We use Moodle in all of our schools (Saanich School District) and teachers sometimes use the gradebook function. British Columbia currently utilizes an enterprise commercial system which has been bought out and being depreciated.
As most of the commercial offerings are,... well commercial, also filled with bloat, are vendor-centric and cannot react to a school or districts ever changing needs and requirements - we have spawned a new student information system called openStudent. It is based on the Education Community Source license and will fulfil the needs and requirements of British Columbia districts and schools (it will include all of the funcationality teaches require such as attendance, assessment tools and so forth).
We are approximately 30% complete at our current velocity and should have the core program completed by January 2013. The softare is being designed as enterprise-based, meaning it would function on a state-wide or province-wide basis - the only software of its type that we are aware of.
Something of interest for the future to other jurisdictions.
Like many IT Projects of this nature, our journey has been one of evolution. We have learned through hard knocks as well as trial and error what works and what doesn't.
To my mind our current iteration is the best of all worlds.
We are purposely NOT using legacy PCs - which we found to be problematic (because they were old to start off and inevitably the hardware failed through no general fault of the equipment - it was just old). Consequently, people were sometimes equating the hardware failures to the Linux systems, which was unfair, but that is the reality. By using good quality "diskless" clients we have achieved a high degree of confidence in the hardware as well as the Linux system - this I believe is of paramount importance.
As well by using good "diskless" clients we are now able to offer accelerated graphics which supports streaming video and the desktop environment Beryl3D. When kids and staff get on the systems now they are not only "satisfied" by how reliable it is, but stunned by the desktop - KDE + Beryl3D. It not only IS state-of-the-art, it looks state-of-the-art and easily rivals Vista and, we believe, greatly improves upon it.
As well by incorporating other features such as:
- Multilingual support when staff and students login (all menus and programs are automatically translated to the language of choice) - Secure, remote access using FreeNX
Students are not only NOT receiving a diminished set of tools but getting something much beyond anything we could have given them using commercial tools - at any price.
Although, I am the IT Manager of this school district, I am truly fortunate to work with a very talented and amazing development staff. Under the leadership our Systems Analyst, John Cuzzola and his very talented team (Freddie being one of them. with Dean Montgomery), we have been able to prove conclusively that not only can you provide high quality educational tools using open source software, but improve on what is available commercially at a fraction of the cost.
Finally School Districts which are hoping to introduce this type of system into their districts require the following:
A Visionary - someone high enough up the administrative chain who can see the efficacy of the system and drive it An Expert - someone who has a high degree of Linux/OS skills who can make it work and support it A Champion - an educator - school-based administrator who will be able to "sell" and provide the school vision
It's definitely not an easy road, particularly in this world of Micro$oft FUD and other fallacies but it definitely can be done.
I might add to this a bit by adding the following:
We currently have over 1200 "diskless" clients in Elementary Schools if you count the ones outside the labs that are in Classrooms and libraries. As well since our initial install at Barriere Secondary we have the following:
Alternate Storefront School - 60 out of 80 clients now on Linux 2nd Rural Secondary School (Logan Lake) - 57 out of 80 workstation on Linux (10 more this summer)
Our goals for the coming year SouthKam Secondary 250 out of 400 workstations running Linux and the rest the following summer Clearwater Secondary 80 out of 85 workstations running Linux over the summer.
As well we are implementing another 300 workstations in Elementary schools over the next school year (summer of 2007- 2008) which will bring the total up to 1950 by the summer of 2008. The following year we hope to bring on another 2-3 Secondary schools and the remainder of the Elementary Schools. A total of 2600 Workstations out of 4500 by the winter of 2008.
The plan is to have over 90% of all workstations running Linux on the desktop by the winter of 2008/2009 and Secondary Schools fully implemented over the next 2-3 years (budget permitting).
I believe it is possible to get over 80% saturation at both Elementary and Secondary within the subsequent 2 years.
