Comments on: Open Source Schools – it’s a no brainer… right? http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503 Technology and Education Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:52:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Mary http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-761 Mary Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:06:51 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-761 I agree with all you say Jose. At our place, while we see the benefits of OSS we've got (apparently) a licence for Microsoft for the next couple of years so there's no incentive yet to change. What we do do, however, is provide every child who is in our feeder primaries in y5 and y6 (who visit us on taster days) with a CD containing Open Office.That way, if they don't have MS applications at home they can still come to the party so to speak. We do an ICT course for primary children, INGOTS, and it is all OSS based and as they enter our school in y7 there is a trend now for some of them to continue producing their work in Oo write /Impress/draw etc rather than the MS equivalents. Long may it continue. But converting staff is another issue - they go automatically to Word/Powerpoint even though they have the option on our network to use OpenOffice- some of them (as yet) are not even aware that there is an alternative... I agree with all you say Jose. At our place, while we see the benefits of OSS we’ve got (apparently) a licence for Microsoft for the next couple of years so there’s no incentive yet to change. What we do do, however, is provide every child who is in our feeder primaries in y5 and y6 (who visit us on taster days) with a CD containing Open Office.That way, if they don’t have MS applications at home they can still come to the party so to speak. We do an ICT course for primary children, INGOTS, and it is all OSS based and as they enter our school in y7 there is a trend now for some of them to continue producing their work in Oo write /Impress/draw etc rather than the MS equivalents. Long may it continue. But converting staff is another issue – they go automatically to Word/Powerpoint even though they have the option on our network to use OpenOffice- some of them (as yet) are not even aware that there is an alternative…

]]> By: Mary http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-2804 Mary Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:06:00 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-2804 I agree with all you say Jose. At our place, while we see the benefits of OSS we've got (apparently) a licence for Microsoft for the next couple of years so there's no incentive yet to change. What we do do, however, is provide every child who is in our feeder primaries in y5 and y6 (who visit us on taster days) with a CD containing Open Office.That way, if they don't have MS applications at home they can still come to the party so to speak. We do an ICT course for primary children, INGOTS, and it is all OSS based and as they enter our school in y7 there is a trend now for some of them to continue producing their work in Oo write /Impress/draw etc rather than the MS equivalents. Long may it continue. But converting staff is another issue - they go automatically to Word/Powerpoint even though they have the option on our network to use OpenOffice- some of them (as yet) are not even aware that there is an alternative... I agree with all you say Jose. At our place, while we see the benefits of OSS we’ve got (apparently) a licence for Microsoft for the next couple of years so there’s no incentive yet to change. What we do do, however, is provide every child who is in our feeder primaries in y5 and y6 (who visit us on taster days) with a CD containing Open Office.That way, if they don’t have MS applications at home they can still come to the party so to speak. We do an ICT course for primary children, INGOTS, and it is all OSS based and as they enter our school in y7 there is a trend now for some of them to continue producing their work in Oo write /Impress/draw etc rather than the MS equivalents. Long may it continue. But converting staff is another issue – they go automatically to Word/Powerpoint even though they have the option on our network to use OpenOffice- some of them (as yet) are not even aware that there is an alternative…

]]> By: Miles Berry http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-759 Miles Berry Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:34:57 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-759 It was really good to meet you too José, and your insights were really valuable on the day as well as above; open standards are even more important than open source. Getting the stuff into schools is a tricky one - there was some discussion on the day about <a href="http://portableapps.com/" rel="nofollow">portable apps</a> on USB sticks, and I'm quite an advocate of the web appliance notion - an apache box with lots of cool web based applications that just sits somewhere on the network and does useful things, ie things which might slip in below the radar, or be such cheap/easy/safe additions to exisiting infrastructure that only the most heardened NM or SLT would object. Not quite on a par with linux thin clients everywhere, but a good starting point, perhaps. It was really good to meet you too José, and your insights were really valuable on the day as well as above; open standards are even more important than open source.
Getting the stuff into schools is a tricky one – there was some discussion on the day about portable apps on USB sticks, and I’m quite an advocate of the web appliance notion – an apache box with lots of cool web based applications that just sits somewhere on the network and does useful things, ie things which might slip in below the radar, or be such cheap/easy/safe additions to exisiting infrastructure that only the most heardened NM or SLT would object. Not quite on a par with linux thin clients everywhere, but a good starting point, perhaps.

