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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?"
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.
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.
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?
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
I cant believe this guy got modded down. Just because his facts were incovenient. If people want to get Linux used in education they need to work with education software makers (like Accelerated Reader, and Scholastic) to produce Linux versions of those software products. Even Openoffice in some parts(Presentations and the database) doesnt work as well as Microsoft Office. IBM are you listening? Wine is not acceptable alternative, you must have native linux versions of these products.
All of his statements are dead right on. As someone who also works in a school Ill verify what he says.
Except teachers dont hate to be taught...they dont have time to be taught.
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 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.