phones so psychologically people will be motivated to wait for the Bus for example?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/06/133233 &tid=146&tid=109
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I think it's a good move, but only if there is no significant downgrade in terms of quality. Making such a move solely based on monetary or semi-political motivation wouldn't be good. With the current state of OSS software (e.g. OpenOffice), we might be seeing this condition met.
see a Text Widget
I have this exact problem. In school we were only given LUMOCOLOR pens. Now when I look for work and they ask me if I know how to use Blic pens I just break down and cry. I blame my education for my inability to adapt to change. I think schools should do something about this!!
People argue about what is cheaper.
GNU people say that Linux is.
While, pro Microsoft study demonstrates otherwise.
I'm neither, while i don't like Microsoft. I do think it has it's place and it is beneficial to some in some situations. Just like Linux is.
There is no clear answer here, figureout what it is that you need first. Then compare prices.
"Becta does not name Microsoft in its analysis. But almost all schools use some of the company's products. Their conclusion? Schools running OSS are saving 24% on average per pc versus those running proprietary systems."
Don't schools use a lot of software that runs on top of either of the Windows or Mac platforms?
Are there OSS equivalents for titles like The Way Things Work, or science lab programs, astronomy simulations, or all those Director based multimedia titles, etc?
OSS is great at replacing an office suite, email program, graphics editor, etc.
But are there a lot of OSS educational programs out there, or educators going to rely on web site content?
Just curious.
My partner works in ICT at a UK high school. Drawing on her experience I can suggest a bunch reasons why "dump Microsoft" is a simplistic solution.
1. There are a lot of computers to reconfigure. A high school has more workstations than the average small business and far fewer sysadmins per machine. The cost in time of switching all the machines to Linux or BSD would be vast.
2. Her school has special software for controlling access to resources. You need this in a school full of inventive and downright evil kids. The current s/w, which is rather good at its job, is build on M$ protocols and would have to be replaced. Doubtless you could build something similar on Linux for zero capital cost, but it would take ages and you'd only make it secure after the kids had exploited all the initial loopholes.
3. UK business want shool leavers trained explicitly in Windows and M$ Office tools as that's what the businesses use. Schools used to use non-M$ computers, and employers found that school leavers couldn't handle the real-world norm.
4. Schools _teach_ ICT. If the ICT curriculum says "teach them M$", then, duh, you have to have enough Windows boxes around to do that. If the school has the liberty to teach use of OSS systems instead, then the change has to be phased in so that students part-way through school aren't disrupted.
5. The students do their homework on home PCs which are almost always Windows. If the school has Linux or BSD machines, then the work and the files needs to be perfectly portable between M$ and OSS. That simply isn't the case (yet) and no amount of OSS evangelism chances that fact. In fact, schools are a good metric for when OSS and M$ become _really_ interchangeable.
I have been wondering just how long it would be before someone realized that the annual tithe they pay to the folks in Redmond made little sense when the purpose was for students to learn how to use a spreadsheet or a word processor. There are plenty of lower cost or even no cost (as in free beer) versions of these old warhorses. If the basics of page layout and print formatting are the subject at hand, then using MS Word or Office is not the most economical way to go.
What this really does do, though, is break the lock step routine that has been going on for a while -- the schools teach MS specifics because Business uses MS, while Business says they use MS because that's what new hires know, so the new hires won't waste a lot of time having to learn new tricks.
I hope to see more of this, because for too long MS has been "locking" students into their way of thinking and of doing things. Bravo for the folks with enough courage to stand up to the MS juggernaut!
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.
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Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
A special problem in education computing is the need to add and remove user accounts in batch. If you are setting up a Linux based server and you need to add many hundreds of new user accounts to it, I hope you might find this useful:
http://www.lfsp.org/
It offers a little free utility called "createusers" that I wrote for adding and removing user accounts en-masse. As well as basic login accounts, createusers optionally also sets up corresponding Apache personal webspace in the home directory, Samba account, MySQL or PostgreSQL personal database and per-user disk quota.
Sure the UK could start saving money in the long run, but I can imagine the cost to get all the computers to run Linux would be of great cost. Just getting them set up to work with their hardware would be a pain because usually they're from big computer companies (We have IBMs at my school in Canada). After that, you need to train all the teachers how to use it, so they could help the students. I'm pretty sure the students wouldn't like it after they downloaded a game of the internet to play and found they couldn't run it on Linux (ignoreing wine). Wait, maybe that's a reason for switching.
I would love if every school in the world switched to Linux, but the costs involved are unreal, including the training.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
I recognise that sometimes this is unavoidable - for example, hospitals need computers and those computers need to be bought from a PC supplier like, say, Dell. But I would alaways hope that in such a curcumstance, the best deal possible has been negotiated.
In the case of software in schools, I do not understand why commercial software is purchased when viable free alternatives exist at the level at which they are used in schools - for example, if a schoolkid is being taught how to use a word processor or how to create a spreadsheet, why do they need MS Office when OpenOffice has more than enough functionality for the level they need?
What's more heartbreaking is the fact that companies like Microsoft suck money out of the system which can instead be put to better use training and paying teachers more, on books, etc.
No, I'm not blaming Microsoft alone or directly, they're just a business trying to make money after all, but Open Source software can also serve as an example to kids to show them what can be achieved when people put pure financial gain to one side and just work together for the purpose of making something good.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I thought I'd reply here to everyone that's currently bashing the idea of using cheaper software in schools as somehow being bad for childrens education.
IT'S NOT. Schools (in the UK at least) have a very limited budget to spend, which doesn't just cover software - it has to manage teachers (of whom we currently have a shortage due to the abysmal wage they get), school dinners, visits and trips - even things like the bus to school in some places. Now, if this was aimed at the government as some "magic tax-saving measure" (get OSS for schools, save £1-2Bn tax) then I'd be worried. However, as it's aimed at schools, it means that they can free up sizable chunks of their budget to concentrate on other areas (Teachers for instance) - other areas which, in all honesty, probably do more for a childs education than M$ Super-dooper-text-ed-2025++ edition OR Open-tux-GNU-codehacker-6000.
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
Quick, get ballmer on a plane with a 70% discount!
The unofficial
I'm with you through the second sentence... Education is not all related to money. There are other concerns, the most important ones are:
-how well does it facilitate people learning?
-does it provide an environment that is open to advancements and does not lock you in?
Of course there are basic requirements like being able to perform the required tasks, and cost related issues, but aside from these issues, open source beats MS on all fronts.
Is it certain that open source software is always the best use for our kids? always? without fail and no MS ever again?
If the target is to make the student to prepare to work for business you might want to consider having Ms-word on you skill's list. You can use O.source software to do a lot of jobs, but you don't find it in regualr business a lot.
Big company are still using windows NT4 (banks even use some OS/2). It will take some time before open software becomes mainstraim.
...Microsoft announced their analysis of the last UK General Elections had detected an operator error in the log of Windows Vote Tabulator XP (TM), and reported the rectified results as follows:
Tory 61%, LibDem 18%, Ulster Unionists 10%, Loonie Fringe 6%, Labour 5%.
Ok, since I'm daring to disparage the almost blind assumption on Slashdot that OSS = good, I fully expect to be moded down but here goes.