Slashdot Mirror
We use Moodle in all of our schools (Saanich School District) and teachers sometimes use the gradebook function. British Columbia currently utilizes an enterprise commercial system which has been bought out and being depreciated. As most of the commercial offerings are, ... well commercial, also filled with bloat, are vendor-centric and cannot react to a school or districts ever changing needs and requirements - we have spawned a new student information system called openStudent. It is based on the Education Community Source license and will fulfil the needs and requirements of British Columbia districts and schools (it will include all of the funcationality teaches require such as attendance, assessment tools and so forth).
We are approximately 30% complete at our current velocity and should have the core program completed by January 2013. The softare is being designed as enterprise-based, meaning it would function on a state-wide or province-wide basis - the only software of its type that we are aware of.
Something of interest for the future to other jurisdictions.
And we hope it continues ... M$ has a bad habit of buying workable solutions and integrating them.
To add to Freddie's comments:
Like many IT Projects of this nature, our journey has been one of evolution. We have learned through hard knocks as well as trial and error what works and what doesn't.
To my mind our current iteration is the best of all worlds.
We are purposely NOT using legacy PCs - which we found to be problematic (because they were old to start off and inevitably the hardware failed through no general fault of the equipment - it was just old). Consequently, people were sometimes equating the hardware failures to the Linux systems, which was unfair, but that is the reality. By using good quality "diskless" clients we have achieved a high degree of confidence in the hardware as well as the Linux system - this I believe is of paramount importance.
As well by using good "diskless" clients we are now able to offer accelerated graphics which supports streaming video and the desktop environment Beryl3D. When kids and staff get on the systems now they are not only "satisfied" by how reliable it is, but stunned by the desktop - KDE + Beryl3D. It not only IS state-of-the-art, it looks state-of-the-art and easily rivals Vista and, we believe, greatly improves upon it.
As well by incorporating other features such as:
- Multilingual support when staff and students login (all menus and programs are automatically translated to the language of choice)
- Secure, remote access using FreeNX
Students are not only NOT receiving a diminished set of tools but getting something much beyond anything we could have given them using commercial tools - at any price.
Although, I am the IT Manager of this school district, I am truly fortunate to work with a very talented and amazing development staff. Under the leadership our Systems Analyst, John Cuzzola and his very talented team (Freddie being one of them. with Dean Montgomery), we have been able to prove conclusively that not only can you provide high quality educational tools using open source software, but improve on what is available commercially at a fraction of the cost.
Finally School Districts which are hoping to introduce this type of system into their districts require the following:
A Visionary - someone high enough up the administrative chain who can see the efficacy of the system and drive it
An Expert - someone who has a high degree of Linux/OS skills who can make it work and support it
A Champion - an educator - school-based administrator who will be able to "sell" and provide the school vision
It's definitely not an easy road, particularly in this world of Micro$oft FUD and other fallacies but it definitely can be done.
I might add to this a bit by adding the following:
We currently have over 1200 "diskless" clients in Elementary Schools if you count the ones outside the labs that are in Classrooms and libraries. As well since our initial install at Barriere Secondary we have the following:
Alternate Storefront School - 60 out of 80 clients now on Linux
2nd Rural Secondary School (Logan Lake) - 57 out of 80 workstation on Linux (10 more this summer)
Our goals for the coming year
SouthKam Secondary 250 out of 400 workstations running Linux and the rest the following summer
Clearwater Secondary 80 out of 85 workstations running Linux over the summer.
As well we are implementing another 300 workstations in Elementary schools over the next school year (summer of 2007- 2008) which will bring the total up to 1950 by the summer of 2008. The following year we hope to bring on another 2-3 Secondary schools and the remainder of the Elementary Schools. A total of 2600 Workstations out of 4500 by the winter of 2008.
The plan is to have over 90% of all workstations running Linux on the desktop by the winter of 2008/2009 and Secondary Schools fully implemented over the next 2-3 years (budget permitting).
I believe it is possible to get over 80% saturation at both Elementary and Secondary within the subsequent 2 years.
Gregg