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A School District's Education in Free Software
david.jonathan.russe writes "The school district in Kamloops, BC, Canada has been working on a linux-based terminal infrastructure for several years. They now have a system in place district wide and they can not keep up with all of the requests for info. They have a great hybrid system, using diskless workstations all booting from local servers. 'The second-generation system cost the Kamloops district about $47,000 to implement, as well as the cost of training and the release time for personal study and taking exams. However, Ferrie has no doubt of the savings overall. License costs are disappearing as the district phases out its Novell NetWare licenses, and the district no longer needs to purchase productivity software. Ferrie also figures that the increased reliability represents a substantial savings, although he admits that it is hard to quantify. However, perhaps the greatest benefit of switching to free software is that the reliability of the new system frees up technical staff to do more than routine support.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
the IT staff having to process all the requests for info from other school districts ;-).
Actually, congrats to them. In areas where you have competent IT staff and are willing to do the work yourself, Linux offers great cost savings *and* the ability to have a system tailored exactly to your needs. Other places, it just offers the latter.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
All the problems that companies have with OSS, like having to train their supporters and techs, or a fear of loss of productivity due to unknown software, don't apply for schools. They usually have a fair lot of clued students at their hands who would gladly offer support in exchange for additional credit or at least other services the school can provide (like net access and so on), and the loss of productivity is, if it applies at all, on the head of the student, not the school.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had to laugh... when I clicked to the article, the embedded ad was this ad that people were switching from linux to windows servers....
_ 336x280_DEF.gif
http://spe.atdmt.com/b/NMMRTUMISITP/mrs06245_swit
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
I was pleased to read about how they handled staffing issues, with help and support for the people to retrain and time off to train in their own time and to get good qualifications. That's just good management. Bringing people to open source software will probably need initiatives like this to reassure people that the skills that they have won't now be wasted...
Good effort by them.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
In the US, or at least the school district I teach in there is tremendous resistance to anything that isn't blessed by the Gods of Redmond. I teach with Ubuntu in the classroom and I am forever getting snide remarks about it. They've even asked me not to put the machines on the network for what they claim are security reasons as if they actually don't want any secure machines on the lan or something. I put the machines behind a router and have safely hidden my enclave of FLOSS goodness. The problem I have with homogeneous networks is that the kids I'm teaching now will probably never see one in real life because in real life there is a mix of *nix and Windows out there and they need those integration skills badly. If anyone knows a way to convince lifetime IT employees at a school district of anything please let me know because these guys and gals are stuck in 1997 and they aren't willing to let it go.
load "$",8,1
We used wordperfect in school, now that i have left school i find that noone uses wordperfect in the workplace.
Those who learn word in school today will probably be using something totally different by the time they enter the workplace anyway.
Atleast for them, whatever they end up using will almost certainly be an improvement, to someone taught on wordperfect word is a huge step down.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Microsoft and Apple, among others, are willing to give stuff to schools. With Linux, the software may be free, but you probably have to buy your own hardware.
It's true, it may be cheaper in the long run, if you're not a highly technical school -- meaning, you don't have to upgrade your hardware very often. But even then, many schools prefer to take the first hit free, and then be stuck with the recurring licencing fees.
Personally, though, schools are the first places I'd want to start on free software, as unlikely as it is. That way, when they graduate, they'll be ready to move their workplace over -- or at least be easily trainable for anything -- and if they go on to be programmers, they'll be more likely to fix the free tools than to buy the commercial ones.
Contrast that to the way it is now, where you only use the proprietary stuff because it's free in school and easy to pirate at home, so when you get to work, you insist that the company buy you the same tools, and the company figures it's cheaper than retraining you.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I live in a mainly rural school district 64 in the same province, and we're starting to undergo a similar process. The local principal is interested, and I've given him a copy of Edubuntu to evaluate the upcoming changes--though I'm not so sure the district is going that direction, I think they're emulating Kamloops (thin client etc.). The comment in the article about the staff having more time for things like a help desk and hardware support is understated, it's absolutely huge in making a difference for teachers, especially at isolated schools. It's important to me, because I want to start a computer club at my kids' (40 student rural) elementary, and I've been giving away old boxes with puppy linux on them for a while now, with some success.