... and how good it will all be when... and we should all take the moral high ground... But that doesn't change reality. MS Office is here to stay. You' not going to wake up and overnight have the majority of business change to OSS. Really!
When my child leaves school I want her to be able to get a job. If she doesn't know how to use the dominant office automation tool employer's use then she will be discriminated against.
Yes I know, if everyone... and when everyone
I want my child to learn on MS Software.
We pay for schools with our Council Tax
Except we don't quite - only about 25% of UK school funding comes from council tax via local education authorities, and much less than that in some parts of the UK such as Wales (about 15%+). The rest comes from general taxation via central government. But one way or the other the taxpayer ends up sending big cheques to MS, so your point is valid.
Getting Microsoft out of schools, especially if they move to openoffice, won't just save the schools money. The parents will also save a fortune not having to buy copies of Microsoft Office just so their children can do their homework.
This is a lose lose situation for Microsoft. Even though the student edition of Office is much cheaper than a full copy, many parents don't know about it, and fork out for a full copy.
It's often said that young children are very good at quickly learning new skills. Surely, if schools switched to being exclusively open-source, the kids would soon find it second-nature - which, in turn, would lay a good foundation for a more technologically adept generation. Shouldn't this be one of the aims of schools anyway?
So not only would it save money, but it would also provide students with a better education in IT.
The report may well be perfectly valid, but I'm a little suspicious of it without further information, if only because the main cost normally hyped for Open Source Software tends to be the training cost. (I'll welcome being corrected.) From the article:
It's difficult to judge this because the report hasn't been released and the article isn't very specific. I'd be interested, however, to know what kinds of prior skills the people at the 15 OSS schools had before they began, versus those at the 33 Microsoft schools. For all we know from the article, these 15 schools had the only 15 staff who are at all familiar with open source software in the entire UK education system. This is unlikely, but my intended point is that the actual cost could be dependent on what skills are available to the school within their existing staff.
If the IT staff at the OSS schools were already confident with installing, configuring and maintaining OSS software, it may be that it was no problem and they could have the low-cost benefits of free software. For all we know, however, the staff at the Microsoft schools might have been regular teachers with more important teaching responsibilities than how to administer the computers. Using Microsoft software would clearly cost more, but what matters is how it'd compare with training all the necessary staff to use OSS.
Staff at Microsoft schools may have had little or no OSS experience, and almost no hope of successfully setting up or administering an open source system without some serious help from an expert. This would be compared with plugging in a pre-installed Microsoft PC similar to their home PC, and running a few setup programs for various educational software, that is.
What's the current status of random people being able to randomly install and use open source software in useful ways? Without having had to go through an installation from that point of view for some time, it's hard for me to know.
Anyway, this isn't to say that the OSS installation and configuration issues couldn't be bypassed in some other way that might still work out to be cheaper. Perhaps it's still not too expensive to simply train people. Alternatively, depending on how serious the curriculum was, an education department might offer a service to configure computers for schools, and perhaps even administer them remotely.
One of the most important skills to have in many jobs is to be familiar with both the Microsoft operating systems and Microsoft Office. So if you do not teach our kids to use the tools used by over 90% of businesses because someone says that is too expensive (and their figures would appear open to question), then, using the same logic, you may as well teach brain surgery using shovels.
Why is this Free/Libre Open Source Software discussion always about being against Microsoft or other commercial companies that develop software.
Try to focus on the principles that are important - it might actually make sense to choose a commercial company to develop the software as long as the software adhere to the principles.
For example the principles in the bill that Peru introduced on the states use of software. The bill set forward some principles that all suppliers of software must follow:
http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php
Microsoft of course tried to fight this bill since they don't want to follow these principles, but that's their business descision. The bill does not ban Microsoft or any other supplier for developing and delivering software to Peru.
It would really be nice if all other countries tried to follow this approach.
saving money is more important than providing a useful education. Not that the education wouldn't be useful with non-MS stuff, but still...
rewriting history since 2109
my mum is a year 6 primary school teacher. in her class there are 5 computers; 3 with Windows 2k and 2 older machines with SuSE 9.0 (that i installed a month or two ago).
only one of the windows machines is covered by their office licence, and their other licences for educational software. the other two windows machines were pretty useless until i installed abiword on them.
the SuSE machines are definately the most popular amongst the kids (aged 10-11); partially due to the selection of games that came with the distro, but mostly because its something new and different. this effect will obviously ware off after a couple of months but it will be interesting to see which machines they favour in the long run.
The worst that can happen is that they'll know that non-MS operating systems exist.
It's a bizarre thought anyway that kids should learn the internal details of how things work in all other subjects but the one (then only preposterously) titled Computer Science, if the latter needs to be limited to clicking about in the GUI of precompiled closed-source binaries because of a poor choice of software: Just like the natural sciences, computer skills need to be taught on systems the students can (and are encouraged to) tinker with and take apart (not all of them, not all of the time, but to some reasonable extent) and gain insights from - not as a pro-monopoly proprietary word processing and IP indoctrination class.
If computers were only used for Browsing the web and word processing, we would be fine.
But when teachers use Frontpage (regardless of the best tool for the job) to teach the basics of web design, then it stops being just an issue of what's on the desktop, and now a job of retraining to use whatever would replace it, and also a relacement of 30 x "front page and the web" books.
There are numerous educational programs that do not run on anything other than Windows, there may be alternatives - but re-training, resources and purchasing of new sftware will quite easily eat that 24% saving.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Yes it might be true about saving money and all that lot. But there is one large problem with going to Opensource - staff and not so much students are very fixed in their M$ ways. If its not Microsoft they don't want to know type of attitude. I've it that hurdle in working myself.
Look at all those people with something as simlpe Firefox instead of IE - but its got a funny icon, it looks slightly different, its not called "internet explorer" etc.
Same will happen with OpenSource / Linux etc until it gets going - its going to be hard to get it going.
Tim (http://tim.igoe.me.uk)
Computers are like Air-con, open windows and they stop working!
They may save 24% per PC, but do they save that 24% on every technician and IT
manager, CS lecturer etc.? As far as I know they teach programming in schools on
Windows because it's an easy environment (VisualBasic and so on) to introduce
kids to it. And it's useful in the real world, still. Did the consider the effect
of having to reimplement every lesson plan around a new OS and new applications
which may be wholly different? The trouble of having 3 years somewhere with 3
different groups of kids all on a different OS, application, and curriculum?
It looks to me (having BEEN that technician and IT manager at a school, and had
to discuss lesson plans with teachers) that this 24% saved is going to be spent
for the first 5 years in finding suitable replacements for Windows, and not on
saving money at all.
Switching from M$ will be a painful process, but it has to happen eventually. I have a difficult time believing that foreign countries want their IT locked into a foreign closed-source vendor. It's difficult enough to believe the US Dept. of Defense is locked in like that, but for foreign defense ministries?
The rest of the herd will follow when a few leaders switch. That will be the end of the M$ monopoly.
I think this is even more tricky than what you've pointed out.
The real trick is in the tools market. Educational software is a special class of software. It's very different from say engineering or scientific software. It's not like networking applications or graphics or text editors. Those are all software applications, but in the bbrave new world of edutainment you tend to think of the software in terms of "titles" or at least in subject matter categories because subject matter or content is the emphasis rather than usage or applicaton.
