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School Software Licenses Under Review
Tony writes "ZDNet asks the question: 'Does Microsoft Campus give good value for money?' Its good to see a review of the dominant software, but the review is likely to lead to no or little changes, so the real question would be 'Is the review worth the money being spent on it?'."
...I can answer that question.
No.
Most of the Local Educational Authorities are in bed with Microsoft. Schools are free to do their own thing if they require, but doing so means you lose out on perks from the LEA such as other free software and support.
It is much easier for them if all the schools are running the same kit and software because it means they can all support things much easier (think IT helpdesks who are knowledgable in JUST the disciplines they need) and it helps them secure bulk deals. And even then, the savings aren't that great.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
Becta are favourable to Open Source and open standards too. See their Technical Specifications document which, for example, requires text documents to be held as .txt, .rtf or .odt but NOT .doc.
See also Open Source Software in Schools: A case study report, Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs, Open Source Software in Schools: Information sheet.
Andrew Yeomans
(or LA, as LEAs have been rebranded)
It's true that maintained (ie non-private) schools do have huge autonomy in how they spend their budget and manage their IT, as long as they support the National Curriculum effectively.
However, most Primary schools are not large enough to employ anyone with any decent knowledge of IT, and overwhelmingly they surrender part of their budget to the Schools IT Service run by their Local Authority in order to sort these things out. More importantly, they don't have the time or expertise to even look into these things! Even Secondary (High) schools depend on the local IT Support service to some degree - for hardware and network support, if nothing else.
So, it's down to the LA - the Local Authority, your friendly county/district/borough/city council or Unitary Authority - to drive innovation and intelligent software choice in schools. And what do they do?
Well, yes, they're predominantly in bed with big corporations who have established enterprise sales, support and service structures in place to get the big council contracts. Now, generally the Schools IT Support teams are somewhat independent from the Corporate IT bods, but seldom are they entirely separate and there is usually a noticeable cross-over. My personal dilemma is that, while I support schools, I myself am supported by the Corporate IT team, and depend on them for my office workstation. The result? Thanks to Council IT Policy, I am forced to use MS for OS, Office and every other flavour of software and as a result, am only able to significantly support schools in the same software .
Oh, believe me, I would dearly love to get them using OpenOffice.org (which, irritatingly, Capita Education Services - the biggest UK supplier of Schools Management Information Software - do not support), Linux, Firefox, whatever, but because I'm part of this big horrible organisation, my hands are tied and so are the schools'.
The latest initiative from the government is to open up competition between various Council IT services so schools can go over the border and get their IT support & training from Bogcaster Council instead of Tadminster, but in effect this has virtually no impact since - as I mentioned before - most schools don't have the time or inclination to go hunting around. If it's not dropped in their laps, most schools won't actively seek change as it makes life busier and harder in the short-term.
In short: No, this report will not make any difference at all.
Meta will eat itself
It's not there to educate people, it's there as an assistant to educators (word processing, slideshows, etc.)
Surprisingly enough, most people are aware that Microsoft Office can't educate kids on it's own, just like guns can't kill people unless someone pulls the trigger.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The agreement is priced per employee, and covers all the computers owned. The fee has to be paid every year. You can exempt employees that don't use computers such as custodial staff. The fee for us is about $50/employee/year to get Windows, office, and all the client access licenses. For this price you get to run whatever the latest version of Windows/Office is available. When you quit paying the fee, you need to remove the software. For us the computer to employee ratio makes this much cheaper than buying the standard licences, even at educational prices. With standard licenses we have to pay to upgrade or deal with multiple versions of software across different labs and offices. Our license is funded by student fees and students have a great deal of input on how to spend it. We have several Linux and Solaris labs, but they sit mostly unused while there are lines at the Windows labs. The students prefer Windows, faculty and staff for the most part prefer Windows and Office and steer students there, and the businesses these students are hoping to work at in a few years are going to expect them to be familiar with current versions of Windows/Office and nothing a few computer geeks in the computing support area is going to change that. Not quickly anyway.