Hi,
I was pleasantly surprised to hear of this letter in the Irish Times.
Whilst I fully agree with Bobs qualifying of the issues around the area of School ICT, I do think that there is room for improvement on this front. We are now clearly in deep recession and any reduction in budgets for Schools will of course also affect IT as well as other areas. If FOSS is more widely adopted in schools just simply to save costs, and without any understanding of the meaning / philosophy behind this type of software, then so be it.
Going back to the original letter, whilst I think that the idea of saving money by using FOSS is a good one, and every euro saved reduces the possibility of job losses etc., I do think that switching OS is a huge change for users. There is an argument that every MS Windows upgrade is quite a large change, but I'm not sure that change is on the same scale as switching for instance to Linux. A ''softer'' target is application software and I have easily persuaded many users to use OpenOffice.org in place of MS Office. Again, Office 2007 was a large change for users and instead of this, a migration to OOo can actually be less painful for users.
According to the governments own latest report on education funding, there are around 85,500 computers in education. If the political will was there, huge savings can be made without adversely affecting users too much. A back of envelope calculation on this would go something like this. If reduced / volume license / educational license is averaged as low as 30 euro, this still amounts to 2.5 million euro which would go some way to reducing the strain on educational budgets. If it simply saved a few jobs, it would still be worthwhile.
Money talks, especially in politics and especially in recession. Asking government to justify unnecessarily spending money on software which has an equivalent which is cost free is the right question to ask. It simply cannot be justified.
I realise that I have over-simplified the situation in order to highlight my point, but I do think that at it's core, this is a simple decision and we should take our lead from some of the many governments adopting FOSS widely within the public service. Any lobbying of government to this end is welcome.
kind regards, Andrew Clarke
Hi Andrew
Mostly I think you are right - deployment of openoffice (and other free software) on windoze are easy wins, easy to justify and potentially cost saving. To be fair, some of these are highlighted on the NCTE website, but there doesn't seem to be any active promotion of them. But I do agree with your point that seeing free software deployment in schools simply in terms of a complete free software 'stack' - operating system, desktop, the works - misses some key opportunities. I'm just a bit wary of pushing the cost argument too far. MS can drop the price of their software as low as it takes to compete in schools. I notice, for example, that it has recently extended its offer of low cost software (Euro 5 for windows, office, plus extras) to a wider range of Irish schools.
It might be worth extending the argument further than just the immediate school environment. With openoffice, pupils not only get it free at school, but can also take it home. As the broadband penetration increases and with increasing numbers of computer owners at home, pupils are being encouraged to do their homework on wordprocessors, even submitting via systems like Moodle. By providing and encouraging the use of openoffice, schools might not only be saving on their own budget, but also significantly reducing the cost of learning to pupils - or pehaps reducing the 'piracy' rate :-)
Cheers Bob
2009/1/26 Andrew Clarke andrew.clarke@dkit.ie:
Hi,
I was pleasantly surprised to hear of this letter in the Irish Times.
Whilst I fully agree with Bobs qualifying of the issues around the area of School ICT, I do think that there is room for improvement on this front. We are now clearly in deep recession and any reduction in budgets for Schools will of course also affect IT as well as other areas. If FOSS is more widely adopted in schools just simply to save costs, and without any understanding of the meaning / philosophy behind this type of software, then so be it.
Going back to the original letter, whilst I think that the idea of saving money by using FOSS is a good one, and every euro saved reduces the possibility of job losses etc., I do think that switching OS is a huge change for users. There is an argument that every MS Windows upgrade is quite a large change, but I'm not sure that change is on the same scale as switching for instance to Linux. A ''softer'' target is application software and I have easily persuaded many users to use OpenOffice.org in place of MS Office. Again, Office 2007 was a large change for users and instead of this, a migration to OOo can actually be less painful for users.