Most adults who don't have kids in school simply rely on their memories and think that computers in school are about teaching typing or perhaps even programming or maybe using the Net. Well, that' certainly can still be the case, but in the 90s, things changed and software pervaded education in a way that it never did before and a lot of people aren't aware of the extent to which that happened. In many schools entire curricula are computer based and a very small set of companies has a major chunk of that market.
The major tools providers in this market create tools for "non-programmers" because they're meant to be used by "content specialists" and specifically that means teachers. This class of development tool is not a popular one among open source enthusiasts particularly because they build their applications around runtime applications that are guaranteed to lock-in the products.
THis is the reason I have long insisted that education will ironically be the last bastion of closed source. It's a systemic issue with roots in the tools market.
The one thing that could change this sad situation is precisely the sort of thing being proposed here. That is, with a bit of encouragement of this sort, companies like Macromedia with an elephant's presence in educational software might be more likely to release Linux runtimes which would allow existing projects to be re-packaged as Linux native apps.
And, since Adobe has recently purchased Macromedia, perhaps such a change might be even more likely as Adobe proceeds to "enter new markets" as they have stated they plan to do.
Luckily, it's not that urgent either way because most of those eudcational apps built with Macromedia tools like Director and Authorware can already be run under Wine.
Then coming back to your point about "best tool for the job" it is really just about OS's rather than the apps since, with the help of Wine, the apps tend to work both ways. And with some pressure, a native Linux run-time could change those apps into native Linux apps at the click of a button as long as the original project files were saved and typically a big project gets archived.
So, it's really about what OS to use simply to hold the content. If you seriously think Windows is a better tool in this case then I would simply say that if it's my tax dollars you're dealing with, you're wrong.
or say text editors or , tends to be very heavy on repetitive GUI interaction with an emphasis on displaying multimedia content and creating easy-to-use interactions that make use of moving graphics and animations and the like. The goals of educational software are very different from most software applications.
People can be wowed and enticed in believing that they will save 25%. School systems can switch platforms, but hardest part is the children who are at home with MS products and crossing platforms with high number of families on the the other platform is a recipe for confusion. Are the schools ready to hire or send employees to learn the new system? So save 25% on the frontend and give back 50% on the backend to hidden fees of converting MS novices.
Now that Windows is going to have a brand new Red Screen of Death, and they're gonna drop it? That's a pitty...
Sigh.. visio.
..don't panic
That last bit there at the end was something I edited out earler. Nevermind that. Sucks to be me. It was a powerful ending and that blows the whole effect. Damn.
A subservient "consumer" attitude to the corporate overlords and prevailing opinions of the time is not what schools (on our taxes) are supposed to teach.
A lot of people seem to be saying that kids should be taught Microsoft so they wont need to be retrained when then get jobs. This is inflexible old-think espoused by people who really don't understand how computers work.
It is only people who lack much experience with a diversity of technology who think you need to be trained how to use each specific task keystroke by keystroke.
Young people who have grown up in a technological enviroment have much more powerful mental paradigms relating to computers. Truly proficient computer users do not need to know specific details about what menu to use or what button to press. They have a higher level understanding of the general design of user interfaces and can jump with little effort from windows to mac to linux to xbox to ps2 to nokia to motorola and so on.
Increasing exposure to more types of technology is in the end a better education than intensive study on one particular (soon to be obselescent) technology.
What kind of idiot is going to answer "Uh, no, but I've used OpenOffice.org" when asked if they can used Word?
Just say yes, and figure out the differences as you go.
And "Can you use XP?"... what the heck kind of question is that?
What are they asking? Can you find the powerswitch on a computer? Can you press a mousebutton? Can you figure out that the folder marked "My Documents" has documents in it?
It'd be a sad, sad, day if someone answered "No."
Genuinely teaching kids how to use information communication technologies and not Microsoft Office is one of my pet peeves. A kid that is taught the fundamentals of GUI and CLI use and is exposed to several different implemetations is going to be significantly better off as with any luck they'll absorb the concept of usage metaphores.
Rather than teaching a child how to use Outlook to send emails, I'd rather they were taught how emails fit in to their toolkit of applications. When to send an email not a letter, when to send an email not make a phone call, not: Press Start, Program files, Outlook Express compose new email. If nothing else it future proofs their knowledge.
What kids need is as much exposure to different technologies as is possible and genuine disscusion on when that technology is appropriate, that means using proprietary and OSS solutions.
The problem here is making sure that the teachers understand this and the curriculum reflects this. The scary thing is even IT professionals don't seem to understand.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
In other words, they have a fixed amount of money they can use to educate children. Less money on software means more money to teachers, textbooks, and things more geared towards the goal of "education."
Microsoft products do not fit well as education tools for two reasons:
1. They are artificially expensive, unrelated to the inputs used in their production (Basic Economic theory here . . . why don't schools buy BMW School Buses too, while they are at it? Or serve caviar during lunch?)
2. Its strengths are in how it HIDES COMPLEXITY FROM THE USER. I suppose we could also convert all the textbooks to use easy words and big pictures, but some believe a lot of learning occurs when students are actually exposed to the realities behind how things work. Not that recent OSS is not really easy to use, but anyone is always free to poke around with the inner workings, if they are interested.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Tech teachers have had to deal with this for a very long time. You simply can't afford to keep your lab equipped with equipment that is currently used in industry. Therefore, you can't teach specific skills required to use proprietary equipment. What you can teach is 'generic skills'.
You teach in such a way that the students can take the generic skills they have learned and transfer those to the equipment they find on the job. The students get a huge benefit from this. Because you are educating them, rather than training them, the students are well equipped to cope when the employer changes from one type of equipment to another.
In light of the above, 'training' students to use proprietary software is cheating them.
...what you need to learn children is not OS or application-specific. I would be equally frustrated if they started teaching about /dev/hda0 as C:\, and init-scripts instead of autoexec.bat.
Office suites have long sinced passed the barrier where it is your skills that is the limit, not the application. Most children I know couldn't wield the full power of OpenOffice or GIMP than they could with MS Office and Photoshop.
And by skills, I don't mean knowing which keyboard shortcuts to push, but to understand what it is they are doing. Even though www.google.com is available to all, even those with supposedly tech skills seem amazed at what I can do by a few +'s and -'s and qoutes and such.
And yes, it all comes down to money. Those money could be well spent on other things, things that really matter. It is not a 3GHz PIV and MS Office 2003 Expensive Edition that will teach your child to be a computer wiz any more than a $10,000 set of golf clubs will make him the next Tiger Woods.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They better make sure it runs on the OS of their users, or they will not sell it.
I think switching to Linux, and opening up for MS software on top would be OK
...for BECTA teachers, specifically their internet connections. They had no idea whatsoever about computers, or how to use them. I don't think that going from Windows to Linux will necessarily help these people, not without giving them a great deal more training than they got when they were given Windows systems to learn (I believe they got 1 day's worth of Windows tuition).
It isn't just the quality of the tool, it's how well you can use it. We need to educate the educators more, regardless of which technology they end up using...
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The school must give the best education within its budget constraints.
If they can save a lot of money on the computers and software, they can spend that money teaching the kids other stuff.
Also look at the side benefit of the parents having to pay less for software on the home computer.
