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Roadblocks to Linux in Education
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) has lashed out at government schools and education departments for snubbing FOSS. In this column, OSIA says it has been trying for over two years to make headway with these government agencies but 'they tell me that they are scared of doing anything which will upset Microsoft.'" From the article: "If these departments suddenly stopped paying for proprietary software and switched to FOSS, the schools know they won't reap any of the purported savings. So, why would schools bother with trialling FOSS? Where's the incentive?"
PLEASE mod this guy a troll
There's alternatives to Linux don't forget.
Afraid to upset MS? What have they got against saving money? Sounds like some people in education need to get their asses fired.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It's true that by switching to FOSS now, they won't save anything, today. They've already paid for the proprietary software. The real savings comes in the next year or two when they don't have to pay for new software to stay on the proprietary upgrade path and they won't have to pay for new hardware to meet the demands of the new software.
It sounds like these government schools are being a little short-sighted in their reasoning.
Were's the vertical education apps, for all education levels?
What I would suggest in these cases would be simply a slow migration.
:)
Take small steps at a time, kinda like ripping off a bandade, it's pretty bad when you do it and before you do it, because you know it's gonna hurt... but after it's gone everything is much better
The incentive should be in educating your students the correct way. Teaching kids using industry standards rather than proprietary Microsoft crap is of much better educational value in the long run.
You don't let teachers use their "own" versions of English, you make them teach agreed upon standards (in terms of spelling and grammar); using open source software instead of proprietary software is comparable.
Teaching children GNU/Linux and other free software exclusively will merely limit their employment opportunities.
Teaching it alongside Microsoft software would be great. However, it is unlikely that schools that do such would continue to receive discount prices on Microsoft products.
Why not? Shouldn't students be able to make their own choice after being presented with all of the options?
If it's reached the point where you are scared of upsetting your sole source for software you depend upon, that's a clear sign you need to GET OUT NOW!
- Always spend at least 5% more than your budget (so you'll get more next budget cycle).
- Never underspend your budget (or they'll trim your budget in the next budget cycle!)
- The department director with the biggest budget wins.
Nuff said.007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
DEET (Department of Education, not sure what the letters all stand for) don't supply our school with any graphic design programs.
:) For awhile the photoshop shortcut was deleted (Someone checking out the license? ;) ) but it was put back after awhile.
Our school have "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2" on all the computers but they are using the "Highschool Test" license which only allows them up to 5-10 or so computers. But....we also have "The Gimp" and "The Gimp 2" on every computer
Sadly, our school haven't switched to Firefox and every computer in the school still uses IE (Expect the teachers laptops, some of which use FF on Windows or Mozilla on Mac, n'sure why they don't use the Mac Firefox *shrug*)
Have you metaroderated recently?
The education system in Australia is a HUGE consumer of Microsoft's products i.e. they are a VERY big Microsoft customer. What moron would think in this day and age of increased compliance surveillance that Microsoft is going to get "upset" with and, by implication, retaliate against such a big customer ? It's a big, bad, competitive world out there and squealing "conspiracy" like 7 year-old schoolgirls every time the OSS movement feels they're being slighted doesn't look good. Nobody likes a whiner.
Perhaps a dual-boot scenario in a few labs until the brass/big-wigs become comfortable with the idea of a complete migration?
Sadly, kids need skills with Windows, specifically its office applicatons for jobs and the real world(tm) in general. I can't get hired by some places because I've refused to learn how to learn some MS products.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Sounds just like our stance towards the US when they moved into Iraq. "Oh, we don't want to annoy America, so we'll piss off the general Australian population instead."
One school I worked at in NSW had a network of Windows 98 boxes drowning in malware, to the extent that they were almost totally unusable -- it took literally five minutes after logging in before any program could be launched; crashes were hideously regular; Internet Explorer had shady toolbars, popups in Google and refused to open a link in a new window. Disturbed that students actually had to try and work on these computers, I told the network administrator that he should install some antispyware software and Mozilla Firefox.
As if the sorry state of the network wasn't disgusting enough, the administrator replied that he'd received a Department of Education directive which said he couldn't install any programs for which there was a Microsoft equivalent. That meant no Firefox.
So, in my experience, the impression that the article gives of our school system not forcing Microsoft to actually compete for its business is pretty much spot-on.
A federal bureaucracy is, by defintion, among the slowest and most hide-bound of organizations. Remember, all bureaucracies run not on incentives (i.e., making a profit) but on constraints (i.e., following rules). These constraints lead to organizations that are manifestly inefficient compared with their private-sector counterparts. Absent signs from the marketplace that its methods aren't working, a government agency might persist in pursuing an unsuccessful strategy for years. As James Q. Wilson notes in his book Bureaucracy, "the Ford Motor Company should not have made the Edsel, but if the government had owned Ford it would still be making Edsels." Remember, America's federal government pursued a welfare program aimed at ending poverty a full decade after it was obvious that it was having exactly the opposite of the desired effect.
In America, this problem is somewhat ameliorated by the doctrine of Federalism, which incorporates the idea of subsidiarity, i.e. that government functions should devolve to the smallest unit of government which can carry them out. The federal government should not undertake something which can be handled by a state government. A state government should not undertake a function which can be handled by a county government, etc., all the way down to, in this case, a local school board. (Let us admit here that America's system of federalism has been steadily erroded for the last 70 years or so).
By centralizing their software buying decisions in their federal educational bureaucracy, Australia's education establishment persists in error when a smaller, more nimble organization would moved on to a more optimal solution, i.e. using software which isn't an expensive, kludgy, virus-and-security hole riddled piece of crap.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This is a relatively easy switch, and it's amazing most don't make it. First, start by switching to Firefox and OpenOffice. You already start saving money on MS Office licenses. Once people get used to using these apps on Windows, you switch out the OS underneath, and the learning curve is extremely limited. These are high school kids and younger, they aren't regularly demanding Visual C++ and MS Project software, they need to write papers and do web research. Doing that on Linux is a breeze, and people need to stop treating it like EVERY aspect is hard. It's not. If you wanna be a developer, sure, there are more hoops to jump through, but I don't see this being a big issue with grade schools, and by the time it is Linux will be even more polished than it is now.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
"Lashed out"? Someone has to be listening first!
I've had extensive experience with use of FOSS in Victorian Schools, or rather, the lack of.
The crux of the matter is, most educational software ('games', if you will), comes for Windows. True, there are alternatives for Linux, but the teachers hear on the grapevine from one another about the popular packages (i.e. Windows-based).
On the server end, many Victorian schools use WinNT/2k/2003, as the licensing arrangements with Microsoft give them basically free OS licenses. All they pay for is the media. There's an instant reason for them not to change - they won't be saving much, as you can find a MCSE going for much less than a unix sysadmin.
On the other side, a few schools are moving towards Linux on the server end - the school that I previously worked at had a number of Linux servers for fileserving, web, proxy etc. OSS can be utilised heavily on the server side, and is being pushed from the top (Dept. of Education) - a prebuilt proxy/wireless authentication box, "Edupass", is being sent to all schools, complete with documentation.
There are inroads being made with OSS to Victorian Schools, but on the client side, nothing will happen until schools are willing to undertake PD with staff on how to use Linux, and there is sufficient educational software available.
Scared of doing anything that will upset Microsoft....
I gotta wonder if its the illegal criminal activity of MicroSoft that they are skerd of...
Maybe the people of the country need to let them know there are bigger things of being skerd of..
The Victorian (Its 2nd biggest state) gov't decided they were going to roll out fiber to all the schools. They gave the nearly monopoly telco $90 million to do it. The result is now the very few regional ISPs that used the schools to help make sure their business plan was solid just lost that to the monopoly telco.
The Fiber they are rolling out is good for 4 megabits a second. Wow!
And for the people winging about the low density... get your facts right 1st. Victoria has about the same population and size as Missouri. Melbourne now has more people than Chicago.
Apparently you haven't been in education for a while. I'll just remind you that:
A) Having Linux requires maintenance consts.
B) Having Linux still may upset those in power or those that do not like "new things".
C) Having Linux on one partition still poses a threat to the entire system (computer, network, whatever). You must assume that the person that must maintain these systems must learn from scratch.
I'm a student now, and our school is just short of OWNED by MS. We are not even allowed to have Firefox installed. I've portested a bit, but was only able to get Putty into lab images (we're talking ~125 computers). I'm pushing for Firefox, 7-zip and Filezilla. We'll see...
To talk about "something open source" versus Linux outright seems a bit silly. You gotta start small. Those in power rarely like change.
The personal computer revolution was supposed to free us from the domination of the evil empire of the day (in those days, IBM) by creating the ability for everyone to have a personal computer and not just a dumb terminal connected to some massive mainframe somewhere. Just look at what we have got int to....a world where your PC is connected to MS and hollywood, might as well have it connected to an ancient IBM mainframe, that is where open source can change things by freeing the PC again from some arbitrairy chains of economic slavery. How many times in history have people been afraid of the big corporaqtion...I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's when companies were afraid of selling AMD chips because Intel would cut off their chip supply and when it was illegal to sell a PC without windows on it. Good things time has changed and you can use open source software and buy AMD systems.
