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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
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.
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 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!!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sigh.. visio.
..don't panic
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.
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!
Schools should be teaching children "concepts", and not "programs". ie, the concept of a GUI, the concept of an email application, the concept of a web browser.
That way, the students are equipped to move from os to os, platform to platform without prejudice.
It's how your user who has never seen anything other than MS products can move from XP to OSX or KDE with little difficulty without complaining about the missing start button and throwing up their hands in horror.
It's how they can deduce how to browse the web, write a letter or send an email based on experiences in other systems.
Platform independence comes naturally once you understand the underlying concepts. This is what should be concentrated on rather than "product X".
That schools may be using OSS is not the point and it shouldn't be championed on that aspect alone. Get a mix in there, let the kids see all sorts.
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?
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.