Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]]

[Michael Hall <admin@openlearningcommunity.org>]

I know where you're coming from Dave ... even though our state system
actually uses Linux and OSS, they don't make much of it. They're all into
image ... "We've spent X million dollars on blah blah blah" ... the
details just don't matter.

Mick

On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Dave Prentice wrote:

> My 2 cents:
>     As a teacher in a 1600+ student public school, I find that most
> technology decisions are made for reasons of image and politics. For
> instance, the technology situation in my school district is a mess. The
> solution? The district administration decided to name one teacher per school
> as the Technology Coordinator. Each of us T.C.s has to serve as the liaison
> between our school and the tech support department. If anything acts up, we
> are supposed to check it out. Tech support will not respond to service
> requests from anyone but us. Despite getting all this additional
> responsibility, we still have to teach the same class load as all the other
> teachers, and get no more money or designated free time to handle the
> responsibilities. The higher-ups look good because they came up with a plan,
> but it's shadow without substance.
>     More image manipulation: the district just spent tens or hundreds of
> thousands of dollars getting a bunch of new computers for my school. The
> local news media come out and take pictures of all the new equipment. Isn't
> it great? We're spending all this money on our kids! Meanwhile, I have set
> up a 20-machine Linux network in my classroom using old donated equipment,
> at ZERO cost to the district -- and it works just as well as all the new
> hardware. But will anybody from the district or the media even come look at
> it? No, because it's not new and flashy. They'd rather get publicity for all
> the money they spent than all the money they DIDN'T have to spend. What a
> waste of money! It's all politics.
>     The point is, decision-makers are very often influenced by what LOOKS
> best, not what IS best. If we want to make an impact, we need to come up
> with something that looks and sounds good to the public and to the teachers
> that will use it, then find ways to publicize it. We need to show that OSS
> can do anything that high-cost software can do, only better and cheaper.
> Also, as others have hinted at, we need to offer more or less a turnkey
> distro for the sake of the personnel who have to do the installations. An
> education distro should install on just about any hardware, be virtually
> hassle-free on installation, and have lots of useful features built in so
> that teachers can use them with little or no extra training. For typical
> teacher/classroom machines this would require at minimum a GUI such as gnome
> or KDE, a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation software, and
> web browser. All of these should work like the Win programs teachers and
> students are used to.
>     The key to success is getting the public's attention so they will
> pressure the decision makers. A tall order indeed.
> Dave Prentice
> prentice@instruction.com
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>
> To: seul-edu@seul.org <seul-edu@seul.org>
> Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 10:31 AM
> Subject: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]]
> 
> 
> >-------- Original Message --------
> >
> >From: Jim Thomas <jthomas@bittware.com>
> >To: seul-edu@seul.org
> >Subject: Re: [seul-edu] RE: [why schools don't adopt OSS]
> >
> >Jay Sun wrote:
> >[snippage]
> >> However, schools waste fair amount of money at same time,
> >> especially at district administrative level in public schools.
> >> you are right that schools use other people's money, so there
> >> are a lot of things that are purely political, and the OSS
> >> just don't make much sense in those situations.
> >
> >I keep hearing this (that public schools spend other people's money) and
> >I feel compelled to respond to it.  I agree - it's very difficult to get
> >a public school (in the US at least) to adopt open source.  The "free"
> >argument doesn't go very far.  We have to tout *other* benefits of Open
> >Source to get into that sector, such as stability, viral resistance, an
> >actual security model, and capabilities.
> >
> >It might be easier to start with private schools - especially non-profit
> >denominational schools, which operate on tight budgets and are somewhat
> >smaller than the public behemoths down the street.  These people really
> >do care about saving money, and they are not hobbled by large
> >bureaucracies either.  Once enough private schools adopt OSS, we can
> >collect their case studies and have a body of evidence to present to the
> >public sector.  Perhaps these arguments  apply to for-profit private
> >schools too, but I think this is a smaller slice of the pie.  I say
> >start small and build momentum.  This approach lets us work out the bugs
> >before tackling the giants.
> >
> >Unfortunately, this strategy takes more time, and we're trying to
> >"strike while the iron's hot."
> >
> >I still think the community needs to come out with an Education
> >Distribution to ease installation.  As I see it, there are three types
> >of installations required in an edu environment: student machines, staff
> >machines, and servers.  When you install RedHat, it prompts for the type
> >of installation and suggests Workstation, Server, etc.  This doesn't
> >make sense for an edu distro.
> >
> >Right now it is no easy task to set this up.  The packages are
> >available, but not on a CD.  The installation procedure goes like this:
> >1) Choose one of a myriad of available installations
> >2) Install it, choosing packages from a tremendous list of confusing (to
> >the uninitiated) options (what does ypbind do?  do I need it?)
> >3) Locate educational packages
> >4) download and attempt installation, only to discover dependencies
> >5) Figure out what those dependencies are
> >6) Locate the package that will satisfy the dependency
> >7) Go back to step 4, and repeat as more dependencies are discovered.
> >8) Confiure the application
> >
> >This is a lot to ask from a person with little or no *nix experience.
> >An edu distro would reduce these steps to
> >1) Get the edu distro
> >2) Choose student, staff, or server installation
> >3) Choose applications (which should be well described)
> >4) Customize the configuration (but it should work pretty well without
> >this step).
> >
> >A student installation would include:
> >Web/email client
> >Office suite
> >Educational apps (select by grade level and subject)
> >Games (this may be important for fostering acceptance)
> >What else?
> >
> >A staff installation would include:
> >same as student install plus
> >courseware
> >gradebook
> >Internet usage monitor
> >Account management SW
> >What else?
> >
> >The server installation would be tailored for school use.  There could
> >possibly be more than one type of server too, such as a lab server (NFS,
> >NIS, DHCP) and a gateway server (firewall, httpd, email server,
> >squid/squidguard).  A library app (such as Koha) should also be
> >available for the server machine.
> >
> >I have installed Linux at a private school, and the effort has largely
> >been successful.  Linux has still not achieved acceptance by the staff,
> >but I'm still working on that.  I'd like to introduce linux to other
> >schools too, but managing the one I'm involved with now still requires a
> >huge committment on my part (and I'm just a volunteer).
> >
> >
> >--
> >Jim Thomas      **    Principal Applications Engineer ** Bittware, Inc
> >703.779.7770    **    jthomas@bittware.com **  http://www.bittware.com
> >The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that is even worse.
> > - Calvin's dad
> >
> 
> 

-- 
################################
Michael Hall
admin@openlearningcommunity.org
m.hall@latis.net.au
http://openlearningcommunity.org