It is not OOS that matters here, it is cost of Free Software.
welll we use @ our school about 200-300 computers up to 4 computerrooms on each floor 4 are maximum. with open source software, which we absolutly could use because we, if you are honest, just need to know how to get used to programms we dont know... as a school member just marks count and not anything else so we dont need annything for customers like a company where a switch would be questinable... for that amount of money we would spent we could finaly hire a administrator... currentlich the teachers does the schoolnetwork.. and did you expect something else than that the whole system is nearly not usable for working at it ? so pi*thumb there where fucked up nearly a half million euros (computers you cant use...)
Maybe you care to explain your point? Or wil it be just of the variety:"It such because I say it is such"?
Altough education is in general not very tech savvy and pretty risk averse, (if OSS/linux is really cheaper) there will come a time when schools will be flocking towards it.
You don't need a ERM system to manage your school, teacher want to teach, not sit behind a computer. So whatever programs you will let them use, it will be pretty straigthforward to roll out a new solution.
Most schools are probably running a horribly outdated (cash strapped remember?) management system anyway, so it will be pretty easy to pick one that has much better features. If you can use a OSS packazge for that, you will be cheaper off.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
dude, timothy is way better than michael. you won't have an editor that never posts dupes.
this article is a dupe of an identical one from last week. anyway. When I was at school we used such computers as commodore PETs, BBC Micro Bs and Masters, Acorns and the occasional spectrum or Dragon32. I didnt use a 'Windows PC' until college (17 years old) and even then its not what folk use these days (being pre Windows 3.11!) and that was only when I couldnt get onto an Acorn Archimedes 3010! what harm did 'not using microsoft' do me? none. I am far more computer literate than someone who has been stuck in front of a Win2k box for 4 years and been taught 'computers'. I think not only ditching microsoft at schools but also ditching x86 PC's is the best way to go. lets get an eductional machine back into the schools. lets allow our children...future generations of the human race..what computers mean and how they work. NOT just to move the mouse to select icons and how to type a basic spreadsheet in. I WROTE a spreadsheet program when I was at school. do children learn that sort of skill now at school?
Consider what educational institutions deal in; They deal in the free exchange of ideas and the exploration of knowledge.
When you introduce computers into the mix, OSS provides an interesting oportunity. Because OSS has the same creed (e.g. free exchange of ideas and exploration of knowledge related), there is an inherent compatibility.
If a student chooses to dig deeply into how his/her computer works, it is all there with OSS.
For that reason alone, I would say that money is not the most important factor.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Tony Blair (our Glorious Leader, re-elected last week) has met Bill Gates numerous times, in the UK, US and at international aid/development conferences. Bill Gates was even granted a KBE (recipients of these honours, due to Royal Prerogative, are, though they are granted by the monarch, picked by the incumbent government).
:P) but theres no reason to believe gordon brown (man lined up to be next) would feel any differently.
There's really no way he would abandon such a huge contract because gates would probably see it as a personal betrayal, and, calculating politician that Blair is, he would rightly reason that the public support for OSS/ anti MS sentiment and the financial gains to be made just arent significant enoughto make it worth pissing off Gates.
It's true that Blair is unlikely to stay for a full third term since most of the country hates him (still re-elected him though, aint that a paradox
It's a dupe.
Still, FWIW, let me put in my thoughts:
He isn't asking anyone to do anything. He is only commenting that the effect is similar. Meaning that having a smoking section in a restaurant is pointless, as others will anyway get affected. (Presumably, his sig only refers to most restaurants where there is air circulating between the two sections, and not to the few restaurants where the smoking section is a separate room with its own ventilation system). This is perfectly true. The analogy is quite accurate. If someone smokes in another corner of the same room, it's comparable to someone peeing in another corner of the same pool. (Of course having different pools is a different thing altogether).
In other words, having separate smoking/non-smoking sections does not serve any purpose. Those of us who do not like the smoke, or desire to be healthy, will be affected anyway. So either ask people not to smoke, or do away with the pretence and allow people to light up anywhere.
As an ex-student of a UK School, i had continually pressed the computer teachers and admin for that matter about how to get the best out of a budget and start to use freeware and alternatives.
Their reply was that it was in the student's interests that they use the market leaders because when or if we go into an IT enviroment in the workplace, we would know how to use Microsoft products, because everyone knows that big businesses use Office, Windows 98 and XP on their cool IBM machines!!one11!.
But again, these were the teachers that halted everyone from going on the internet because viruses were publisised in the media.
I don't think things will change. Microsoft will start giving education grants, or double what they do already.
My dad works in a secondary school in the UK; it's one of the Microsoft "sponsored" ones, whereby they get cheap access to more of the company's software and cheap/free onsite MS tech support.
What that amounts to, *in my opinion*, is the poor staff and students being Microsoft's guinea pigs for new products. They have the latest and greatest "school management" systems foisted upon them, which constantly break down and are buggy. Microsoft is getting some great field testing of their new products on the cheap. So far my dad has refused to load his own coursework into the system, as he'll probably spend more time fixing it than saved by using it in the first place.
Our students thank you, Microsoft!
If you're entering the business world via a business degree, you WILL be using the Microsoft Office suite in the states.
On the outside chance you aren't, you're still doing the following:
Developing spreadsheets for cost analysis (tool is irrelevant at this point, as pointed out by other posters)
Developing presentations for your management classes
Writing papers with a word processor of some sort.
If you're any sort of scientific discipline, the toolkits you're using won't be Microsoft Office. Saying you've had exposure is enough; HR ain't looking at your leet Excel pivot table skills, they're looking at your technical degree and your ability to demonstrate the skills they require you for.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Put in Office Space, jump to the scene with the little 'going away present'
Get the fax!
Get it again!
Gimme some!
Woo hoo!
Rarely has senseless violence against hardware felt so satisfying...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
you *try* donating old PCs. People don't want to know - ok, a primary school where they have a couple of machines for kids to play on might, but secondary schools are like corporations: they want new, fixed TCO machines on a 4 year refresh cycle. they want them consisted, so they can use the same image on them. what they don't want is a ragbag of old tat that'll cost more to setup and support than buying new will. PC costs are negligible now: I've just bought a Dell with a monitor for 211UKP with 3 year warranty, for example.
These come with a client licence for XP as well.
Bash MS all you want, suggest schools use Linux/Open Source, but don't set up a straw man argument that's clearly false.
I'm an ICT technician working in Primary Schools within London and Microsoft are not the whole problem here. RM (Research Machines) still hold a virtual monopoly over all-things school, at least in the primary schools arena, and they will supply and support only MS.
Then you have individual boroughs who will ONLY supply/support RM stuff, so you're fighting a losing battle.
The borough I work in has no non-MS schools to my knowledge, there are no borough tech's supporting non-MS stuff (in fact, support for any non-RM stuff is almost nonexistent hence my employment). Borough support has been effectively removed for any school which dares go non-RM (I kid you not).
Schools with even just plain Windows 2000/XP setups are abandoned and have to employ people like me to do silly things like add printers, block websites, fix paper jams, etc. as well as keeping the network going in all weathers.
Convincing a school in such a borough to go non-RM (and therefore possibly non-MS) means possibly removing any sort of borough support, having to coexist machines (the borough I work for can do finances, classlists etc. **only** via a piece of arcane Windows/DOS software), replacing every piece of software and all their paid-for expensive site licenses with an equivalent via Linux, or getting Wine to work with programs that cause no end of trouble even in Windows-only environments.