1. Become manager of IT at a high school 2. Switch all computers over to Linux late one night but don't tell the budget committee that it cost significantly less 3. Sell the spare copies of MS keys lying around 4. Profit!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Unless you learn to play the game, you will never succeed in government.
When it comes to schools, two things matter, saving the children, and the teacher's lobby. The debate needs to be framed in the way that the opposition has been framing it since they first entered the sector. You need to put FOSS savings in terms that teachers understand, and in terms that parents and others with vested interests in schools understand. Therefore, the next fiscal crises (there is one everytime new taxes are considered, the beginning of every school year, sweeps weeks at the news networks, everytime school employee contracts come up for renewal, etc) put FOSS in terms that the target audience understands. When teachers' jobs are threatened as justification for a tax increase, translate the fiscal savings from FOSS into the number of teaching positions saved. Translate FOSS into an alternative to a proposed unpopular tax or tax increase to save teaching positions. Translate FOSS savings into lower class sizes when the inevitable scandal breaks out on increasing class sizes. Translate FOSS into saving the children.
When the teachers' lobbies are faced with firm resistance on tax increases to subsidize their jobs, and are presented with an alternative method to save millions of dollars which can then be used to save the jobs, and that is the only alternative they can grasp at to save those jobs, watch how fast they'll change their tune.
Forget a tour on trying to explain FOSS savings or savings from lock-in. Just be ready and take action when the threat of teaching positions being eliminated rears its head, and then go on a country wide tour with every television news station, every radio station, every network station on how FOSS savings can save those precious teaching jobs. And be prepared to back it up with simple, concrete examples of other nations that have taken the FOSS plunge and have actual savings to speak of. Brazil, Argentina, Extremadura Spain, other countries that speak your country's native language, etc.
When the teachers' job saving opportunity arises, write letters to the editor asking why your local DOE head refuses to use FOSS software to save money that could be used to save those teaching positions. If relevant, ask why the higher ranked person in the central government, ask why their agency get to reap savings on using FOSS for their computers (ie: file servers, web servers), and yet they won't let the schools, the teachers, the children benefit from the same software. Write the letters to the editors of major news organizations in your country. Now with blogs and email there is more direct contact with reporters. Ask them the same questions. Maybe they'll ask your questions of the legislator during their next interview.
"Why not? Shouldn't students be able to make their own choice after being presented with all of the options?"
Unless the subject is intelligent design verses evolution.
Don't sell yourself short Roy.
Aussies play some very good rugby, and I may go out on a limb here, but I think that Nad's No Hair Gel works miracles.
I get a lot more respect around the office with my back all nice and smooth.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
> If these departments suddenly stopped paying for proprietary software and switched to FOSS, the schools know they won't reap any of the purported savings.
What is the value of "savings" on stuff you don't buy?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Preexisting software investment, and perceived software availability for a given platform, seem to be the biggest problems in the schools I've worked with. They all use various windows-only educational software, but the bigger roadblock to FOSS adoption seems to be student management software.
This is the software that lets teachers enter grades and attendence in their classrooms, automatically prints report cards and creates student schedules, and gives parents access to progress reports about their children via the web. The software itself is extremely expensive, but even worse is the cost of getting the technology infrastructure in place for it, training all of the staff and students on the software, keeping the system up and running, and changing school processes to be compatible with the software's idea of school 'workflow'.
A district running this proprietary Windows-only software would need to find somebody that makes a Linux version of student management software, dump the old software (money down the drain), redesign their tech infrastructure to fit the new software's requirements, retrain everybody in the district (notably, most districts seem to have finally on training their staff in tech - this would mean starting from scratch again), AND converting/importing all the old data from the windows software package to the new linux software package.
In a lot of ways, it's really not the cost of the software that seems to keep schools from converting to FOSS... it's the cost of conversion. If FOSS had been in the faces of school administrators back when the tech wave first hit public schools in the US some years ago, it'd stand a much better chance of succeeding in schools. Unfortunately, many schools are now 'locked in' to their current systems for various reasons, and it'd take a lot to convince them to change.
These are my impressions, anyway, based on what I've seen at a number of school districts...
As a school district employee I tell you why. Microsoft cuts us some sweet deals on our software. They make it worth our while to keep using them. Beside how do you think teachers would take it when I said "Sorry, but Accelerated Reader won't work on Linux" or "Whoops, SASI isn't supported without using wine. And you need Libs X, Y and Z to run it. Guess you'll have to do attendance the old fashioned way." Microsoft is best at ease of use and wide application support, I would have ten times the headaches moving to linux as I have running windows. Plus with Websense and a kick ass firewall we rarely fall victim to spyware and virii. So it's a non-issue.
Although we still have pentium ones around and it would be nice to move from windows 95 to Linux. But even though teachers may teach, I found they hate to be taught.
The error with your logic is that it's not just Linux applies in your ABC, but any operating system, including Windows.
As for the economics, conceding that both have maintenance costs, that rules out A. The fact that Microsoft will be releasing a new and different interface in the next version of Windows and Office, rule out B. Finally, Linux on a partition is no more a threat (and I'm sure many would argue it's less a threat) than having Windows on a partition, so that rules out C.
Here is some real economics for your situation. Your computer lab has 125 computers. The next OS upgrade from Microsoft will cost, say $100 to upgrade. That's $12,500. Upgrade to the next version of Office at the same time, to eliminate incompatabilities with the new OS, of course, say another $100 per machine, so another $12,500.
So far we are at $25,000. Now, this is assuming that you pay the same to install Windows as you would Linux, etc. So these costs don't really factor in, nor do maintenance costs, as both systems have these. The $25,000 is just the cost of new software.
Of course, we are assuming that your then three year old computers will have enough power to run all of this new software, chances are it won't or won't for long. So, you buy 125 brand new Dell computers for $500 each, or another $62,500. This time you will need to pay someone to install these and haul away the old, so figure another $100/machine for an additional $12,500. None of this would be required with Linux or one of the other FOSS operating systems and software.
To make a long story short, your computer lab, just to stay compatable with Microsoft will cost $100,000 more than switching to FOSS. Repeat this process every three years to maintain the upgrade cycle and you will see the true cost of your computer lab staying proprietary.
That it's not their money. Those funds come from the taxpayers and therefore the burocrats don't need to "save" it. Their salaries won't go up if they do and they won't get any recognition if they do. The only way you'll be able to bring about a switch would be to do a study showing exactly how much money would be saved and if it's a hefty enough percentage of the government's IT budget, take those numbers directly to the taxpayers.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If a product costs $1,000 the margin is higher
than if it's essentially free.
With more $'s in the total deal's profit,
there's more $'s available to "share"
with decision makers, eg, in State Educ Dep'ts.
But, wait, there's more...
Consider the jobs issue.
More M$ software => more need for administrators
=> more jobs
Political parties like to show reductions
in joblessness when they were in office.
Noting that FOSS provides opportunities for
VOLUNTEER work on projects doesn't sound as
good as the other case's report that M$ pro-
vides opportunities for PAID WORK.
It's not a matter of cost here.
I prefer FOSS, myself, but I see some others'
dilemmas (at least two, above) & understand
the temptations they may be faced with.
What'cha think?
City College of San Francisco converted some years ago to the Banner college MIS system made by SCT (recently bought by SunGard). The system cost over a mill (IRRC); annual license fee in the neighborhood of $150K - which is supposedly for support as well, right?
Well, the school pays a consulting firm ANOTHER $115,000 - just now raised ANOTHER $80,000 to $195,000 - for ACTUAL support. And this just to "finish the upgrade to Banner 6" - and now they're talking Banner 7.
The consulting firm gets to recommend itself every year for a new contract...Nice racket.
If the school had any brains, they would hire somebody (like me) to bring the system in-house over a period of 2-5 years, and subsequently save themselves $250-300K a year (not to mention license fees for Oracle, HP/UX, HP servers, etc.) - not to mention getting a higher quality product.
And now, despite the presence of tons of successful OSS workflow packages, they want to go out and spend another God knows how much (figure I heard was $250K) on a commercial workflow package.
The library spent $100K on a new integrated library system (ILS) on the contractual condition that the vendor integrate it with the Banner system. Banner is complex enough that it is not likely the vendor will do this, resulting in a reneg on the contract, for which they will undoubtedly offer a small rebate as an incentive. Then they'll raise the maintenance fee (around 12% is standard for the ILS industry) to recoup. Standard software business tactics. The library will undoubtedly knuckle under.
All of this is invariably justified under the rubric "support", as in "Who will support the system?" Translation: Our ITS department doesn't know what it's doing, doesn't care to find out, and we are too timid to look at alternative support mechanism such as second-sourcing support or - heaven forbid - actually developing the stuff inhouse and KNOWING how it works so support is also inhouse.
It's bullshit. It's amateur night. I don't care how many corporate types weigh in with "Yeah, but they're right - support is all-important!"
It's not. And as SCT - and Microsoft - has proven, you don't get support from commercial software vendors. You get promises.
