Schools and Open Source
This is gonna be a long one.
Being a high school student as well as a computer (and Linux) geek, I follow the tech-ed "industry" pretty closely. There's a pretty intense movement of sorts out there to get schools to adopt technology in the classroom (not "integrate," as one picky blogger puts it ;-)). Last summer, I attended a two-day workshop at my school with a bunch of teachers from the area as well as David Warlick and Steve Dembo, two very prolific educators/speakers/podcasters who are strong proponents of this idea. That's what really got me turned on to this entire movement. I learned a ton at the conference, in addition to providing my own "student perspective" on the ideas we talked about and getting to know a couple teachers at my school really well.
We sort of glazed over the idea of open source in schools, but didn't really hit it as hard as I would have liked. Seriously, this kind of thing has INCREDIBLE potential. School districts pay thousands of dollars every year for operating systems, software, support contracts, and hardware upgrades on the computers in their schools. They could virtually eliminate most of those costs if they ran Linux instead of Windows, OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office, and replaced all the other costly software with free, open-source alternatives. For example, DGS has Pinnacle Studio, the Macromedia suite (now defunct), Visual Studio, AutoCAD, and I'm sure there's more stuff I haven't seen or been made aware of. (I'll save my Blackboard ranting for a later date. :-P)
The one thing that is continually cited as a problem is the ease-of-use and ongoing support of such a platform and setup. David Warlick hosted a roundtable discussion (the site is kinda broken, it's episode 60) on open source and they talked about just that. One of the things I think needs to be realized by technology coordinators and school boards is that yes, Linux is and always will be a haven for geeks. It definitely has a geeky image attached to it. I can count on one hand the number of my friends from school who use Linux, even on a semi-regular basis. There's not an easy work-around to this: they should embrace it. School districts don't need costly 10-year custom support and development contracts with big-name companies like Novell in order to keep it running smoothly. Eliminate the expensive middleman. Go directly to the geeky programmers themselves. The ones who can hack Linux to do whatever they want it do, the people who can make your systems run ten times as fast, ten times as secure, and save you ten times as much money. If the three network administrators at my school were replaces with three Linux-embracing IT people who know enough about the benefits of open source that they have the balls to go to the school board and tell them, we're going to teach the entire 3200-student, 200-staff school to use Linux, the world would be a better place.
That kind of transition will not be easy, no doubt about it. There are some teachers, even technology-friendly ones, who have never touched Linux in their life and will be reluctant to accept it. But sooner or later, educators will recognize that the ends justify the means.
Cost-effectiveness isn't the only factor, although I have a feeling it would be the key selling point to a bunch of 60-year-old school board members who can't tell the keyboard from the mouse. Security is a huge bonus. Case in point: my school web server is run off of Windows Server. I don't want to incite a riot (or a suspension), but that can be hacked a hell of a lot easier than a Linux box, and it's fairly common knowledge on how (among geeks). AT LEAST run your servers off of Linux! Second case in pont: a virus infected a Windows machine in my school that I used from time to time. It was out of commission for two days. It wasn't in a general student area, but that's still unnecessary downtime for the educators who used it. If (somehow) a Linux machine got infected with a virus, a sysadmin could theoretically walk up (or do it remotely), type a total of 6 commands, reboot the machine, and have it back running fresh in under 10 minutes.
*sigh* I get very worked up over this. In my high school career, I will not see a Linux machine in that building. That makes me sad.
This whole thing branched from a Digg article from Networkworld.com on open source implementation in schools:
Schools need to save money (know any school districts so rich money doesn't matter?) and one way to do so is via Open Source Software.
Of course, this is all falling on deaf ears. Even if this blog was read by a school administrator-- one who could initiate a process or at least bring it to the attention of those who can (which it's not), who the hell is gonna trust a student at that very school? (Especially one with my record...)
