Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Wednesday 14 January 2009, 11:25 PM
Every child in Portugal and Venezuela will have open source
This couldn't happen in this country - either because (as the government says) it would be wrong to impose a single PC on schools, or else (could it be?) because it's not got the cojones to challenge Microsoft's virtual stranglehold on education software here seriously.
There may also be another reason. I was told at the BETT educational technology show today, that the Portuguese government didn't spend its haul of money from the 3G licence auctions at the end of the 1990s. I'm not sure how feasible this is, but I was told that money had been saved, and is only now being spent, on 500,000 3G-equipped Classmate laptops for primary-school children, and bigger, less-subsidised laptops for older children.
The move has been welcomed, and is being followed by a more ambitious project in Venezuela, which will give
out a million Classmate PCs, all running the local Canaima version of Debian.
PreviousComments on this post
Peter
It is not quite free laptop for every child as most parents who can afford it have to pay 249 Euros some get the subsidised 50 Euro offer, quite a bit of discussion on how 3g equipped the computers are too as not all school are in a 3g data network path.
But overall a positive project, let's hope the learning and teaching improves too
This is truly excellent news. I hope that it sets a precedent, or at least a good example, for other countries, school systems, or anyone else.
If you (or anyone else) is able to follow up on this, I would be very interested in hearing how the 3G connectivity works out. By coincidence, I was just about to write an updated blog post about 3G on Linux.
It's great to see that some countries are pushing ahead with establishing education platforms built atop free and open computing.
It's interesting how many of these moves come from non-English speaking countries - it seems that we in the Eglish-speaking world may be tithed to Microsoft for years to come.
Anyway, some possibly useful material in relation to this topic:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/The-real-roadblocks-to-Linux-in-education/0,130061733,139191668,00.htm
http://www.itnews.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=130697
Thanks for clarifying that, utzy.
I see you've posted on 3G and Ubuntu this morning, Jamie
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10011900o-2000498448b,00.htm
Seems nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.
And welcome aboard, Con. It sounds like things are very similar in Australia.
It sounds like it's a difficult move for a teacher or a school IT head to spontaneously shift to open source - it's not quite like the average office worker going against corporate IT policy, but sometimes not far off!
PS Why didn't any of you tell me I spelt "Venezuela" wrong in the headline? I just had my knuckles rapped by ZDNet editorial... :-)
I think it is obvious that a lot of the reluctance to switch to Open Source systems is the typical "cover your rear end" syndrome. If you switch, and things don't work out for ANY reason, you may be perceived as having made a "bad decision", whereas if you just blindly follow the crowd, continue to use, buy and recommend Microsoft Windows, Office and such systems, and things don't work out, perhaps even for the exact same reasons, you can throw up your hands and say "don't blame me, I bought Microsoft like 90% of the rest of the world".
Never underestimate the importance of being able to avoid blame when making a decision, especially when bureaucrats and government employees are involved.
P.S. I didn't notice the spelling error, or I would have gleefully reported it... especially since I never make such erors myself.
jw 16/1/2009
To quote from Conz' link; "The UK government's ICT agency, British Educational Communications and Technology Association, suggested that schools could slash their total computer costs by up to 50 percent if they "stopped buying, operating and supporting products from the world's largest software company". "
true, perhaps, but one of the major obstacles, in my opinion, is not that schools are tied into Microsoft software, but rather that they tend to be tied into the network package; my school, like many, uses RM to manage much of the system.
Now my knowledge of the ins-&-outs of the RM system is a little hazy, but I understand that to move away from such a system would cost rather a lot of money in the short-term, something which most schools don't have.
heck, my school don't even have enough money to fix half the ageing pcs in the classrooms!
