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...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/06/133233 &tid=146&tid=109
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!
But its not a all one or all the other thing.
The report says to dump microsoft. What happens when microsoft do make the best tool for the job? It seems too broad to me.
Maybe linux is good for 80% of things and MS good for 20%. maybe the other way around or some other combination. 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 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 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!!
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.