According to the governments own latest report on education funding, there are around 85,500 computers in education. If the political will was there, huge savings can be made without adversely affecting users too much. A back of envelope calculation on this would go something like this. If reduced / volume license / educational license is averaged as low as 30 euro, this still amounts to 2.5 million euro which would go some way to reducing the strain on educational budgets. If it simply saved a few jobs, it would still be worthwhile.
Money talks, especially in politics and especially in recession. Asking government to justify unnecessarily spending money on software which has an equivalent which is cost free is the right question to ask. It simply cannot be justified.
I realise that I have over-simplified the situation in order to highlight my point, but I do think that at it's core, this is a simple decision and we should take our lead from some of the many governments adopting FOSS widely within the public service. Any lobbying of government to this end is welcome.
kind regards, Andrew Clarke _______________________________________________ fsfe-ie@fsfeurope.org mailing list List information: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/fsfe-ie Public archive: https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-ie
Hi,
there is a UK organisation http://schoolforge.org.uk/index.php/Main_Page%C2%A0with an active user group here http://groups.google.com/group/sf-uk-discuss. There is also an American site http://www.schoolforge.net/
Here is a BBC article on the recent BETT event http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7847377.stm.
There was an article on FLOSSIE in an edition of Linx User and Developer. I got permission to share this with a few colleagues, erm. I'm taking a slight liberty here but I hope anyone wishing to share it further will seek permission or download the article. http://www.oj77io.com/flossie
I am currently looking into using mobile devices in the classroom in particular the neo freerunner.
On the subjuect of cost a photoshop educational licence costs around £80. Piracy as you may well know is largely ignored as for example if a student learns ps at school in their working life they will be more likely to buy a copy of that sw if fits their needs, as opposed to using an os equivalent.
In the UK the government launched C2K, as with most if not all government attempts with IT it leaves alot to be desired.
Regards, Anthony.
________________________________ From: Andrew Clarke andrew.clarke@dkit.ie To: fsfe-ie@fsfeurope.org Sent: Monday, 26 January, 2009 14:18:57 Subject: [Fsfe-ie] Ireland OA Policy
Hi,
I was pleasantly surprised to hear of this letter in the Irish Times.
Whilst I fully agree with Bobs qualifying of the issues around the area of School ICT, I do think that there is room for improvement on this front. We are now clearly in deep recession and any reduction in budgets for Schools will of course also affect IT as well as other areas. If FOSS is more widely adopted in schools just simply to save costs, and without any understanding of the meaning / philosophy behind this type of software, then so be it.
Going back to the original letter, whilst I think that the idea of saving money by using FOSS is a good one, and every euro saved reduces the possibility of job losses etc., I do think that switching OS is a huge change for users. There is an argument that every MS Windows upgrade is quite a large change, but I'm not sure that change is on the same scale as switching for instance to Linux. A ''softer'' target is application software and I have easily persuaded many users to use OpenOffice.org in place of MS Office. Again, Office 2007 was a large change for users and instead of this, a migration to OOo can actually be less painful for users.
According to the governments own latest report on education funding, there are around 85,500 computers in education. If the political will was there, huge savings can be made without adversely affecting users too much. A back of envelope calculation on this would go something like this. If reduced / volume license / educational license is averaged as low as 30 euro, this still amounts to 2.5 million euro which would go some way to reducing the strain on educational budgets. If it simply saved a few jobs, it would still be worthwhile.
Money talks, especially in politics and especially in recession. Asking government to justify unnecessarily spending money on software which has an equivalent which is cost free is the right question to ask. It simply cannot be justified.
I realise that I have over-simplified the situation in order to highlight my point, but I do think that at it's core, this is a simple decision and we should take our lead from some of the many governments adopting FOSS widely within the public service. Any lobbying of government to this end is welcome.
kind regards, Andrew Clarke _______________________________________________ fsfe-ie@fsfeurope.org mailing list List information: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/fsfe-ie Public archive: https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-ie