Nice thing about successful changeovers like this is that they're infectious.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I have a similar story.
My name is Josh Beck, and I'm the IT coordinator at a magnet middle school within the Northeast Independent School District.(San Antonio, TX) Last year I piloted about 9 classroom Ubuntu computers in my lab. As the year went on, I modified the default setup so that I have an image that is secure and hopefully %100 percent functional. I've spent the last week exporting this image to 5 computer labs, approximately 150 computers. When the teachers and kids come back next year , they'll have the option to boot Windows or Linux. (The Linux side is sporting the fancy Beryl desktop. It won a lot of the kids over last year, and I'm thinking it will do the same next year.)
If you are in Education, and you want to migrate your school's computers so that open-source is at least an option, be warned. There really can be a whole lot of resistance. I have to agree with what I read here in that respect. I really did put my job on the line when I wiped out my first 9 licensed computers to replace them with open-source alternatives. The district-level IT coordinators put up a bit of a fight.
Although I'm in agreement that Novel can easily be phased out, I do use the Linux client. It isn't easy to bring online, and if your primary net device is listed as anything other that 'ETH0' you have to reprogram and recompile the thing, but Novel access through Linux works. Here's a more detailed look if you are interested:
Novel on Linux How To
At this point in time my feeling is that it's probably more realistic to offer teachers and students a choice, and then educate them about what's involved with that choice. If they want to use Windows, and your school district has a healthy tax-base, by all means purchase the license and allow them to do so. I can tell you this. When I offered the choice last year, the Linux seats were hot real estate. The kids love it.
Here's a video with one of my students:
Eject!
Josh Beck
IT Coordinator
Interactive Media Applications at Krueger Middle School
Northeast ISD
San Antonio, Texas
Yes, congratulations. However, they are building on years of effort by the Kindergarten to 12th grade Linux project, and other such projects. The K12Linux Project was originally started for the Multnomah County Education Service District, using hardware donated by Intel. (Intel does some of its processor design in a big facility which is also in Portland, Oregon, USA.)
Perhaps 8 years ago, one of the founders of the K12Linux project told me that the total cost of maintenance of Linux was less than half that of Windows. (He gave a figure much less than half, but I don't remember the actual figure.)
My experience with Windows is that it is sloppily coded, and lots of things cause Windows to need maintenance. For example, the CPU hogging bug in Firefox, which seems to be worse in Firefox version 2.0.0.4, sometimes causes Windows XP Professional SP2 to become unstable and require re-starting the computer. When Firefox hogs the CPU under Linux, it is only necessary to kill Firefox. Linux remains stable.
If Microsoft paid schools $100 per copy to take Windows, the cost of Windows would still be far higher than K12Linux.
The K12Linux Project home page gives links to other Linux-in-schools projects, also.
A side benefit of Linux is that it is much more secure, partly because of its design, and partly because students are less likely to know how to tinker with it, I was told.
It is far easier to maintain a terminal server with numerous simple terminals, than separate stand-alone computers, too, and Linux is fast enough to be used that way.
I feel a little uncomfortable with what I said above, because I am vastly understating the savings of using Linux rather than Windows. Microsoft can't even make "Microsoft Genuine Advantage" work correctly; that is a GENUINE disadvantage of Windows. (I am using the word "genuine" in its honest sense, not in its abusive public relations spin sense.)
Another problem with a Windows system is hiring people who are willing to work with products from a company such as Microsoft that is so abusive. It's tiring to work with abusiveness.
Again, I still feel uncomfortable because I am understating the case. My company has had considerable trouble with error messages from Windows Update, for example. We've had about 8 different kinds of problems, some of which have required hours to solve. Judging from the many, many complaints on the newsgroup, there seem to be many other kinds of Windows Update problems we haven't had.
People who work in IT sometimes like Microsoft because the sloppy Microsoft products give them more work.