]]> By: Miles Berry http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-2803 Miles Berry Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:34:00 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-2803 It was really good to meet you too José, and your insights were really valuable on the day as well as above; open standards are even more important than open source. Getting the stuff into schools is a tricky one - there was some discussion on the day about <a href="http://portableapps.com/" rel="nofollow">portable apps</a> on USB sticks, and I'm quite an advocate of the web appliance notion - an apache box with lots of cool web based applications that just sits somewhere on the network and does useful things, ie things which might slip in below the radar, or be such cheap/easy/safe additions to exisiting infrastructure that only the most heardened NM or SLT would object. Not quite on a par with linux thin clients everywhere, but a good starting point, perhaps. It was really good to meet you too José, and your insights were really valuable on the day as well as above; open standards are even more important than open source.
Getting the stuff into schools is a tricky one – there was some discussion on the day about portable apps on USB sticks, and I’m quite an advocate of the web appliance notion – an apache box with lots of cool web based applications that just sits somewhere on the network and does useful things, ie things which might slip in below the radar, or be such cheap/easy/safe additions to exisiting infrastructure that only the most heardened NM or SLT would object. Not quite on a par with linux thin clients everywhere, but a good starting point, perhaps.

]]> By: Sinclair Mackenzie http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-756 Sinclair Mackenzie Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:14:43 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-756 Good post, Jose. I would love for this initiatve to succeed but I have to agree that this nut is close to diamond in the hardness scale. I use OSS at home, where I have a desktop machine running Kubuntu. However, in school we have very little say in the software on our classroom machines. While we are moving away from windows 98 towards laptops running XP, there is little sign that we will be trusted as professionals to install software of our own choosing. I have admin rights for my laptop but I am very much the exception in my school. Admin rights is only part of the problem, of course. We can get round that by running portable open source applications from a memory stick. The next problem is the way that software licences are frequently purchased (at least up here) at an authority level. This means authorities spend an absolute fortune on things like Windows and MS Office when they could be using the OpenOffice.org suite or online solutions such as Zoho or Google Docs. To be honest, I think that they are scared to look at any alternatives because they wouldn't know how to administer it. Buying software also means you are buying some peace of mind in terms of aftercare from the supplier. In many ways, the problem of getting OSS into schools looks similar to the problem of web filtering. We need to get to the people who make and impose the decisions from the top of the education/ICT hierarchy. I do not believe that there is the potential to make significant progress by an evangelical approach amongst teaching staff, although I am open to your convincing me that this would work ;-) Good post, Jose. I would love for this initiatve to succeed but I have to agree that this nut is close to diamond in the hardness scale.

I use OSS at home, where I have a desktop machine running Kubuntu. However, in school we have very little say in the software on our classroom machines. While we are moving away from windows 98 towards laptops running XP, there is little sign that we will be trusted as professionals to install software of our own choosing. I have admin rights for my laptop but I am very much the exception in my school.

Admin rights is only part of the problem, of course. We can get round that by running portable open source applications from a memory stick. The next problem is the way that software licences are frequently purchased (at least up here) at an authority level. This means authorities spend an absolute fortune on things like Windows and MS Office when they could be using the OpenOffice.org suite or online solutions such as Zoho or Google Docs. To be honest, I think that they are scared to look at any alternatives because they wouldn’t know how to administer it. Buying software also means you are buying some peace of mind in terms of aftercare from the supplier.

In many ways, the problem of getting OSS into schools looks similar to the problem of web filtering. We need to get to the people who make and impose the decisions from the top of the education/ICT hierarchy. I do not believe that there is the potential to make significant progress by an evangelical approach amongst teaching staff, although I am open to your convincing me that this would work ;-)

]]> By: Sinclair Mackenzie http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-2802 Sinclair Mackenzie Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:14:00 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-2802 Good post, Jose. I would love for this initiatve to succeed but I have to agree that this nut is close to diamond in the hardness scale. I use OSS at home, where I have a desktop machine running Kubuntu. However, in school we have very little say in the software on our classroom machines. While we are moving away from windows 98 towards laptops running XP, there is little sign that we will be trusted as professionals to install software of our own choosing. I have admin rights for my laptop but I am very much the exception in my school. Admin rights is only part of the problem, of course. We can get round that by running portable open source applications from a memory stick. The next problem is the way that software licences are frequently purchased (at least up here) at an authority level. This means authorities spend an absolute fortune on things like Windows and MS Office when they could be using the OpenOffice.org suite or online solutions such as Zoho or Google Docs. To be honest, I think that they are scared to look at any alternatives because they wouldn't know how to administer it. Buying software also means you are buying some peace of mind in terms of aftercare from the supplier. In many ways, the problem of getting OSS into schools looks similar to the problem of web filtering. We need to get to the people who make and impose the decisions from the top of the education/ICT hierarchy. I do not believe that there is the potential to make significant progress by an evangelical approach amongst teaching staff, although I am open to your convincing me that this would work ;-) Good post, Jose. I would love for this initiatve to succeed but I have to agree that this nut is close to diamond in the hardness scale.