I read an article recently about a company that switched to OSS software and was very worried about support - until they found out the stuff "just works" - and they don't need support other than what can be provided by the OSS community which developed the software.
People in government organizations like schools don't care - because it isn't their money and it isn't their jobs because it's very hard to get fired from a City job after you've been around a while. So they always take the easy way out - and when it doesn't work, they either ignore it or they just spread the blame around and let it talk itself out - after first being talked to death BEFORE it was implemented (usually for years.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...using OSS is a sure fire way to have M$ groveling at your feet in no time. The sales reps hate it when you tell them that you don't need M$. I love it when a rep meets me at my desk and sees my workstation, laptop, and dev box all running Linux. It's a great way to start a conversation with a M$ sales rep. Especially when I am involved with the decision making process...
Requirements Specification for Educational Document Retreival System. (Web Browser):
Software must retrieve documents from Internetwork Uniform Resource Locators.
Software much display said documents using standard HyperText Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets.
Software must allow multiple documents to be presented simultainiously within a single instance. (tabbed browsing)
Software must not allow executable modules to contaminate the base operating system. (no ActiveX)
I agree.
I'm no MS troll, but I don't think this is that good of an idea. Most system admins at public schools are used to MS. They would be useless on linux boxes. Same with teachers, same with the school's staff. If we push this too soon, we will give linux a bad name for a very long time.
Remember, only fools rush in.
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
What the hell? I can't decide if you are an extra-subtle troll or just retarded. I'm pretty sure you are retarded.
I mean honestly, a first post with the title "linux suxxors" has about as much chance of not getting modded down as you have of ever posting at +1 with this account.
I discussed this with one Australian Capital Territory Govt high school headmistress.
She indicated the reason they use Microsoft is that is the only environment they get support for from the Education Department. At least she was aware of the issue and they have one alternative - several Macs.
A bigger worry though is the formal Certificate in IT that students study for as part of the basic IT course in year 9 or 10 as it is based on Microsoft products.
I guess we need to encourage adoption of an internationally recognised qualification such as an lpi.org certification
Was it you that decided to blow off a company with only a few thousand workstation seats? or
Tech Public Policy stuff
a prebuilt proxy/wireless authentication box, "Edupass", is being sent to all schools, complete with documentation.
If you truly had extensive experience with Victorian Schools, then you'd know they almost every TSSP in the state hate the EduPaSS server and it's creator.
The school I'm based at is moving towards running Linux web and file servers in the next few days, with a new mail server being brought online at the end of the year.
One of the bigger problems is that CASES21 only runs on Windows, so the Admin networks can't run Linux at all.
There are inroads being made with OSS to Victorian Schools, but on the client side, nothing will happen until schools are willing to undertake PD with staff on how to use Linux, and there is sufficient educational software available.
I doubt this will happen any time in the near future. Teachers are paranoid enough as it is, with the disaster that is the WiNS initiave and the latest notebook image fiasco.. Throwing a new OS into the mix would be a horrible idea..
While running Linux on the curriculum network would make TSSP lives a lot easier, teachers would be the hardest to convert.
To NULL or not to NULL.
Many teachers are technologically backward (by choice or because they don't have the time) and thus some very basic things that the kids can do are very difficult from them to handle. It's one thing saying to give the kid a Linux box and high-speed internet and quite another to tell someone from his parents' or grandparents' generation.
And all those (generally) useless educational games are basically solely for Windows (or Mac).
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Schools that I know, which are Florida schools so bottom of barrel, aren't run by the most tech literate or most intelligent people. They're run by principals who could easily be a life-long middle manager somewhere, never rising above his position. What will he do when he needs tech resources? He'll look to well-known names and people with certifications from well-known names. Yes, they'll hire MCSAs. I'm not saying OSS is difficult. In fact, I find Linux to be simpler. However, mention the words "compile", "code", and "command-line" these MCSAs will freak out. Plus they want the job security of all Microsoft shop. Essentially, you have a tech clueless principal hiring someone who's barely competent with a recognizable certification to do IT. Can he get it to work? Yeah. That's what Microsoft aims for. Even the dumbest of us can build a network with Microsoft products. Is it going to be good? Not really. I remember how easy it was for us to bypass all their "security" features. In fact, my friend email-bombed the principal using the school's own mail server. You think any of these people involved in the decision making is going to risk trying something different? If they go Microsoft and it blows up, they can always blame Microsoft. Anyone will accept blaming Microsoft. If they go with OSS and it blows up, what the hell were they doing with "cheap" software with no corporate backing? In PHPs' minds, a corporate logo is a stamp of approval.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Only if you upgrade all the time. Many, many organizations are still on Office97. A suite getting on almost 10 years old. No real need to switch. And the FOSS world is almost as bad on older hardware/new applications. The most recent KDE/OpenOffice really chokes on an old PII300 laptop just as bad as WinXP and a recent MSOffice. It runs, but very badly.
Maybe if Free Software advocates starting making Free Software arguments instead of "cost saving" arguments we'd actually get somewhere. For an example of how different a Free Software argument is to an Open Source one, read Richard Stallman's "Why schools should use exclusively Free Software" paper. There's some good truths in there that can and should be presented to educators.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We have several computers lying around the house. Anytime I see a PIII or beter, at a garage sale or pawnshop I buy the damn thing. As well, I have several highend machines in the household. With my daughters (9 and 4), they make very little distinction between the underlying OS. My 9 year old in particular loves wikipedia and chatting with her girl pals.... We have: Windows XP : IE, Firefox and Trillian Mac OS X : Safari, Firefox and Fire (multui client chat) Linux : Firefoxand gaim. guess which one shes uses the most? The one with the best looking monitor.. she could care less about the differences between the OS's. I moved the 17 inch LCD she loved around to all flavors of OS and she followed the monitor not the OS. It was a unique experience. She now have a little X-Terminal in her roow (with a modest 15 inch LCD she loves). When I finally asked what OS she liked the best, her answer was somewhat amusing. She cose Mac OS X because the mac mini was cuter than the others. Kids adapt as long as the apps are there, it's us adults that muck things up.
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
I suspect this is fairly common, worldwide
.edu (public, state/tax payer funded) that has a centralized IT organization
i work in an academic department (versus administrative, etc) at a
the centralized IT org is *very* MS-centric, when, in my opinion, they don't need to be
speaking from personal, direct experience, I believe this problem is a generational one. the "upper brass" all around campus is just waiting for retirement and doesn't want to be bothered with something new. i suspect this is fairly common at every university
i am in a different generation (mid-20s). in my formative years (read: getting into computers, making red boxes, etc), FOSS was beginning to organize and take shape and a lot of "us" took interest
i don't intend to be hostile, but, i see *very* few people over 45, at my campus, who have taken a keen interest in FOSS, let alone dropping $$-licensed software for FOSS
vodka, straight up, thank you!
MS probably has a lot of governments on the ropes. Think about it for a minute. MS is a foreign investor in many countries. It is cheaper to pay MS for software than it is to annoy Microsoft and lose millions of foreign investment capital
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
i work at a .edu that is a *huge* buyer of MS (not my choice). .edu-wide, we probably spend about $3 million US on MS licenses/year
speaking authoritatively for my dept (a very, very small one on campus), we have paid at least $30k to MS over the past 3 years
vodka, straight up, thank you!
"...I'm a student now, and our school is just short of OWNED by MS..."
Pretty sad really. As TFA said, "...our elected government are scared of displeasing a vendor!" That statment alone should set off alarms, down under, that a vendor has you by the short hairs! And it's time to educate and diversify; othrwise, stay technically challenged and dependant.
Just another load of religion - suuuurrrreee it's ALL free with open source *trust me*!
I work for a state educational service district, and many of our schools pay for Microsoft School Agreement purely out of fear.
One of our schools was being courted by Microsoft last year, and the district politely gave Microsoft the finger, explaining that between Open Source software, pre-installed Windows OSes and Microsoft Select licensing they were perfectly happy with their current licensing and budget.
Two weeks later the Business Software Alliance came knocking. Three months of legwork and tracking down purchase orders and the district is facing a five-figure fine (and grateful it wasn't six) because of one copy of a piece of software they believe came pre-installed on a beige box workstation but can no longer prove it.
The average district would be looking at seven figures based solely on the decade-old workstations no longer networked, sitting in the corners of their elementary schools and probably stuffed with bargain bin titles from the local superstore.
Though under a dozen of our districts have been audited, not one of our School Agreement schools has been contacted. News like that travels around.
Could it be prevented with Open Source software adoption? Sure. But as other posters point out, public pressure to adopt industry standards and internal pressures to support proprietary curricular software are too strong for district support personnel to take a stand.
Unfortunately, they're also the first ones out the door when the lawyers and that five-figure fine comes.
the xterm in her room ... is it an actual thin client, or just another box running an X server?
vodka, straight up, thank you!