Training of staff/students is a minor matter, despite some posts on here, because most primary school teachers are nowhere near proficient on computers (I've met 2 or 3 across 6 different schools, and that's using a definition of "can install printer on standalone Windows PC by self given instruction manual and driver disks"). Some staff I know have cheat-sheets for almost every action from saving to printing to logging in.
Change the OS, change the cheat-sheet, the teachers still fumbles along without too many problems. You can actually watch them and see just how quickly they relearn how to work when you go from standalone to networked, PC to laptop, 95/98 to XP/2000. This happens almost every year for a decently-funded school.
The problem is 90% political, 10% technical. Convincing a school to go against the grain is hard. Cost savings are easily countered by hiring of technicians to replace lost support, previous expenditure on software and licenses. School's have little to no interest in moving to a "unheard-of", non-popular, finnicky, incompatible, new operating system with no "groundbreaking" features for themselves.
Existing software is pretty much Windows-only, even with Wine, and hardware is very below-par (some schools still have PC's with 233MHz or less). But most hardware is Linux-supported, even down to things like SmartBoards, microscopes, printers etc.
Teachers know nothing about software compatibility and will expect to be able to pick up Rainbow Fish/Barnaby Bear/Tweenies etc. and just plug it in the network for it to work. This will not happen with Linux. It barely happens with Windows.
No major educational software distributor that I am aware of supports Linux in any way, shape or form.
Saying that, I have slipped a Linux machine or two into schools but as kiosk-style machines for things like the Intel QX3 microscopes, exotic printers without XP drivers, etc. but these are expected to run pretty much unattended and unserviced for years and, when they stop working, it's no great loss to throw them away.
In short, get rid of RM, make boroughs and those higher-up in educational terms learn what an ass RM are making of them, encourage most educational software creators to support Linux, let ICT Co-ordinators/Heads/Governors know that this "Linux" thing exists and THEN try for a push.
It's in the operations and technology portion of the budget.
If they're not spending it on MS products, they're going to be spending it on other operational or technology things. Probably buying more computers.
Bear in mind we're talking about pre-university institutions here. The learning curve for running alternative OSs is *plenty* steep for schools like this. Although they might save money buy deploying Linux, it will also cost them to train / hire to get expertise to run their systems. I wonder how that balances out... Some schools may just lack the capital to make the switch regardless of long term savings. That said, the perpetually cash-strapped education sector is clearly a good market for Linux distributors to target more closely with solutions. Maybe there's scope for (yet) another distributor to appear, or scope for growth by an existing distributor. One final thing: given the choice, I think schools should perhaps retain at least some MS products. Why? Schools educate the workforce, so it seems to serve the students and their future employers best if they are familiar with a wide range of the tools they might encounter.
I think we can get 2006 to be the year of Linux on the desktop, if we can get all governments to mandate Linux use.
If schools are saving 24% of their computing costs, I imagine that UK-wide we can afford more teachers.
If the utility of the computers is not affected then I'd say this is certainly to the benefit of the pupils.
Of course for support on OSS you'd probably pay more as the skills are rarer. The costs here should decrease as OSS becomes more prevalent. Indeed I'd imagine that the geeks in any school could administer the network in a couple of years given the right guidance.
Quills and parchment.
What?! It works for Hogwarts!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Seems the owner of the whiteboxlinux.net and whiteboxlinux.com domains has decided to offer them on ebay as a peace offering between wbel and himself.
This is really great news so lets hope someone with WBEL enthusiasm steps up to build a respectable community site.
I bet they're are looking to get a sweet deal from Microsoft by threatening this...
They are simply putting forth a recommendation to drop Microsoft. Nice try, Bill.
Yeah, save 24% on cost and lose 50% on maint. hassles. "What do you mean teachers don't have 40 hours to sit around learning how to rebuild the kernel so they can install a sound driver? They must be stupid then!"
None are so blind as those who will not see. Since open source has become a religious movement you can't say anything negative about it. It's like saying white men AREN'T all racist and don't deserve to be put at the back of the line to make up for hundreds of years of bad actions by others. No one wants to hear it.
If anyone thinks that the TCO is going to go down just by switching every computer to Linux, espcially if they've been using windows for an extended period, then they are either stupid or just going off on some personal/political agenda and reality be damned.
And the funniest thing about this is that by being this way it makes us so easy to be manipulated.
How lame are we?
"Wow, 24% cost savings, that's pretty much" i wondered. "How comes when you get a cheap copy of Windows thrown in with every PC and there's special discounts and all?"
... educational and scientific software like Mathematica, ... the whole (very expensive) shelf of proprietary software, and of course all the updates too.
... but to start with OSS is also a whole different mindset: when you start with OSS you're used to look for all those freebies, it would never cross your mind to spend money on CD burning software. You could also put OpenOffice, GIMP and loads of other free stuff on a Windows machine, but usually on the Windows-side it's proprietary software all the way (even if it's not properly licensed).
But it's not just the OS. For a start the Windows-Home edition isn't up to it, not even for schools. Once you want proper networking and at least enough security to protect the systems from overambitious pupils you need the "Professional" (i.e. not dumbed down) Windows and probably a server and the licenses for all those clients too (i know of at least one antivirus software that recently needs that for centralized updates).
So you need to "upgrade" to a "better" OS and you need a Virus-scanner before you can even start to think of the Apps. And then it really starts to get expensive: MS-Office, PaintShop, Nero or something else for CD-burning,
A lot of this you get for free with OSS: OpenOffice, GIMP,
So i think what really makes the difference is the mindset: If a "Windows person" needs new software he starts looking in the shops, the "OSS person" starts with the distri and looks for open/free software first.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Our method of advocacy has been to recycle computers that we in turn donate to schools and non-profits. More often than not we use the K12LTSP in order to take advantage of discarded hardware. It is critical to keep in mind that getting a school to embrace FOSS is only 16% of the work. The real challenge is in creating a competent culture of self-reliance and sustainability, aka Training.
Our position is that if an end-user is comfortable with the GUI in Windows or Mac, then the migration to FOSS is trivial. However, if one struggles with either of the proprietary distros, they can expect to be equally challenged by FOSS. The fact that it is free does not make it easier.
We are at a critical transition in our education system. Schools have no business spending taxpayer dollars on Commodity Computing Solutions. Most NCLB focused apps are web-based. Proprietary, curricula-enhancing apps purchased for stand-alone installs are an entrepreneurial opportunity awaiting you. Code an alternative that is more culturally sensitive to your district's needs. We can no longer afford to spend money on software and hardware that does not contribute to the value of education.
Success without humility is an indulgence in arrogance
Now we're even debunking the headline in the story description. The report doesn't mention Microsoft at all! They only recommend OSS. Does anyone know of another forum with the OSS/Science/Geek leanings that has more editorial integrity and some inteligent commentors? Cause /. is quickly sliding into disrepute with me. Sure it's been said before, but I'm looking for something else.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I lied on my application for a job, instead of putting OO.org, abiword, wordperfect, ect as my expert skills......
i put down Word.
i put down Excel.
i put down Powerpoint.
