Re: [school-discuss] Korea brings homegrown open source to schools

[Daniel Howard <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All of the schools that I know of in the US that are moving to Linux still 
have other OS's in them, and many have all three: Linux, Windows, and 
Mac.  The first, most important thing in my opinion, is to break away from 
the 'Microsoft only' mentality, which frankly is what I'm seeing in many of 
the schools here in the US.

Daniel

At 06:36 PM 6/23/2005, you wrote:
> Steve Hargadon wrote:
>
> > On 6/23/05, Daniel Howard <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Great article Doug, I forwarded this to another parent who doesn't like the
> > > idea of his child's elementary school moving to Linux because "Microsoft
> > > Office is what they'll be using when they grow up".  Along with the
> > > article, I noted that when I was in elementary school, we watched TV on
> > > US-made TVs and listened to vinyl records on US-made record players,
> > > neither of which exist anymore...
> >
> > I love this argument!  It's the same one I hear:  won't the children
> > be confused if they use Linux at school and Windows at home?  How many
> > of our children already are using Macs in schools, and nobody seems to
> > complain about that!  And the kids do just fine...
> My only concern about instituting Linux into all these schools is that you 
> are mandating now what teachers are expected to use. I think it's great 
> that South Korea has gone ahead and discovered the economic and technical 
> benefits of Linux, and I think this will be really interesting to see 
> local support economies benefit from this as well. Still, when 
> technologies are mandated or institutionalized, innovation and flexibility 
> can be be hindered.  What happens when the alternative becomes the 
> mandated, dominant force and the ONLY choice?


Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Quadrock Communications, Inc
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