It's more of that the larger bureaucratic unit shoudl not take on projects that WILL be handlesd by a smaller. For instance, every county and township in north america COULD independently build and maintain the continent's road system, including highways... but they wouldn't. This is the gray area of federalism that leads to disagreements-- it's the place where politicians have to make a qualitative descision about what will be a problem before it arises. So don't be too hard on the poor bureaucrats in this case, eh. At least they aren't outlawing observed biological phenomena, like the school boards are trying to do in Kansas.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
If you are on Microsoft support, then you need to upgrade frequently to stay on that support. Even without frequent upgrades, the only thing that changes is the "Repeat this process..." part. Eventually, your Office 97 and Windows 98 (?) will need to be upgraded and then the costs still apply (although, you might need new hardware in your case, so the savings will only be $37,500).
But, if you did switch to linux, there are good alternatives to KDE/OpenOffice that won't choke that PII300 laptop (XFCE/Abiword comes to mind).
You misspelled "skeer'd" on the last two lines.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
And no one tells me what to put on the computers - certainly not the government. I've been gradually moving the whole network over to F/OSS. I do a few PD courses for the teachers every month, and they seem to be taking to it.
Ok. I know this might be something you never actually thought of before. You know, being blinded by the whole "M$ SuX0rs y0!" thing you've got going. It sometimes gets in the way of the obvious.
MOST EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE IS PC BASED. Yes. You can use open office. I think it's a great ap. Firefox for the browser. But occasionally other software is being used, especially in the lower grades. This software is not available for *nix.
If you really want to help the Open Source movement, write some good educational software and release it.
Ok. Go back to hating Microsoft now and do nothing to actually help spread the gospel of open source.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
There is this common assumption that MS charges a lot of money to put their software into schools. This is quite erroneous. Microsoft has a brilliant strategy in that it sells it software to schools for rock bottom prices.
My university, which is a small private institution, has a site-wide agreement that covers every machine on our campus for nearly any software Microsoft makes. I've believe it is something on the order of 20 - 30K USD/year. Considering that it's covering well over 1500 machines they are paying approximately 20 USD for Windows, Office, Visual Studio and the like. So for less than 1/2 of one UNIX guy, don't forget benefits as well as salary, it would take to manage Linux the school gets all this software.
Regarding students, it can get even better. Our computer science department is a member of the MS Academic Alliance which for less then 400 USD/year any CS students can get access to any MS software, with the exception of office, available on MS Developer Network for free. That includes Visual Studio, SQLServer, MS Server 2003, Exchange, etcetera.
Now before the impression is given that we are an all MS campus and that's all we do, let me state that every machine in our computing labs are configured as dual-boot with XP/2000 and Linux(RedHat), most of our main servers are either Sun running Solaris or IBM machines with RedHat Enterprise.
We have our share of windows, but as an educational institution we would be sorely failing our students if we only exposed them to a single platform whether it's Windows or Linux or whatever. Now despite the cries of foul Windows still has about 90% of the desktop market and even as that drops as Linux gets better and/or people start liking Macs more, it's still something that anyone needs to learn, if they plan on working in this market.
schools should be teaching how computers work, not how a particular interface to the computer works.
If students learned how computers work, then it wouldn't matter much what flavor of lickable buttons the interface has.
It's like schools get all hung up on the colors of the cover and the fonts of the book rather than teaching the contents;-(.
OSIA says it has been trying for over two years to make headway with these government agencies but 'they tell me that they are scared of doing anything which will upset Microsoft.
Wow, who's working for who in this relationship again?
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The argument for portable skills is pretty persuasive. People need to know how to use MS-Word, Excel, and Access. So, I was wondering ... couldn't the open source community just clone these applications? I mean, without the aborts, the faults, and the bugs -- I am sure that open source programmers could do this. Whicb brings me to my next question: would we rather have open source software be good (and not have the MS menu structure and bloat) or would we rather have open source win (clone MS-Word, kick some MS azs.)
But what of teachers and students? There's over 15 years of teachers with knowlage of Microsoft products. Most students (ie non-cs majors) are going to end up working in companies that are all Microsoft shops. The cost of getting a whole new teaching staff, having admins upgrade every machine to a different os and the cost of debugging a completely different network environment as well as the loss of students to other universities that will teach students the software employers use is way more than a Microsoft lock in. The free software seems attractive on the surface, but there's a huge hidden cost. Until employers start switching and there are more OSS teachers and admins, the human costs are too great.
There is hope thou, start small. Move a few computers over to OSS. For all the students who just want to check email or browse, set up simple locked down Linux or Freebsd based systems. Start offering classes like "Word Processing Using Open Office", "Computers 102: Advanced Computer Usage With Unix" or "Graphic Design Using The Gimp". Make them optional classes for majors like English, Art or Cultural Anthropology.
When non-geeks actually know something else other than Windows based programs, then real change will happen.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
I know what you're saying, but it's not quite as simple as Linux = free forever and Windows = replace your entire infrstructure every 3 years.
And for the people winging about the low density... get your facts right 1st. Victoria has about the same population and size as Missouri. Melbourne now has more people than Chicago.
Nope, Chicago's bigger. Get your facts right:
Melbourne - city of Melbourne population, 52,117; metropolitan area population 3,488,570 (2001 census)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne
Chicago - city population, 2,869,121; metropolitan area population 9,650,137 (2003 Estimate) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago
...did they let the BSA in in the first place?
For anyone else who's completely clueless, the BSA is a BUSINESS ORGANIZATION. They have no legal standing whatsoever to show up at anyone's door and demand a fucking thing. Quite frankly, until they show up with the sheriff, and a warrant describing exactly what they are looking for signed by a judge (who, BTW, still has to be convinced of the merits of their arguments, and will tend to frown upon fishing expeditions), they should be shown the door and waved goodbye to.
Preferably, one finger at a time...
PLEASE mod this guy a pornstar
Sadly, things are similar in Canada. While education funding agencies (the provincial education ministries in the Canadian system) are motivated by saving money, sadly, schools are often not. And this is despite tight budgets being the norm across the board. A fellow in the energy conservation services business and I (I am in IT consulting) were recently exchanging notes on our recent experiences working with schools. We had both independently come to the conclusion that schools are not motivated by economics, despite, paradoxically, being vocal about inadequate funding. It means very little to a school principal that you have a proposal (for energy savings or IT) that will save a large school board millions of dollars over two or three years, as it means little or no money for his or her school's budget. In Canada, there is currently a prevalence of "school based budgeting" where the bulk of funding received by a school board is distributed to the schools to do with as they see fit. This eliminates almost all opportunity for initiatives that realize efficiencies due to scale, such as significant FOSS deployments.
i just want to play go
> 'they tell me that they are scared of doing
> anything which will upset Microsoft.'
Oh, good grief, hyperbole or just idiocy (or
both)? Yeah, no doubt, Don Gates is going to
send around some street soldiers to show them
the errors of their ways.
It sounds like these government schools are beng a little short-sightned in their reasoning
ok, take a deep breath...my friend, as a teacher I can say you are definitely wrong to say schools are short-sighted just b/c they don't use FOSS and other non-proprietary software.
Technology educators know more than most about their field. They know that Linux, etc. is free. They know that on paper it could save some $$$ in the long run.
However! These teachers have lives. They cannot be expected to take the HOURS of extra time commitment just to save the stingy school district a few thousand dollars 5 years from now. We aren't paid enough as it is, and YOUR kids are suffering on the global job market b/c of it.
You might think, "But non-proprietary software is really easy for me and all of my friends to use, why can't teachers use it, are they idiots or something???"
The fact is, teachers are not paid to save money, or promote open-source software, or be techies...they are paid to prepare students to function in the power system of our country and world.
You will not see SuSE, Linux, FOSS, or anything in schools until:
1. Software designers (you) make open-source software that does not require intimate technical knowledge. It should just work. That's the only things students will be able to learn with.
2. There is a constantly updated manual and user guide that high school students can understand, b/c the teacher cannont walk around the room solving every software conflict, etc.
3. Software developers (you) take the extra time to MAKE these wonderfully easy to use free programs truely better than windows for ALL or MOST users, not just those w/ the time to become proficient with code, and other technical computer knowledge
So, if developers bitch about schools not using open-source, then YOU DEVELOPERS need to make open-source software so damn good they have no option but to use it
Thank you Dave Raggett
I work in a scientific environment. I have some very smart people in my IT department. We have more brainpower than dollars, and the international nature of our business makes it very tedious to try and keep track of license utilization. Our management org chart is CFO-centric, so proprietary software means countless hours wandering through the wasteland of endless approvals. So far, our OSS efforts have been a phenomenal success. Beyond the ability to cut our own self-imposed red tape, our support of open standards plays well with clients. The confidential data remains confidential, and we never have to apologize for the behavior of our computers.
From what I have seen, local school systems don't pay enough to attract reasonable IT talent. The career path is non-existant. Funding for hardware is scarce. Most educational software assumes a Windows environment. Microsoft hands out licenses freely to any school that knows enough to mention the "L" word. Getting rid of proprietary software would require brain power that most school systems do not have. If school systems squeeze every last dollar out of IT support, then they are condemned to that which can be supported by the cheapest IT laborers. These days, that means Windows.
Would school systems benefit by migrating to OSS? In the long run, yes. However, the education industry has a long history of getting locked into technology because of their dependency on handouts. First there was Apple, for a while there was Digital, now it's Microsoft. The kind of people who can drill down into the hidden costs of IT are generally NOT the people you find working in school systems.