I use OSS at home, where I have a desktop machine running Kubuntu. However, in school we have very little say in the software on our classroom machines. While we are moving away from windows 98 towards laptops running XP, there is little sign that we will be trusted as professionals to install software of our own choosing. I have admin rights for my laptop but I am very much the exception in my school.

Admin rights is only part of the problem, of course. We can get round that by running portable open source applications from a memory stick. The next problem is the way that software licences are frequently purchased (at least up here) at an authority level. This means authorities spend an absolute fortune on things like Windows and MS Office when they could be using the OpenOffice.org suite or online solutions such as Zoho or Google Docs. To be honest, I think that they are scared to look at any alternatives because they wouldn’t know how to administer it. Buying software also means you are buying some peace of mind in terms of aftercare from the supplier.

In many ways, the problem of getting OSS into schools looks similar to the problem of web filtering. We need to get to the people who make and impose the decisions from the top of the education/ICT hierarchy. I do not believe that there is the potential to make significant progress by an evangelical approach amongst teaching staff, although I am open to your convincing me that this would work ;-)

]]> By: Doug Belshaw http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-755 Doug Belshaw Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:46:49 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-755 Who is this 'Doulg Belshaw'? Sounds like an interesting fellow! But seriously, good to meet you again, José - it was a great day with lots of interesting ideas. :-) Who is this ‘Doulg Belshaw’? Sounds like an interesting fellow!

But seriously, good to meet you again, José – it was a great day with lots of interesting ideas. :-)

]]> By: Doug Belshaw http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-2801 Doug Belshaw Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:46:00 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-2801 Who is this 'Doulg Belshaw'? Sounds like an interesting fellow! But seriously, good to meet you again, José - it was a great day with lots of interesting ideas. :-) Who is this ‘Doulg Belshaw’? Sounds like an interesting fellow!

But seriously, good to meet you again, José – it was a great day with lots of interesting ideas. :-)

]]> By: alice http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-754 alice Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:41:25 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-754 I am 100% for OSS and when I'm at home I use Linux and OpenOffice. It's mainly due to my "geek" partner who is an IT consultant and works for the French OpenOffice community designing its mascots http://benbois.posterous.com/openofficeorg-education-mascot I do understand your point that teachers and SMT (who are teachers in the first place) will be hard to convince but I still think that OSS will have many more advantages than using bloody Microsoft! One argument that you haven't mentioned is that you also get less virus problems! But as you say the battle will be hard to win.... I am 100% for OSS and when I’m at home I use Linux and OpenOffice. It’s mainly due to my “geek” partner who is an IT consultant and works for the French OpenOffice community designing its mascots http://benbois.posterous.com/openofficeorg-education-mascot

I do understand your point that teachers and SMT (who are teachers in the first place) will be hard to convince but I still think that OSS will have many more advantages than using bloody Microsoft! One argument that you haven’t mentioned is that you also get less virus problems! But as you say the battle will be hard to win….

]]> By: alice http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503&cpage=1#comment-2800 alice Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:41:00 +0000 http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=503#comment-2800 I am 100% for OSS and when I'm at home I use Linux and OpenOffice. It's mainly due to my "geek" partner who is an IT consultant and works for the French OpenOffice community designing its mascots http://benbois.posterous.com/openofficeorg-education-mascot I do understand your point that teachers and SMT (who are teachers in the first place) will be hard to convince but I still think that OSS will have many more advantages than using bloody Microsoft! One argument that you haven't mentioned is that you also get less virus problems! But as you say the battle will be hard to win.... I am 100% for OSS and when I’m at home I use Linux and OpenOffice. It’s mainly due to my “geek” partner who is an IT consultant and works for the French OpenOffice community designing its mascots http://benbois.posterous.com/openofficeorg-education-mascot

I do understand your point that teachers and SMT (who are teachers in the first place) will be hard to convince but I still think that OSS will have many more advantages than using bloody Microsoft! One argument that you haven’t mentioned is that you also get less virus problems! But as you say the battle will be hard to win….

]]>