Re: [school-discuss] Linux News: Open Source: Linux Making Headwayin Primary Education

[Bruno Coudoin <bruno.coudoin@free.fr>]

Le jeudi 04 novembre 2004 à 08:09 -0500, Doug Loss a écrit :
> I just saw this on LinuxInsider:
> 
> http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Linux-Gaining-K-12-Ground-but-More-Software-Needed-37585.html
> 
> It mentions Schoolforge, KDE-Edu, and K12LTSP, and quotes Anne-Marie 
> Mahfouf and Jeff Elkner.
> 

I saw it and I'm sad because Anne-Marie gives a dark view of the status
of free software in education. It's not that bad.
I wrote to the editor to try to provide another more optimistic view.

In short my view is that it's going slower than we would like, but when
we look at the road we made we should be proud and optimistic on the
future.

Talking about a shortage in free educational software, it's simply not
true. We already have more software than the time kids spend on
computers. 

We can still improve our code and I work hard on that with gcompris but
in many area we are even above our proprietary counterparts.

Yes, there is a lot of application on windows but most of them are not
accessible to schools for several reason like money or obsolete
hardware. With kids software, publisher do target the home audience for
money reason but their software often lacks real educational value.
Great graphism does not automatical makes great software but it's very
easy to sell.

---
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net free educational software for kids
http://ofset.org    free educational software for all