One of the few things that would really jump-start the process is BSA audits. Start raiding school systems, and watch how quickly the brown stuff hits the fan. Notice that BSA activities in school systems are few and far between, despite the fact that schools have quite a few computers and they do a lousy job of controlling licenses.
The K-12 market is presently out of reach, but the university market is another story. Companies with OSS success stories will hire more people with an OSS background. At some point, the universities will see the light because the job market will dictate some changes. In my opinion, higher education follows the job market -- not the other way around.
Well, when I started courses at City College of San Francisco, in spring 2002, they had Red Hat 6.2 running on the Linux lab machines. The machines were maybe 500MHz P2's.
They got 25 more Linux machines a year or so ago, so they upgraded to Red Hat 9.0. They also got nice new machines (with DVD drives, no less) for some of the Windows labs and moved the old ones to the bungalow buildings for other labs.
The new machines are used for teaching Windows 2003 Server (this semester - 2000 server last semester) and Windows XP (as well as other server classes like Active Directory, etc.)
So the college basically HAS to upgrade to run current Windows OS courses - just like corporations. In fact, more so, since a corporation can just say "No" and wait a few more years until Windows support is pulled. Look how long it took most corporations to switch to Windows XP - after three years, it was only around 60%+.
But to run the UNIX courses, they could have stayed on Linux 6.2 - except the Linux teachers and lab admins didn't like that since it meant THEY had to stay on Linux 6.2 to assist students with problems. So they upgraded to something more current, probably for teaching convenience reasons.
No, it's not "Linux = free forever", but control of your own upgrade schedule is definitely a corporate concern and should be a limited-budget school's concern. (Personally I think everybody SHOULD upgrade to the latest and greatest - for servers, once adequate testing is done so nothing breaks - but I can understand an organization not wanting to do so.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I have worked for school systems as a techie, and I can tell you that these schools are not contracting with Microsoft for support. At best, they have support for the Dells they're buying, and having that run out is not a huge issue. When the computer breaks, take it out of commission and use it for spare parts. When you run out of spare parts, that's when you finally go buy new machines. The machines that were in the lab go to secondary purposes (i.e. go replace older machines in classrooms).
You write your post as if following that richtech link solves all the issues of using non-proprietary software in education.<br>
<br>
Software developers need to work hard to make their software usable by students, and work even harder to get the information out to educators about the benefits. That's the only way you'll ever see it in schools.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Think realistically. The $500 Dells in a computer lab in a school are going to come with Windows and Office preinstalled. Furthermore, they will probably be cheaper due to educational discounts. Furthermore, a minimum-wage summer techie can install an entire lab like that in a couple of days. This makes a total charge of well under $63,000, and probably less than $51,000.
Also, as a side-note, Office/Windows upgrades will not happen until computer upgrades occur.
Can't Be Worse Then The Roads In Detroit!
Your skill in reading has increased by one point!
I'm a net admin for K-12 schools in the region. The biggest block is resistance to change. If the teachers or secretaries have to change their procedure by one single keypress they go racing to their unions and create hell. It is the school faculty in general (not all of course) that refuse to learn and/or keep an open mind- and it's these people that are teaching our next generation! Most kids can easily handle learning both. I go into a kindergarten classroom (I'm not kidding) and the teacher will tell me to ask such and such kid what the problem is because the teacher lacks computer skills. Sickening...
Its really must simpler. Don't teach students how to use applications at all. Teach them how figure out apps instead. A word processsor is a word processor is a word processor. You shouldn't be teaching MS Office, OpenOffice.Org, Koffice, etc. If students understand what an office suite does, they should be able to sit down with any app and figure it out.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
So that's why OSS copies commercial software?
If you're going to have a Win2003 course, it might make sense to have a few Win2003 boxes around in the lab. Same as if you're going to teach RH 9 vs RH 7 or 8. I fail to see how either of these situations promotes a 'required update' or a loss of control of your update schedule.
Try comparing like figures. The 9.6 mil figure you quote is effectively the high density area around Lake Michigan. If someone in Chicago isn't going to drive to the area to visit friends, its not in the metro area. You don't get lots of people from Gary Indian visiting Milwaukee for the afternoon. If you include all Melbourne's suburbs where people routinely drive to the downtown area, as well as places like Naperville for Chicago you will find they are very close no matter how you want to draw the boundary line of the "metro area" unless you want to pick something like the US regional economic zones which is where the 9 mil figure came from its also called the "Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area". Thats the same as saying the population of Melbourne covers Sydney as well since its about the same geographical area.
Does anyone ever read some of these posts and think that these people who just "don't get it" are planted by Microsoft? Maybe I'm paranoid, but that doesn't mean it's not happening
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
The objective of education is suppose to get people ready for life. Guess what, the vast majority of kids are going to work in an environment where Windows is used. Linux has it's place and it is not on the desktop, yet.
Of course you have a couple of valid points however, please also consider the following:
More of my customers run Linux on the desktop than all versions of MacOS combined. And I am the only one in my area who supports either.
Most of my customers who run Linux are not technically savvy. But they find that they learn how to use the computer more easily with Linux than with Windows.
You have a point that most businesses are still tied to Windows but that is changing too. If we are to prepare our children for the real world, I can guarantee you that by the time they get out of school that they will find that Linux use will prepare them at least as well as Windows use.
I and I alone must support 14 different buildings with a total of over 5,000 computers. Desktop management is extremely important for me. I currently use Zenworks to manage the desktops. There is nothing in the Linux world that compares with the options available for Windows management.
Right. It is not as if Zenworks is is available for Linux or anything, right?
I understand what Microsoft is doing. They are not making any money off of our district. What they are doing is molding future consumers. Am I ok with this? Yes I am.
OK. I am confused. Is the purpose of education to prepare students for the real world or to help indoctrinate them into using a certain brand of products? I.e. are schools to be used for extending and protecting Microsoft's monopoly or are they to be used for actually teaching people about computers. Like it or not, Windows is *not* a good OS to learn much of anything on.
Regarding application support.... Here is your one major point. It is not a matter of being ready for the desktop. It is a matter fo the Linux desktop being ready for a vertical market. This is the one thing that keeps many of my customers from using Linux on the desktop, but it is the one thing that is driving others to it.
One has a chicken and egg issue too. If nobody uses Linux in education, nobody releases software for Linux in education. If nobody releases software for Linux in education, then nobody uses Linux in education. This is a real problem. The answer is that you have to start somewhere. Your district is starting with the OpenEnterprise server. Good for you. This is just the first step. Now the next step is to use Zenworks for Linux and have a small lab of Linux desktops. Then move it out to larger labs. Then maybe even into the classroom. Figure that such a migration, if done right, could take 3-5 years or longer.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The DE&T pays for the licience and every DE&T employee is covered by the licience. Schools only have to pay $7 for the CDs and that's it. No other fees are paid.
To NULL or not to NULL.
In most school districts, the money for "technology" comes from a special part of the budget, and from various Federal programs. If the school/district doesn't spend all their "technology money", they will get less of it the following year. They can't spend the money on anything but technology, and any money they would save by using FOSS would NOT be reallocated to buy other things. It would just disappear. it's very similar to the way federal funding for roads works. If you don't spend it, you don't get it next year, and you don't gain anything. You just have less roads. There is *incentive* to spend as much as possible every year, and FOSS fucks that up. Proprietary software, however, is perfect for racking up huge bills. Even better than hardware, because it doesn't take up any physical space.
Welcome to public education funding in the United States.
That's there lose then.
you will see the true cost of your computer lab staying proprietary.
I think you missed one of the main points of the article, being IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! The people who have to implement and/or use the computers are not effected by price! They will be underpaid and over worked (more so during a proposed transition) no matter what.
If you had a divorce settlement in which every penny over $250 a week went to your ex, would you really choose a job simply on the basis of economics?
It seems to me that tax payers are the ones who'd have to push this through, as ultimately their the only ones who'd actually benefit from the savings.
This incident was the fault of the school rep who gave MS the finger. Never, ever, let any of your suppliers know 1) who your other suppliers are, 2) how much you buy from the other suppliers 3) when your purchasing decisions have to be made.
Find new people, experienced people (preferably with business management experience and/or business purchasing experience) to be the point of contact between your schools and Microsoft. Then make sure that that person never releases details of when/where/why you are buying. If a large number of schools buy by a certain deadline, there is no reason for Microsoft to know that the date is a firm deadline. Or that other schools in your control are held to the same deadline. Make sure that person can recite various reasons why all the schools aren't buying at the same time. Always have him/her seem interested in the products previously purchases, in products the MS rep is attempting to upsell you on, and in possible alternate products. Make excuses for late purchases like a new hardware delivery that is behind schedule holding up a purchase rollout for other things. Don't let him/her know who the hardware sellers are, let him hint that he'll find out when the purchase finally goes through. School funding is often part of a political calendar.
