Re: [school-discuss] my puzzle about OSS in education

[Daniel Howard <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Wen,

The main reason our elementary school is switching to OSS is to improve 
reliability and reduce maintenance.  We have had nothing but trouble with 
maintaining Windows PCs (and four different versions of windows throughout 
the school) and we hope that OSS/Linux combined with a thin client 
architecture will drastically reduce the amount of time the computers are 
non functional.  And yes, we also hope OSS will improve our student's 
understanding of computers, programming and networking, but the other main 
reasons we're going to OSS are:

        Lower software and hardware costs over time
        Ability to provide students, parents, and teachers with Knoppix CD 
ROMs with the school's OSS for extending the learning environment into the 
home (and also encouraging the use of OpenOffice for Windows and Mac for 
the same reason)
        Allow lower income parents to purchase (or get donated) 
refurbished or bare bones PCs running OSS so that all school families have 
PCs at home
        Allow remote access of computer work to reduce printing and 
eliminate floppy disk usage
        Expand at no additional cost the applications used at the school, 
especially for the gifted students (to learn programming, electronics, 
music composition, etc.)
        Allow students to access files from any PC (thin client) in the 
school when changing classes
        Provide a scalable solution so that eventually we can support a 
network where every student has a thin client all day long (currently we 
have three PCs per class that have to be shared by 16-20 students per 
class, and usually only one or two PCs on average have been fully functional)

Daniel

At 02:38 AM 6/2/2005, you wrote:
> Hi,
>   everyone!
>
>   Since Becta published the report on OSS(open source software) in 
> schools, many people and school pay their attention to OSS in education now.
>  Why shall we use OSS in education? The report think the main reason is 
> that applying OSS in schools should slash school¡¯s IT budgets. Is that 
> the only reason or the most important reason for schools¡¯s adoption of OSS?
>  Do you think using OSS in schools have any other advantage? Especially 
> do you agree that using OSS in education will do better to help students 
> in mastering computer skills?
>  Help for your reply.
>
>
>                                                                    wen 
> 20050602
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Quadrock Communications, Inc
404.264.9123 main
678.528.5839 fax
404.625.1593 cell