I had to do "skill testing", which included a typing test for speed/accuracy on some other app, making a chart in excel, and EXACTLY copying a letter from a printed page to word.
Suffice is to say, i got the job, but i havn't used Word/Excel for a few years now. On all my applications i still write down Word/Excel/Powerpoint. When the landscape of office applications changes, i will switch my 'expertise' to the current wordprocessor/spreadsheet/presentation software of the day.
I have beaten the system. I suggest you do the same if you have confidence in your skills.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
For the report to focus entirely on costs is a little myopic. Free Software might be free as in beer, but its greatest value to education is that of software freedom: the children can tinker, investigate, and learn skills for real future competence with computers...
Really, the report should be looking to ROI, rather than merely cost. This would be the real opportunity of and for Free Software.
Wikileaks, no DNS
this would be a terrible thing if it happens. Please allow to explain:
In my school they switched to Linux 3 years before I graduated , as a result we had 3 years of Computer Science courses on Linux. As I am posting on Slashdot it is pretty obvious that I didn't have a problem with this but the case quite the opposide with most students.
Allot of my classmates had barely used a PC , and what was important at that time , was teaching them how to get work done on the PC. Now for better or worse that means knowing your way around Windows.
The complete switch to Linux basicly took that chance away from them . They were learning Linux , when at home ( and at Internet Cafes , and pretty much everywhere) they had only Windows.
Obviously this isn't good.
A school must have BOTH imho. Linux is a nice thing to learn , but Windows is too. You shouldn't dump Windows completely because in the end the kids are the ones that are going to suffer from it.
Sorry for the lengt.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
Yeah, but you know what's weird? They are also saving 24% on average per every two PCs! This got me to dig a little deeper, and I found out that it's also true per every five PCs AND every ten.
Coincidence? I think not.
We just reimaged PCs with XPSP2, Firefox 1.0.3 and Notes 6.5 (migrating from SP1, Mozilla 1.7.7 and CorporateTime).
Every Windows/MS Word problem the middle aged user reports begins with "I have a problem with Notes..."
You don't mind linking to the BECTA publication. As I recall, BECTA "got the facts" on TCO and found free software to be 25% cheaper than current, M$ dominated, junk.
Let them know when M$ provides free as in beer solutions.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Wow, for once schools are being smart and cutting costs by using a cheap OS, rather than getting rid of textbooks.
and save even more?
an article about Microsoft giving it's software to the school district, or at a deep discount. It's fairly predictable now how these PR battles play out..
... rebuilt it from an image, obviously!
My old school in Kent (UK) might well have been a Microsoft Training centre. MS had provided the money for a class room of tablet PC's. Thats good you might think - However all the Tablet PC's where setup like TFT monitor's. They even had keyboard's and mice!! Way to waste some cash!
To Slashdot or not to Slashdot. That is the question (that will cause me to fail an interview)
5. The students do their homework on home PCs which are almost always Windows. If the school has Linux or BSD machines, then the work and the files needs to be perfectly portable between M$ and OSS. That simply isn't the case (yet) and no amount of OSS evangelism chances that fact. In fact, schools are a good metric for when OSS and M$ become _really_ interchangeable.
What's preventing them from installing the same program they use at school on these home PCs ?
That isn't even necessary. They can boot up a knoppix live CD-R or CD-RW and run GNU/Linux on their own PC, do their homework, without installing anything on daddy's computer (except maybe storing their homework file on his C: drive).
Of course, students will probably WANT to install Linux on their home PCs, as their tolerance for Windows' worms, viruses, trojans, spyware, and general flakiness will be at an absolute minimum once they've learned to use Linux. Even my mom and sister (who use Linux and are not anything close to computer literate) can't stand windows now...students will almost certainly be more inclined in this way.
Which is really what the likely employer of the Microsoft apologist you are responding to fears the most.
You know, OpenOffice run on windows also. And it's really the same interface, and since the total cost is $0, what could be the reason to NOT install them ?
Absolutely. You are responding to the inane drivelings of Microsoft apologists arguing "black is white" because the hard facts are against them. Paying recurring licensing fees to use proprietary software which stores school, community, and students' data in a proprietary format owned by a foreign monopolist convicted on two continents, when free (cost and liberty) alternatives exist that store data in open formats embraced by the standards body of the EU is madness...one that can only be sustained in said convicted monopolist succeeds in befuddling the policy makers of Europe and the UK. Seeing how easily the extreme right was able to befuddle the American population, Microsoft has reason for optomism. It may not yet have sunk into Redmond that the rest of the world, developed and developing alike, isn't anywhere near as stupid as my own country has become, so there is hope that sensible policies will be adopted by the UK school system and Europe as a whole. Not certainty, of course (witness the software patent debacle), but hope...which is more than most Americans to the left of Ghengis Khan are left with these days (but I digress).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
IF they do dump M$ and go to Linux / Open Source and Free Software, the students will be better off because they will be able to understand something other than Windows, and they will learn how to do something else besides point, double-click, and reboot.
This excites me because I have seen first-hand what happens when students learn on a Linux desktop, and then take their skills elsewhere. It is a very good thing indeed.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Some posters above have said "oh, kids nowadays can't even do math without a calculator." Bullshit -- I've been on the computer since age 4 (12 years) and I can integrate quite a bit with just some paper and pencil, not to mention I've known my multiplication tables (and state capitals!) since second grade. "The old fashioned way" -- as you call it -- is alive and well except in the minds of aging skeptics.
Now, I do agree (and I'm presuming you think this way) that standards have been lowered too far, and that students are more content going to the mall and socializing on cell phones than learning, but that isn't an educational problem, it's a cultural problem. Inattentive parents or parents who don't give a proper emphasis on education, I think, have more to be blamed for than the mass of students you're generalizing does.
Computers in schools are most certainly not the problem -- without them, some other facility would distract them*. It's not the options available to the students -- it's their attitudes towards learning that affect their choices, and taking computers away won't change that.
*Oh, and I manage to get an unweighted GPA of around 3.7 with 3 AP-level classes and 3 honors, while spending one of the periods playing on the computers and several hours at home on forums and on slashdot. And, occasionally, coding PHP/MySQL, DHTML, or installing/trying out Linux distros. And meanwhile, I maintain a social life.
Its very common for schools to purchase, or accept obsolete equipment from various vendors.
"Furthermore, Linux doesn't have the same diverse hardware issues when dealing with images that windows does. Think Knoppix as an example of how this works."
I used to think this was true until I found out that a $499 RAID controller that's only a couple years old was a *bitch* to get working under Linux. (MegaRAID Enterprise 1500, Series 467)
Seems that support for "older" megaraid cards was silently dropped, screwing over lots of people with older (and not even *that* old) Dell, IBM, and HP hardware that came with these cards.
Google around, there's a few bugs about it on Red Hat's bugzilla. It really boned quite a few people.
So now, when I have a hodgepodge of parts, I take the time to make sure that they're supported by the Linux distro that I'm using. I no longer have to check the Microsoft HCL - the stuff Just Works under Windows, but that isn't really true of Linux anymore.
FWIW, I couldn't get the card to work at all with a new Knoppix CD, but an older Knoppix 3.6 CD (with the 2.4 kernel) had the module for the MegaRAID card. I loaded it, was able to partition the drives, and did an alternate install of Gentoo 2005.0. The correct module exists in the 2.4 kernel, and the box has been working great. Only 3 days of Googling, forums, IRC, and mailing lists wasted.