The basics are, don't let MS know who your other suppliers are, don't let them know that Linux is used on site. Don't let the MS rep walk through your server room. Don't let them know that you are considering Linux. Buy just enough licenses to stall for the next funding installment. Then migrate to Linux AFTER buying MS licenses. You don't want Microsoft getting wind of what you are doing, you don't want the BSA knocking on your door before your migration is nearly finished. Once you start your migration, then you will start becoming over-licensed. At the point you are sure you have more licenses on hand than you will need going forward, then you won't need to keep confidential what you are doing, though the "don't let your suppliers know about your other suppliers" is always an excellent tip. It keeps them guessing, it keeps them thinking you have alternatives, they know there are alternatives out there that they can't compete against, and they know which ones they can compete against. If they don't know who your suppliers are, they'll always think that you may have one or more suppliers available who they can't compete against. Once you are over-licensed, then you have nothing to fear from the BSA.
Once your migration is finished, then you can chuck all the proprietary licenses out the window, stop buying any proprietary garbage, and then, and only then, can you give Microsoft the finger
You can google for the story on the Oregon or Washington school system who Microsoft sent the BSA to. Read the story about what happened there. Then be prepared to go public with any threats of the BSA. That one short license for the one computer? There's no excuse why your town/city didn't make it a political issue with press coverage. If that had been done, the claim would've disappeared instantly. And if one of your reps to Microsoft slips, then it may be a good idea to let the MS rep know that you are pre
pay millions to a forgien company call microsoft, or employ some local people to develope the same piss easy software they use on windows now? i know which i preffer, after all this is MY fucking tax dollars.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You have a problem with English, right?
Or conceptual processing?
Conflating concepts from several parts of a post indicates a certain degree of, well, stupidity.
My point was to illustrate that schools have to upgrade just as much or more so than corporations do in order to teach current material.
Corporations CAN refuse to do so, but if they DO upgrade every time an OS comes out, they essentially do not control their upgrade schedule. The vendor does.
Anybody well-read in industry news knows that Microsoft offered companies a higher license price because Longhorn was supposed to be out by now. Since it isn't, MS has had to sweeten the pot somewhat. The companies that paid the higher price are pissed because they paid for something they didn't get - a new OS on a regular schedule. Which, besides, favors the vendor more than it does the corporation - unless the corporation NEEDS the new OS to be competitive.
Schools have less flexibility if they want to teach current OS topics (although I will admit that Windows 2003 came out in 2003 but CCSF didn't have a 2003 course until this (or maybe last) semester. Still, that's a pretty quick response for an academic institution.) The point is, the school has no choice - they HAVE to upgrade or be irrelevant to industry - and a community college district can't afford to be irrelevant to local industry.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Regardless of politics, this post is just plain incorrect in a number of areas.
I went to a good deal of trouble to write it that way. The mods got it right when it was modded as funny.
What?! Are you kidding me?
Yep. Though I was hoping that the Microtroll was the one who'd fall for it.
But in reality, unless you are using some weird-ass window manager, all GUIs are pretty much the same.
And that was the substantive point my post was intended to make.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"This incident was the fault of the school rep who gave MS the finger. Never, ever, let any of your suppliers know 1) who your other suppliers are, 2) how much you buy from the other suppliers 3) when your purchasing decisions have to be made.
"
If they were able to understand this concept, they would have gone into business in some other industry besides primary education. Don't blame them for being poor poker players. They couldn't have known what they were getting into.
And, that said, they deserve the consequences of their failure.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What Primary and Secondary schools are you're talking about? Seriously.
I think a good question to start with is what are we trying to accomplish with computers in primary and secondary schools anyway? Some research indicates that avoiding PCs in the classroom and at home improved the literacy and numeracy of the children studied and that "messaging" depletes human cognitive abilities. Certainly, there is value in familiarizing our youth with the tools of the modern workplace, but is that enough to justify the trouble and expense of putting computers in our primary schools?
It appears to me that many children are making it through primary (and even secondary) school without picking up some things that I can't believe we'd let our youth proceed without: make change, read a map, comparison shop (math, logic and units), wipe, research, sit through a movie in a theater without talking, reasoning and rhetoric (form an opinion, present and defend it), produce some art, etc. I think we really should be more worried about nailing these.
Once we get beyond penmanship, I think a text editing program really helps a child learn to put thoughts into writing but that until a certain skill level is achived any benefit is offset by Clippy and other features more appropriate for doing, not learning how. In other words, when it comes to primary and secondary education, pico is better than Word.
At some point, some students are going to need some "Getting the most out of Microsoft Excel" type courses. Personally, I think the place for them is as "adult education" at the local community college or parks and recreation center, as needed. Still, this wouldn't be entriely out of place as an elective in High School or even universities that will teach students the software employers use.
We pay ~AUD$15M/year as a state school system to MS for licensing. Beyond that, the schools pay only for media - although they're free to copy media from other schools. So there's no real incentive for schools to switch away.
If you truly had extensive experience with Victorian Schools, then you'd know they almost every TSSP in the state hate the EduPaSS server and it's creator.
I left the school that I worked at a year or two ago.. before the Edupass boxes came into play. And you're right about CASES21; but at least the curriculum side's free to run any old OS.
While running Linux on the curriculum network would make TSSP lives a lot easier, teachers would be the hardest to convert.
Definitely.. teachers are rather staid when it comes to IT.
I think it might make more sense to phase in F/OSS, rather than making a sudden switch.
Start putting Linux in this lab, or that. Use it a leverage against msft. Start using non-msft apps as often as possible: openoffice, firefox, etc.
Lol. Do you forgot that a lot of people take a good and big piece of this cake? Updates = Upgrades = $ = C O R R U P T S !
Much money is involved is such transations. Why people rarely comments this black side of techs?
"They would be useless on linux boxes. Same with teachers, same with the school's staff."
I work as a school district admin and im currently implementing linux and we have ran it for testing for 2 years on 30 boxes. I can firmly say that most teachers and school staff are useless on any OS, period.
They dont know half of what they must to teach anyone about computers. Its sad really when most teachers dont know the most basic concepts of email or word processing.
The problem lies in that the staff only know by icon placing how to do something. And this is what we teach our kids? Our kids will suck at computers.
.. as educators, to produce generations of mindless consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthoug htful contributors to society.
honestly, if there really is evidence that such strong-arm techniques are being used, then this is a case for corruption, and the administrators making such statements are investigation targets.
go to the police.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Kids who don't plan to go into IT or science/technology careers need to learn how GUI interfaces are used and how office (small o) applications work.
That way, if a kid sits down at on a Linux box, a Mac, a Solaris box running Open Office, a thin client running some office suite nobody around here's ever heard of, or a version of Windows two revs later than the one your people inadequately taught him to work with at the most minimal level, or WordPerfect 15 beta or Textmaker, that kid will be functional and productive instead of wondering why none of the keyboard shortcuts you want to teach her work as expected.
The process of getting a student to the point of saying "this is a computer and I can use it" is called computer EDUCATION. You're offering computer training in a very specific environment with a shrinking market share. Conflate them as you will, they aren't the same thing.
Education prepares students for future challenges. You are publically supporting the training of young people on a Windows XP that'll be legacy in a year or so.
The Windows monopoly is crumbling, whether educators want to admit it or not.
2 years ago, I was writing 100% Windows how-to pieces and reviews for publication. Now, I'm selling 100% Linux and doubt I'll ever sell another Windows piece for the remainder of my writing career, though I have no idea which non-Windows OS I'll be using 5 years from now.
The world is moving on. Where to? I don't know, and I currently do tech journalism for a living. Do you claim to know more than I do about what business will be running in 5 years? Shouldn't education be moving on with the rest of the world? Do you support teaching classes in buggy whip manufacture and how to stuff printed circuit boards by hand as well?
Governments and major corporations are voting with their feet against Microsoft tax. If you want to prepare kids for a world that's disappearing, tell us you're doing it because that's what you're comfortable with, or tell us that's all teachers know, or tell us that MS is subsidizing the school in some way and you fear losing the subsidy, but don't tell us you're doing either the students or future employers any favor.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Is that that POS which got sent to my school a couple weeks ago?
My school (I'm a student in SA) upgraded the internet connection/proxy/etc. over the holidays, and when I came back there was an internet system that couldn't deal with non-alphanumeric passwords, needed times of over 10 minutes for changes to password hashes to propogate, and can't work from my school's domain name.
...but here in England, there's at least one major obstacle preventing schools from going Open Source, which I haven't seen mentioned.
Many schools here run IT course that have been written with MS software specifically in mind. Now, however a bad idea you may think that is, that's the way it is. What they need is either courses that are more generalised, and so can be used with a wide range of software that does the same thing (i.e. general DTP instead of MS Publisher DTP), or at least more choice in the limited courses so that there are some aimed at OSS
... that make me wonder whether anyone on Slashdot has ever actually attended an elementary or seconadary school with a computer before.
The vast majority of classes taught in schools have nothing to do with computer science or the use or administration of the operating systems. Instead, those computers are in those schools to help teachers aid students in the learning process.