Here was the most tragic line in the piece for me
secondary schools in British Columbia are supposed to teach skills rather than specific software, in practice, many teachers had developed courses that specified particular pieces of software. "You get a teacher who's been around 20-30 years, and they're not that keen on developing their course again," Ferrie says in wry hindsight. Also, many schools had already paid for textbooks that referred to specific proprietary software.
The teacher is absolutely right in this assertion: students should be learning about concepts and ideas - not only about examples and instances. It's fine if an algebra student can derive the quadratic formula from rote memorization; but it is far more important that she develops the skills to think critically on how to attack this problem on her own.
In the best computer science programs and programming books; you walk away with a deeper understanding of the science behind the code. Learning should be focused on cultivating concepts and ideas that can be applied to a broad range of implementations; not churning out specifically Java or C# developers. Similarly, children should learn about core computer concepts and ideas - not on how to create flashing text in Microsoft Word.
I am a level one tech support volunteer who has gotten some assistance building a 33-seat thin client network in a public school in San Francisco. We could use the help of a one or two higher-level network admins on a few issues. We have been up and running nicely for two years. We could just use some help occasionally. It's a public school, so there is almost no budget. We are doing almost all of this on legacy hardware. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would like to help with a few issues, please email me at einfeldt at digitaltippingpoint dot com. Thanks either way! Christian Einfeldt
So instead of teaching applications, teach concepts. There is no profound difference in using Windows and associated apps and using Linux and the alternatives until you start doing the admin stuff. Outside any computer tech classes, that isn't even a consideration. These are school kids not IT admins. You still click on a menu or an icon to open a program, you still need to use a menu or a button to save a document. And last time I checked, Open Office didn't require you to convert everything to hex and back to decimal to do any calculations, Same old formulas in cells stuff as Excel.
I agree, a monoculture is bad.. So how are you proposing that it changes? Teaching kids that the only way to use a computer is with Microsoft products just maintains the current state. Teaching them to use different systems can only be an advantage. If nothing else, it will give the kids a chance to see a different system in use. At worst, it will require them to do a little more study to get up to speed with Office.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
My first reaction was that it may be TraitorousWhore-StickItUptheCommunityAss-Linux since it appears on the a Microvell blog, but I found an article on the school website that may suggest otherwise:
(from Linux in Education Project link, on right column)
"Here is a list of some of the free software technologies that we use: Debian, Free BSD, RedHat, MySQL, PHP, OpenOffice, Linux Terminal Server Project, Diskless Clients, Dansguardian, Squid, Cyrus, Squirrelmail, Scribus, Qcad, Cycus, and more..."
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Are we sending our kids to secretarial school, or are we teaching them to think? I used AppleWorks to type papers in high school, and wrote them out in cursive before that. Who the heck writes in cursive anymore (except grandparents and elementary schoolkids)? But amazingly enough, I have *somehow* managed to get jobs and be a productive member of society.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Deployment was also relatively simple. I created accounts for all of our students and teachers. I used samba to connect to the existing student/teacher data on our old Windows 2000 Small Business Server and copied the data to one of the new servers. One server was going to be used as the Application Server and the other as the File Server. Secondly, I went around to all of the PCs, yanked the hard disks and set them to PXE Boot. The teachers came back early for an inservice and to see the new system. During the presentation, the older PC I was using died. I got a few snickers and snide comments. They were mesmerized when I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed its new-in-box replacement, turned it on and the presentation resumed. Here the teachers thought they'd get a coffee break while I would have to image a new machine. Instead I just cut the tape off of a new Dell box and was up and running in under 5 minutes. The returning students were greeted to a flashy, student-designed GNOME login screen and an equally slick desktop. Mostly, I got comments like, "You mean I don't have to reboot!?" and "Every time I print, it actually prints."
Now, I can devote more time to some of my passions. I took the old Win SBS box and turned it into a FreeBSD machine that I use for teaching system administration to interested students who then become assistants. These student will come out with a far stronger knowledge of TCP/IP networks than any MCSE. In fact, if some should decide to go on to careers, they will be further ahead of the curve and, most likely, will be able to run rings around many of the MCSE teachers.