Fedora Core 3 won't see the card either. Fedora Core 2 *does*
Anyway, I think that yes, Linux does have hardware issues in many places that Windows does not.
Given that whatever software they use in school will not be what is in use (other than in name perhaps), the specific app is not relevent. That being a given, children should be tought that when you are offered two equivelent products, the good economic choice is to choose the least expensive one.
Perhaps this isn't tought in schools now because so many of them hire coaches to teach economics (if they even have an economics class), instead of hiring economists to coach football.
All schools make a choice on which is more important for their students, good financial sense, or corporate sponsership. (NFL/MS/PEPSI) It is unfortunate that so many have taken the corporate sponsorship route.
With Microsoft being attacked on all fronts, the UK schools dropping their products seems like "just another brick in the wall" when it comes to barracading ourselves from their over-priced software.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
My high school used IBM Selectric typewriters. I can't begin to express my frustration at being confronted with Brother or Smith Corona models and not being able to use them. Some of the typewriters I have to use are even labelled "Dell", "Sun", or "Happy Hacking". I sure wish my school had taught me to use the most common typewriters instead of just those old Selectrics; they completely failed to prepare me for the workplace.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In the US, public services buy off-the-shelf products (or specially packaged bulk equivalents) from thousands of different sources. I know that my school system doesn't manufacture the window cleaner they use, or that my county's road department doesn't process the oil used in making their asphalt, or that the maintenance division doesn't make their own paint.
I am extremely skeptical that your public services don't also contract out a huge amount of the goods they use. Given that they most assuredly do, whose pockets do you think all those taxes should go to?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
My wife works in a school. She teaches Pre-k (4 yr olds). I lost complete faith in the system when I saw her "Work Review and Assessment" for her teaching style.
Intro statements: "All of your students are learning at or above grade level average. Many of your students are attempting to read."
Next three pages are nothing but things to change. They want less focus on teaching and more of the children getting "incidental" learning in small groups rather than as a whole class. I call it "accidental" learning.
I'm not sure how they do it, or if it's down to the personalities of people in the UK, but Microsoft dominates British IT in a scary way. In the US, sure, there's lots of Microsoft developers, but there's a lot of Unix developers too. In the UK, the ratio is significantly higher on the Microsoft side than for anything else. Why is this? I'm not sure why, but the British seem to be suckers for a monoculture.
What happens when they leave school?? Go back to microsoft?? I don't think so. After that wherever they go or work, they will push for what they use. If it is open source then open source it is.
Microsoft's strategy is like that of the tobacco companies. Get them hooked while they are still young.
...to discount their products to education. MS already walks a fine line in this area as they have already virtually eliminated their profit margin on educational licenses. If they were to discount further or start giving away software they may run afoul of anti-trust and/or international trade anti-dumping laws (they already do give away software as charitable donations, but there is a limit to how much they can legally donate).
If MS were to engage in dumping practises in developing nations and with nonprofits and education would probably be unwise from a marketing strategy standpoint as well. MS wants to promote software as something powerful, proprietary and valuable in terms of dollars. If they raise kids on "free" software then in MS view they are teaching kids that their products are "worthless". As such they should at least require students to cover the costs of producing the product.
As a corporation in the forefront on the war against software piracy, MS also must establish strict license compliance enforcement practices with all customers, even schools and charities and even in cases when they donate software for free. To do anything less would be hypocritical, and might make it look like MS condones piracy by students and teachers. I happen to agree with that view as I take a dim view of "relative morality"/"situational ethics"--if MS is going to be the champion of commercial software then everybody has to follow the same rules.
That said, I think it would be hard for most educators to to argue in favour of MS in the classroom over Free software--and not just because some study put the TCO 1/5 lower for Linux. Back when I was still in grade school there was a raging debate about Coca-Cola funding renovations to our gymnasium because of the strings attached--the scoreboard and some other equipment would've sported giant coke logos, we would've had to replace all our vending machines and we would've had to change the concession stand menu (becasue the hostess snacks, Dr. Pepper and Hires root beer we sold were Pepsico properites). Other schools were being offered similar deals as well (one was an A/V system upgrade and free newsfeeds for current events classes, where the school was required to play corporate ads). In all these cases, teachers and a good deal of parents objected strongly to what some of the more vocal opponents termed "corporate indoctrination".
It seems to me that letting a big corporation own a school's IT infrastructure runs counter to everything those educators believe in. If Coca-Cola and McDonalds couldn't make such deals or had to substantially modify them, then why would we expect any less scruitiny from hardware and software companies? It was such a terrible thing to see the Coke logo all over our school, so what makes it OK now to have the MS logo on the startup screens of every PC? In the name of moral/ethical consistency, all these educators who do not like overt commercial presence in public education should be fighing to get Free software into the classroom--perhaps not eliminating MS but at least to teach students that there are alternatives.
BTW I think the same should apply to Apple (and should have in the past). I think it's great that MS and Apple support education but I think if there are too many strings attached to their generosity it should be rejected (especially if it involves exclusivity or terms & conditions obviously meant to diminish the presence of competitors in the classroom). I was lucky enough to be a young student at a time and place where we could see the alternatives--the first PCs in our school were Commodore PETs (which was typical in Canadian schools in the early 80s as Commodore was founded in Canada), but Apple II+ and IBM PCs and newer Commodore machines followed and kids got to see the advantages and disadvantages of all of them.
I'm all for a drastic increase in the presence of Free software in the classroom in the name of promoting choice.
My daughter was working on an essay at home using OpenOffice on our Linux box, but wanted to email it to herself so she could finish it at school.
I said, "Um, are you sure you'll be able to edit this there... most places use Word." She said it would be no problem, since the computers there run Linux too. She also said it was nice, because every student had his/her own login, just like on our home PC.
OSS is not "the other company". With one linux CD they can install software for pupils for *all* the schools of the country.
And yes, they told them to dump it. Just like your girlfriend "dumps" you. You know. DUMPED! NO MORE SEX for MS.
My .02...
//e. There was a ton of educational software. It took a long time for the move to Windows, but it happened, and eventually the educational software caught up.
When I was at school, they had Apple
So now most schools around here are Windows, and though a lot of stuff is net based, there is still a lot of educational software that is and will continue to be Windows only.
No software means its of little value as an educational tool. Eduware companies aren't going to flock to linux, and no school has resources to produce OpenSource educational software.
The IT cost of linux is worse than windows. When I was fighting to keep Macs in schools, the administration came down to hard numbers: for every Mac expert they'd need to support the school they could hire a swarm of Windows experts. Supply and demand. The same will go for linux.
Linux is not a desktop OS. It never will be. Any time you need to recompile the kernal to add support for VPN, AFS, or whatever the new device driver is... you have a support nightmare. And yeah, I'm talking about the modular kernels...
"I can't read from my floppy." "Did you mount it?" "No I put it in the drive but nothing happens." "Check your fstab and mountab see if its there." "What?"
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
I have the TES in front of me but it doesn't really give much detail. Many of the posts on this thread have moved onto American Schools, which is fine and important, but the Article was about British Schools.