Since time is limited and shared with many of these computerized classrooms, teachers don't have weeks to sit down with students and teach them how to use a new desktop interface and non-standard software. They need to get these kids in and out and out while maximizing the time spent, and the best way to do it is by setting them up with an interface that most of them are already familiar with. Frustrating or confusing children does the teacher no good and wastes valuable time in the classroom. Linux simply isn't a pragmatic choice for the classroom at this point in time, regardless of how you want to argue about the money issue.
I'd be pissed off if my kid wasn't learning Windows - its on the desktop of almost every office in the country, including mine.
So - what is wrong with actually learning both Linux and Windows? Some may call it hedging bets - but if you can have kids comfortable with both envirobments, thats gotta be a win.
I've tried switching individual users abruptly to linux and found that it didn't work. They required constant support and when that wasn't always there, they decided to switch back. For kids, the best thing is to get them "try it out" on a PC at home (starting with a dual boot). They usually like tinkering and learning. It's more likely that if the kids themselves want it, they'll somehow make sure it's around in their school networks. Imposing a switch top-down usually requires an enthusiastic instructor. Such people aren't easy to come by unless more /.ers take to teaching (even if it's little time they can spare.)
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
You could hardly call it education if less than 1% of the earth's population is using it. That would be like trying to teach democracy in the U.S.
But it's an important point nonetheless. The problem is worse in University. For example, yes we could have OpenOffice (pending testing), Firefox (not until it can be packaged properly and its updates are updates instead of full remove/installs), but not Linux. I should clarify this, we have dual boot systems both for staff and the labs, but the labs will always have Windows on them for the simple fact that not one of the 450 applications we have installed, for one department alone, work under Linux. In other departments there are some that work under Linux and others that only run under Linux, but they are in the minority. My memory from school is that we had no OS dependent applications, though times have changed and I suspect they are in the same situation that we are.
--
I'm doing my final year in a school in NSW atm. I could never imagine my school switching to linux. The teachers simply have no idea how to deal with Linux. The school recently lost its only "real" computing teacher (He went of for a sea change). This leaves one computing teacher who's chief qualifications seem to be as an English teacher. To put it simply her computing experience is almost 0. She can teach from a text book and mark an exam. Put her on linux system though and she would have no idea.
Aside from the teachers having no practical experience with the system, all text books are written for windows (Perhaps with side sections on Mac's).
I do software design and development via distance ed (For lack of a qualified teacher), we are forced to use TurboPascal and VB6. When I started the course I said I was more familar with Java and C, could I perhaps use them instead? The answer of course was no. The teachers didn't have enought knowledge of Java/C.
To the best of my knowledge, my school uses a FreeBSD gateway and webserver, with windows servers internally. All the systems are based around windows and are all running windows xp, why would they consider a swap to Linux?
http://www.colinux.org/
Installed properly, it can be used inside Windows.
However, the post is close to the money on claiming that this attitude being partially about Australia's founding. However, this is not due to the manner of the founding, but to the time. Australia's founding as a nation is a recent one, as late as 1900 Australia was still multiple colonies of great Britain, after federation, it never really considered itself as a nation apart from Britain until World War II, when it started considering itself somewhat as part of America. Both of those attachments were by and large wise, since Australia never had the economic or military power to survive independently. Legally, Australia was never totally independent from the United kingdom until the Australia act was passed in 1986, removing the control of the British privy council over the Australian Judiciary and the British Parliament's control over the Australian states. Still today, the head of state of Australia resides within the UK and the Australian flag retains the flag of that country in it's canton. In many ways Australian independence is something that has never really occurred and thus dependence on other nations than Britain is seen as no more demeaning than what is the case now.
Although Australia may seem like a modestly formidable world economic political and maybe even military power today, this was never the case until recently since somehow it was able to avoid many of the declines in certain areas that were suffered by other countries since the early 80's. The US has been very powerful for at least a hundred and fifty years but only found out in 1943, Western Europe has been powerful for 1000 but only found out in the fifteenth century with the advent of colonization. Australia is still not as powerful as either of those two and has only been able to have pride, confidence and Independence for twenty yet doesn't know this yet, it makes sense that the Australian government still doesn't have the courage to throw its weight around against a huge corporation with links to the American government. I don't know what other Australians and foreigners that have studied Australian society think of this conclusion, but to me, it explains fairly well the culture of timid subservience that permeates the Australian conscience from John Howard sending troops to Iraq, to the Education system fearing to piss off MS, down to relationships in workplaces, schools and even families.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Does anyone know of a program where the HS students are given some hardware, some real responsiblity like the school web site or sports programming, and are allowed as part of senior computer or media work to choose their own software ? this would be a good way to start (a) getting oss into the school systems and (b) give the kids some good training
So, your school system will pay something like $30 per 'eligible' PC per year even if you bought it clean and installed Debian on it, and MSFT software never touched it. I thought there were laws against charging for services/goods not rendered to another entity.
I realize I'm late to this conversation, and it'll no doubt crop up again shortly on slashdot, but where the heck is VMWARE in all this? Are they not agressively courting schools with huge discounts?
Their basic system is $189. Kinda steep for schools, but would mightily help this 'we can't migrate' syndrome. If VMWARE could offer bulk discounts for, say, $40/seat (for windows) and bundle it with a disk image of Mandrake or Suse or something else, schools could readily adopt this, roll it out, and run big pilot programs.
OK, OK, perhaps it's not VMWare's ultimate goal to help people migrate to OSS, but the opp is there to sell a lot of licenses to large installed bases.
Students/teachers could still run all Windows apps when needed, but try out new stuff too on multiple platforms. It would beat an OSX migration which I know some macfans want to push into schools. Keep existing hardware, keep benefits of existing windows compatibilty, 'upgrade' to expand available application base and eventually migrate to a more virus free environment.
creation science book
I'd like to know which edumacational institutions this was aimed at. Universities I think have pretty good adoption of free software. I'm a senior student at UNSW, and the school of computer science and engineering (cse) is primarily linux.
...thi makes me think perhaps they were talking about schools.... This is likely to start a flame war.... but in that case I'd have to say I don't think linux is ready for schools. Perhaps the kids can deal with it but the educational system can't adopt it overnight...
They have a token few macs for roles where that's needed and run vmware for one of the windows programs they have to use (which isn't free but they probably get free as part of some educational deal). They used to have some machines that dual booted to windows2k but I don't think they even have them anymore.
The school of maths also is all linux afaik. They use maple which isn't free... but on the grand scale I think UNSW does a very good job. I suspect though that other unis are probably doing similar things... soo.....
Could you imagine the panic when 35 year old primary school teachers are told they have to learn linux... I'd suspect many of them haven't come to grips with email. I recently found out a 30 or so year old aunt doesn't have internet. I doubt she's the only one...
I don't think linux can be adopted much quicker... it's not really intuitive enough for people to get running without help.... especially when things go wrong... and most ma and pa pc repair shops wouldn't have a clue on linux yet either.
The wankers controlling education made getting going in my first job infinitely harder. In my opinion they made a piss poor job of educating me, and charged me a fortune for the priviledge.
Using computers in schools is as much about helping with learning, as teaching the use of the computers themselves. Teachers must be able to use them too, in order to help students. The ECDL (European Computer Driving License, also known as the ICDL International Computer Driving License) standard is a common set of learning requirements about the operation of a modern GUI PC, and its applications. While fairly popular and theoretically platform neutral, the ECDL has been complemented with books, courses, and e-learning tools that are all Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft Office based, effectively excuding that FOSS could be learned by those attending ECDL courses. We have developed to fill up this void http://www.openicdl.com/ which is an interactive online e-learning course based on Linux, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. Schools that want to adopt FOSS based curricula are using OpenICDL to first teach their teachers, and successively their students.
doesn't the american education system use macs? so where's the "fear of microsoft"?
in my current school, I don't think that there is one windows box in the whole building (on the other hand, most of the desktops run MacOS9, which is a really bad OS, but they are starting to switch to OSX).
My new blog
I can't imagine too many things that would show signs of an abusive monopoly more than the customers being afraid of the supplier.
But, if that is the case, then you don't need to figure in support costs for Linux or BSD, either. All that is left is the software/hardware acquisitions costs and it has been shown time and time again, that in those areas Linux is a fraction of the cost.
Even in Microsoft's own studies, where they show MIcrosoft to be cheaper, it's only when you figure in the support costs (and they use highly inflated Linux ones, at that).
In a Linux/BSD solutions, the machines that were in the lab wouldn't have to go to secondary purposes, they could still be used.
The problem is that most educators don't know enough about computers to make intelligent decisions. So, they rely on school boards which have even less experience and recommend what the individuals use at work -- Windows. Or worse yet, they contract with a consultant to make the decisions and almost always end up with a company who is in the business of selling Microsoft products. It's kind of hard to give an un-biased recommendation when your livelyhood is dependent on Microsoft alone.
The $500 Dells don't usually come with Office, but come with Works, instead. Furthermore, Dell doesn't discount, or at least not significantly, for education, government, etc. Furthermore, setting up a pre-installed computer is not the same as setting up the entire lab, unless you are just having them surf the internet. I would venture, though, that most schools use some form of ghosting their machines to set them up. If so, then ghosting to Windows vs Linux is the same process. Even if they don't ghost, Booting from an install CD is not significantly more work.
