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23,000 Linux PCs For Filipino Schools
Da Massive writes "Speaking at the linux.conf.au event in Melbourne, Australia, independent open source consultant Ricardo Gonzalez has told of how he has helped bring 23,000 Linux PCs to over 1000 schools in the Philippines: 'Ministers in the Filipino government now understand Linux can do so much for so little outlay.'" The slow process of educating a government that knew only Microsoft is especially well described in this piece.
I am also a Gentoo guy.
It doesnt matter what OS or software they use.
Typing up a document or surfing the net is nearly identical no matter what you choose.
Also hopefully some of these kids will go on to management and instead of being tied to Windows they will lean towards Linux instead.
I really want to shoot the managers who think "Windows works well on my desktop. Lets make all our company servers run it too!"
Thats a effect of Microsoft being in all the schools.
In Australia, Microsoft actually gives away all their software to schools in a effort to make sure everyone is brought up with their software.
Pretty much *any* software you are going to teach in school is going to be obsolete by the time they are "in the workforce", so it would be better to teach concepts as opposed to steps to follow. Teach them how to learn, not how to memorize, and they will get much further.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Most of the public and private schools here only computer textbooks that is only related to MS products. What I find funny is that, they can't afford to buy those Office suites and operating systems in the first place, yet they are teaching them. There is nothing wrong with teaching it but then again it boils down to the fact that they had to pirate these software just to be able to practice what they teach \ learn.
Recently, BSA had been hot on companies and large educational institutions here, I have seen some smaller educational institutions switch most of their OS to Fedora since they could only afford to show a number of licenses. There are also raids conducted on local internet cafes but the rumor is that, they are not BSA but the local NBI units trying to make some money. Because of these factors, most cafes that only offer printing and internet surfing switched to Linux also. The only cafes I know in our area that run windows are those gaming cafes and those located at known malls.
Yes, we had been pretty much dependent on MS as a nation. At least this is a good step in the right direction. Even though DSL is pretty much affordable by middle classes here, the combination of OS and Office seems to be much, many just pirate them leading to numerous unpatched systems that are always online, coupled with users who only know the basics.
On second thought, we should really do something about the whole educational mess we are right now. Not just regarding computers / technology.
Or is resistance futile?
Yeah, all those Mac-only programs like Word and Excel, well there's no way I can use that knowledge on a Windows machine now. And those Mac-only programming languages like BASIC, C, C++ and Pascal. Useless now that I use a Windows machine at work. Even those Mac GUI concepts like copy and paste are un-transferable to Windows.
Stupid Apple. Stupid schools.
All that time spent learning apps and stuff on a Mac was totally wasted.
Even for those that do go on to work with Windows, though, having used more than one UI is a Good Thing for a reason: The more of them you learn, the better able you are to notice and generalize the common concepts, and the less limited you are to only being able to use the individual UI you learned on.
Actually this is a fallacious argument.
I just pointed out yesterday that kids can learn any OS. Keep in mind that I (along with all my peers) grew up in a world without windows and yet still managed to learn. In fact, I didn't even see windows until I was 19 and in college. That's when Win 2.0 came out and I thought it was - erm - mostly harmless.
My seven-year-old and five-year-old sons have no issues moving from my Vista laptop to my wife's Win2K desktop to my openSUSE laptop and desktop and to my mom's openSUSE desktop or to my father-in-law's Macintosh. Unless you're gonna teach kids how to administer Win2K3 workstations, then there's no issue.
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As a Filipino - and by the way, the comments here are very very disturbing - I am happy this is pushing through. If you are living here, Microsoft Windows IS the most dominant OS around here, with a few exceptions of other who used Macs. The only Linux users I knew are those that belong to my local Linux user group and programmers like me. But ever since the crackdown of BSA on schools regarding pirated copies of Windows and others, schools here (or at least in my city) reacted by moving some of their machines to Linux, using OpenOffice.org and using Firefox. Of course Windows machine didn't evaporated overnight but at least we are on the right track.
God gave Linux, the devil gave BSD, and a hacker gave Bill the MS-DOS - anonymous
Just don't look up anything in a reference book in front of your patients (or in the case of a vet, the owner of your patients). My boss is a pilot, and he told me a story about how he took up a friend for a flight once, and when coming in for the landing, he got out his checklist to go through the proper landing procedures. The guy got all freaked out because he thought that he was looking in a manual, and didn't know what he was doing. I'm a software developer, and I spend a lot of my time looking up the right answer in various places, rather than trying to come up with it on my own. It's often faster, easier, and more reliable to look up the answer somewhere else, rather then try to solve a problem yourself.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Hah, put "Landing for Dummies" on the cover of the landing checklist.....
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
In addition to that, it might be more rewarding in the long term to tech the student solution that they can own themselves.
Teaching Microsoft in 3rd world countries, mean creating a new generation of users that will completely dependant on an foreign solution, and that one day, the workforce of the country will spend significant amount of money which will be spent overboard and will go to the pocket of a foreign company.
This guarantee future bleeding of money : you have a nice new emerging IT environment that strives to develop, and most of the earned money will exit the country in term of license.
On the other hand, teaching open source software will help the new generation realise that these solution exist, and that they can take them as their own. Instead of having a Microsoft unleashing BSA-like dogs to crackdown on unlicensed copies, they have access to FSF software whose philosophy is "do whatever pleases you with it *AS LONG AS* you keep guaranteeing the same freedom when you passes it around".
Once this generation grows and enter into the workforce, a lot of busyness opportunities may appear that don't depend on foreign companies. Thanks to OSS, local solution my be developed, with new emerging companies basing their solution on infrastructure they can own themselves. The earnings from such companies will stay inside the country and help stir up the economy.
Free software empowers emerging countries, whereas proprietary software represents one additional way to lock them into a permanent dependence on foreign companies that will bleed out of the country the earning of emerging IT busyness.
That doesn't matter much for rich countries. But learning that you don't necessarily need to depend on some US company is very important in emerging markets.
Also, as you said, given the difference between Office 2007 and, let's say, Office 97, and given that these children will also be at least 10 years away from entering the workforce (and much more for those few who'll manage to go to universities) learning a specific interface implementation is completely pointless. What they need is to learn some basic concept in computing (what is word processing vs. which button should be clicked). And Linux is just as good as anything else for that.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Therein lies the key. You leared how to use an OS and computer, most people learn "if you click this that will happen" and cannot handle having things happen outside their little bubble of knowledge. I personally think that every school should have a decent mix of different types of computers, that way kids will learn the actual core skills to use a computer and not the other way. I'm teaching my two year old right now how to use windows and linux, soon Mac when I get the iMac for my wife. I want her to have a base knowledge about these things.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
The little guys count more than you imagine.
If every insignificant country switched to Linux overnight, Microsoft would be screwed within months.