When I was at school,the RM Nimbus (!) seemed to a monopoly but at lunch time you could basically do whatever you wanted to them, they were not re imaged and all had different combinations of software. We learned a lot using DOS and if we were lucky you could type win and Windows 3 might pop up.
Nowadays 'ICT' is a big thing in British schools and they put the poor kids in front of MS Office at an early age. As a teacher, school trips and outside exercise might get you in court so putting them in front of a PC is a relaxing hour for the teacher if the kids just get on with playing flash games and educating themselves about the human form using Google Images.
I have to say that considering how much more money that gets spent on computers, I think it is disappointing that the students are just taught how to use Office Software as if computers were magical black boxes that run office suites that come from heaven.
At University and in business they will be bored stiff typing in Word it would be more useful and more inspirational to teach them how to do more interesting stuff and broaden their minds, e.g. Artificial Intelligence Robots, Website creation, scripting. Kids can pick up this stuff because they think in the same insolated and literal way as computers
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I could see that Microsoft would give free stuff to schools if pushed to it. However eventually there will come a point where everyone has Microsoft over a barrel and they will have to start saying no.
Don't forget that Star Office is being offered free to schools and some of the free-libre-open-source tenders that go to schools are increasingly being signed off by big companies like IBM/Red Hat etc. Remember that no one was ever fired for buying IBM!
Not to mention that it is more community focused for say Springfield High School to work with the local Springfield Yellow-Head Consortium than with big evil American Company Brand X.
I don't believe that anyone who masters GNU/Linux will ever get stuck at a Windows box; they will be much more confident sorting out Windows problems, especially if they were encouraged to use bash (which is also similar to MSFT's BASH clone MSH).
A local consortium or benevolent LUG can provide a complete GNU/Linux solution which makes use of both new and existing hardware combined. Most distros are backwardly compatible to old computers, even with Pentium Is - albeit with a cholesterol free Windows manager.
Try running Windows XP across old x86 computers, not to mention any old Apples or Unix machines that are lying around!
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The more schools think of switching, the more Microsoft will try and make deals. However they can't advertise or lobby over the fact that getting all your software free is a good deal. They may able to do so in some places some of the time. However the UK is a varied place with big differences between regions, some will break away completely and act as beacons for the rest.
Tony Blair is a rather weakened figure - the rest of the Labour party don't understand his desire to big business involved in schools and Tony no longer has the power to rule the world from his sofa. The Jamie Oliver/Supersize Me effect on school food has already led to many companies being sent packing out of school; there is no reason why Microsoft can hope to flee the coming wrath....
If a school switches to GNU/Linux then Microsoft loses the network effect; if Microsoft gives increasingly bigger discounts/freebies then everytime sets a precedent. Here we have laws about deals and discount pricing and so on, and if one school if offered free/cheaper copies then others will not stand by and pay full price. Either way MSFT loses.
Yes it has 40 billion in the bank but that cannot buy you
My little Linux and tech blog
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/10/ 020610hnopensource.html discusses how governmental organisations round the world (Germany, Taiwan, France, Finland, the Philippines, South Korea, and China) are tending more and more to leave Microsoft and head towards Linux and other open source software, generally to save money.
This British education survey is just another in the chain.
I'm sure it's coincidental that this would also mean that 99.99% of the games anyone has ever heard of or would have at home COULDN'T be installed and run in any reasonable way on these machines....yeah, coincidence.
-Styopa
Wait a week and you'll see an ad: "How did all the British schools lower their TCO? They dropped Linux in favor of Windows. Get the facts." (And then, they'll link to the article, only they'll modify it so Windows and Linux will be reversed. And then, they'll get sued and settle for a few hundred thousand, which they'll pay out of their marketing department's accounts, and Microsoft will consider that acceptable. What the hell do they care, as long as yet another PHB out there believes that Windows costs less than Linux.
Will Microsoft do the Apple thing? (or is that just in the US?)
The geek shall inherit the earth.
The usual response is raucous laughter.
Oddly enough, I have had more success - the few times I tried - getting such things to run under WINE than under XP.
If it were important enough (say, the sale of 200+ desktops and maintenance for same) it woulf be financially viable to iteratively run WINE in debug mode alongside a copy of the app running under '98 with a debugger (where the app allows it!) and simply write enough to the incomplete bits of WINE to make the app work. Do that enough times, and you'll start finding that some of your new candidates Just Work.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...then maybe you can retire that Apple //e.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...then how does knowing PowerPoint help you to get employment there? Surely something like DeScribe would be more appropriate?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They all have it at home. You're insisting that the Ed Dept make sure that the Greenlanders have enough ice.
-1, Outsightful
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...but aren't Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg honking great content archives?
They're not children's books, but are childrens' books always the best medium? What stands in the way of extending Gutenberg to include those, anyway?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...start here.
If time weighs heavily on your hands, adding a second, massively simplified, child-oriented interface to The GIMP would be nice.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...but I recall a similar situation. I taught a lady to use WordStar on an Osborne 1, the office manager for a politician in Midland, Western Australia. She demonstrated that she knew what was going on. The next day, it was all gone. All of it. Every keystroke, every process.
So I taught her again, watched her run through the process, hung around for an hour making sure she had it all sorted out, no worries. Went home.
The next day, it was all gone again. Hello, square one. And again. And again. Every. Single. Time.
No problems with anything else in the office, it all ran smoothly, she just woke up WordStarless every morning. <shrug>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Which WP suite is groing the fastest, in terms of screens graced rather than boxes sold? Which has the brightest future?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So if a company provided a Linux-based system for schools computers, you don't think they'd provide a simple reload CD? It's a solved problem, after all - just look at the various Knoppix, Morphix and Ubuntu derivatives.
To go back to the original point, School Sysape decides to nuke and pave to fix a dodgy driver. RM supplied the kit, RM supplied the reload CD. Fine. Let's look at that with a company supplying a Linux system - Rabid Penguin (we'll call them RP) supply all the PCs, and the Linux CD.
Now I *know* there isn't a company doing this now - but that doesn't mean that there will never be. It would be a nice little market to get into.
Our local school district used to be packed with Macintoshes. When businesses started donating old PCs to the district, they began installing them with M$ licensed software because it was so much cheaper than buying new G4's. As computers become more ubiquitous in schools, it's only a matter of time until Linux takes over the desktop. There are not going to be enough budget dollars available to license Windows for every desktop in every classroom.
Same news more public forum:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/72465/british-schoolki ds-overcharged-for-software.html
Interesting thing with this recently respected uk magazine, they had on their A-list for some months last year:- openoffice as the only office suite... until (the ms moguls gottem and) both OpenOffice and emmessophice now appear together -- the latter appears with a "corporate" tag (whoops wotta wopping spelling mistake -- must start using ispell again).
Cheers,
Joc
Even rocket science is not 'Rocket Science' any more, but God is faithful in all he says and gracious in all he does.
...Groundhog Day, but of course that wasn't to be released for another 12 years.
Our little munchkins (5.5yob and 4yog - and, come to think of it, 15yog as well) quite enjoy watching Ever After, but probably not because of Drew's looks. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
less problems + less virus threats + saving money = dump microsoft Cheers! ^_RaMoN_^
I can't believe someone modded this "troll." My God, some of these zealots think anything that doesn't say "Linux good, MS bad" should be modded a troll! I just metamodded his ass "unfair," FYI.