So, since the support or labor cost is equivalent for installing Windows vs Linux and the setup time is equivalent, what's left to make the difference? Acquisition cost. Linux requires less frequent hardware upgrades and software acquisition costs are next to nil.
Your last line of "Office/Windows upgrades will not happen until computer upgrades occur," actually strengthens my argument. To upgrae Office/Windows almost always takes a hardware upgrade. Although, as of yet, I haven't heard anyone explain why Office 97 or IE 5.01 is no longer able to do the job and requires an upgrade in the first place.
I'm pretty sure if funding for schools was given in a lump sum to be allocated on the local level, there would be far fewer computer lab upgrades. As it is now, the budget process has bought into how the computers need to be upgraded every three years. That's fine for businesses, because they have a profit motive and can show a cost-benefit. Schools, unless private, are non-profits and have limited resources. If they spent less on web surfing classes and powerpoint presentations and more on core subjects, then maybe we (U.S) wouldn't be falling behind all the other western countries in math and science.
But hey, Johnny can't read, but he can sure make a nice powerpoint presentation!
I wouldn't wish most Linux distros on the dumbest high school kid, much less the brightest one. Regardless of how ugly or pretty the user interface is, it shouldn't get in the way of the software, and the software shouldn't get in the way of the subject matter that these schools pretend to teach the kids.
Probably the biggest hurdle that Linux has to overcome in the educational world is... lack of educational software.
Who cares if Linux is better/faster/uglier/more-mauve if it turns a computer into a doorstop because you can't do anything with it. Get educational software on Linux (with comparative or better quality than Windows), *then* start evangelicising. Until then, you might as well evengelicise replacing their computers with rocks.
Don't forget the "fudge the area" law.
1. If you can save money on computers, spend them elsewhere. Spend your budget + 5%.
2. Demand you get additional funding for computers, because your other areas need so much and you have been on a shoestring budget when it comes to computers (even if you haven't).
3. Watch either a) Your funds get increased or b) Everyone else's cut back "They can do it, so can you".
4. Push the money around, repeat.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A more challenging roadblock for Linux is the lack of international language support, IMO.
To forsake an inherently educational environment for one with the "right learning packages" is not necessarily a good bargin.
As for kitting children for the future, a single school would gain a niche advantage, and a cluster of schools would change the baseline for employers in the area. Also, measuring future employment opportunities according to current demand is not necessarily reliable. Far better to attempt to educate the kids with more generic skills.
Wikileaks, no DNS
52,117? The buildings in the photo in the Wikipedia article would suggest a higher figure.
I've had extensive experience with use of FOSS in Victorian Schools
/. is interesting, though -- where did you get the time machine?
Cool -- I didn't realize 19th century England had an open-source community.
Posting to
Long ago, Apple had a lock on education, I never once heard a cry from the foss community in the early '90s when everyone in school was using system 7 (which might I add is FAR less stable than Win 2k/xp which is less stable today than *nix/OSX)
Teach kids COMPUTERS! show them windows, show them Mac, show them LINUX...Teach computer basics, not just one platforms way of doing things.
Of all markets for software, educational software is the one where Mac portability is most important.
QT would give 'em Windows, Mac and, oh yeah, Linux from a single set of source code.
Of course the packages that need Mac support probably have their own separate Mac-specific source trees, so there'd be some initial cost for a switch-over to QT. But these businesses have to see the benefit of cross-platform development to their bottom lines.
TrollTech should have a whole marketing group dedicated to the educational software market.
But students are free to take home copies of software to study on. If the goal of schools is to educate students, wouldn't this help?
"Instead, WE need to re-engineer THEIR stuff (and OUR stuff) to Linux! Then stick them in the ass with it!"
You've just bolstered every argument as for why businesses shouldn't have a damn thing to do with OSS.
"EVERY proprietary software house in this country needs to learn that they either go open source - or they get put out of business."
Talk is cheap.
1.) an unintentional offence should be a "fix-it" ticket.
2.) a minor offence (ie: unpaid copy of something that was paid for multiple times) should be like double the cost of the software, with the first half actualy purchasing a legitimate copy.
3.) a major offence (warez-pirated) should be say .. the cost of a DUI fine plus the cost of the software, which will actualy purchase legitimate copies. and multiple incidents should increase just like multiple DUI's
But irregardless of this, the BSA should have to make an appointment for an audit of any facility, stating beforehand what licenses they are looking for. If I was setting up a company today, I would probably go opensource OS and office just to avoid this crap.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I just Googled to see what I could come up with:
i cleID=3028 i cleID=1050 a pril.htm A dvisory/minutes/uWeb_minutes_2002_05.pdf
o ry101270136.asp
t ml
:) It also looks like the SPA might now be the SIIA (Si-I-A?).
http://www.eschoolnews.org/news/showStory.cfm?Art
http://www.eschoolnews.org/news/showStory.cfm?Art
http://www.wmich.edu/facultysenate/FSminutes2002/
http://www.it.utah.edu/leadership/committees/uWeb
Interesting:
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/08/24/st
http://www.aaxnet.com/topics/slicense.html
But:
http://www.wired.com/news/story/0,1240,10654,00.h
Which does not put the problem in a good light.
I also see references to SPA audits, which does not Google well.
I was just at a conference with their tech director. If it's the same district, I heard this story first-hand, but I think it was the SPA and not the BSA. I *think* it was North Thurston Public Schools, but I can't remember. Someone in that ESD.
"One suite of programs for math is required by the state.
Raise your voice. Make a complaint. What software suite is it, exactly? Make a large dent in the company's profits and they'll consider porting their software. Guaranteed."
It is the Schools job to TEACH children not to develop OSS or to push for OSS! Microsoft is actually giving the schools money to use their software. If you want more solutions for schools so they have a choice about what software they use on their desktops I suggest you stop posting on slashdot what other people can do and fire up gcc and emacs and start writing some code
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
For about the same reasons.
Seriously, every day when I read the internet news sites, there's at least two new stories per day about M$ (sic - there is no character on my keyboard of a little "M" with horns!) getting *way* too cuddly with everybody's kids. If your neighbor acted like this, they'd lock him up, wouldn't they?
What are kids doing with computers?
.. Limewire, Firefox, Openoffice and Gaim. Besides that there is no care what OS is used.
At my kids High School they use the computer for math class: http://www.carnegielearning.com/ and that is really about it. They can use the computer for "research" in the library but that usually entails checking email or trying to get to questionable sites or changing the text of other web pages to look like their reports. At home the main computer use is all Internet related including "fun things" like chatting to friends, looking up information for reports and downloading music. The actual applications used have been Word and Power Point for reports. I have at times changed my OS to Linux and there has been no complaints. The main applications of interest used now are cross platform
There is no reason for computers in classrooms unless you are financially tied or have a vested profit interest in the computer industry. Could this be why teachers sometimes reject "training" in computers? They don't really help as much as they have been pushed. They are a status badge to communities that can spend money. Have a computer lab of course. Teach typing, Internet searching, email usage, and online protection. If the office needs to stay with Microsoft for business aspects then go ahead. (Though you don't need to) But the rest of the school? Why? The local IT department at most schools? MS people. They have trained and learned over years and years. What happens if it is all Linux? More training or losing a job to someone else. Of course they are not going to be the most helpful telling why you can download an ISO and install it on every student used computer in the building and they can then access the Internet, write documents, play media(standard media not company specific extensions) learn to program in many languages like PERL, PHP, C, C++, set up web servers, set up mail servers, all for what cost...ummm my knowledge and a blank disk. I
have the blank disk...
Then even with all that, what are kids doing? See above.
Some people seem to think the kids are doing advanced spread sheets and word processing and programming etc. They are not. At least not in High school. This is a major problem for another post.
All this aside, I wouldn't really care except each year a tax bill comes that takes money to support a school that can't figure it out, just send us more money.
No, think again. Those $500 Dells are going to come pre-installed with whatever is the latest Dell offering - do you really need MS Works?
If you have a MS site license, you need to install your apps with specific license keys, both for the OS and the Office suite.
The installs are generally documented, and have a process in place, so the existing install is pointless...
--- "To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!" -- Jesse Jackson
Italicizing quotes = good.
Italicizing whole post = WTF?
Getting that sort of thing right is really helpful when you're trying to make points on a technical forum. Especially when your points aren't very good ones.
Tech Public Policy stuff
How many people in "industry" don't have an education?
Do you want Linux to win? If yes, then you want schools to teach exclusively Linux -- that way, the "industry" will have tons of new people who can either start using Linux for $0 right away, or have a copy of Windows bought for them and be retrained.
Ultimately, this would lead to so many desktop Linux boxes that people would start porting software. Before you know it, Linux is the standard and Microsoft is playing catch-up. I guarentee that Word will be the last program ported -- and no one will notice or care, as they will be quite happy with their OpenOffice by then.
If you don't want Linux to win, then you should make your argument based on the actual pros/cons of Linux/Windows, and not just on whatever the "norm" is.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Leonardo Da Vinci's archives, of course..