I just picked this post up from the OOo Marketing mailing list and thought it a great example of the scale of FOSS deployments being made in some of our European colleague's countries. Germany and Holland also spring to mind in doing similar large scale roll outs.
Hi all,
For information, 55 000 laptops will be distributed to students and
teachers in one department of France (Oise). They will be prepared with
OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately they will be under Vista, but they have a
lot of free educational resources on them.
This operation is known as Ordi60 in France and we were waiting for the
results since some time now. After USB Key in Ile de France (220 000),
CDs in Auvergne (64 000), this is the third department to provide OOo to
their students!
An article in French can be found here
http://www.silicon.fr/fr/news/2009/01/23/55_000_collegiens_equipes_d_un_ordinateur_portable_dans_l_oise_
Kind regards
Sophie
Interesting n'est pas?
Alan
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Don't forget countries like Malaysia, Macedonia and Brazil (30 million leaners in Brazil alone) are migrating all their schools to Open Source Software. I'm training some Romanian teachers in May in the use of Open Source as part of the EU Lifelong learning programme. What is often forgotten is that it's a globalised world and what you actually see in the UK is not necessarily representative of what is happening in the rest of the world. The irony is that having spent billions on locking our schools into closed source software and the added value of viruses and other malware, developing nations can simply leapfrog over the mess and on relatively meagre budgets easily support superior technological learning. With hardware costs going down and low cost network bandwidth increasing it's only going to get easier over time.
Good points Ian (I assume it's Ian anyway...).
It does indeed strike me that we are rapidly being left behind by the rapid pace of adoption and migration elsewhere in the world.
There is no doubt that FOSS is in the ascendancy and consequently the rather blinkered view expressed by some that 'proprietary software is what is used in business and so must be what we
trainteach our children' will end up leaving them at a serious disadvantage by the time they have completed their education.I will make a very confident prediction:
In the future, a great deal more FOSS will be used in business than it is today.
Therefore, when our kids finish their schooling, what ICT skills should they have?
Yes 'tis me :-)
Wayne Gretzky said the secret of his prowess in ice hockey was that he would "Skate to where the puck is going to be". All the leading analysts, IDC, Gartner, Forresters predict that Open Source is going to be in every major business application in the next few years. Microsoft announced its first ever lay offs with profits below targets and citing the rise of the netbook as a key factor. Openoffice has clearly had an effect on the price of MSO. So there is plenty of evidence that the world is changing and we should be preparing children to cope with those changes not saddling them with the same technophobia that seems all too prevelant in the adult population. We get a lot of talk about managing change, life-long learning, investing in people etc but in practical terms no strategy to skate to where the puck will be even when the technological change is almost jumping out of the web and biting us.
Therefore, when our kids finish their schooling, what ICT skills should they have?
They should have been taught to try out a range of technologies (akin to sampling several MFLs) so they are not put off trying new things and understand principles rather than specific procedures associated with specific apps. They should understand licensing, what is and isn't legal as the web has made digital information and rights to access much more important. They should be taught the value of community participation and shown how they can make valuable contributions to community resources while they learn that can be extended to peer mentoring and helping others. Finally, they should be taught about economic issues, cost-benefit and the implications of monopolies for innovation and value for money. On the grounds of inclusion and equality of opportunity they should be taught how to get all the technological tools they are likely to ever need freely and legally from the internet.
Hello,
my name is pierre-yves, and I'm one of the maintainer of a websites network called Framasoft (see below for a quick presentation), sustained by a community of volonteers and a non profit organisation wich aimed to promote OSS to people, and especially in schools (historically, the websites were created by teachers)
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Free softwares users community, Framasoft is at the inception of a number of projects, including :
Endorsed by a network of cooperative accommodating websites, our goal is the dissemination and the promotion of the Free culture in general and of Free softwares specifically. Framasoft is meant to be an open door for the larger audience toward an assisted discovery of the "Free software world" : Free software and it's frame of mind, the Free culture and also digital liberties.
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In the specific field of "OSS in education", here are some of our latests productions/actions :
* In 2005, we created the Framakey, a package for USB sticks full of OSS softwares. This has directly inspired lots of education projects. The most impressive is that, in 2007 and 2008, the "Ile de France region" (= Paris and suburbs territory) distributed freely more than 150 000 usb sticks per year to students. But there was also the "Clé en main" and CNEP projects (primary and secondary) ; the @qui.clé (key for future teachers) or several university projects like UP Key Etu ; etc
* We translated the Becta "Microsoft Vista and Office 2007" full report : http://www.framablog.org/index.php/post/2008/06/22/windows-vista-et-ms-office-2007-en-debat-a-l-ecole
* We host a discussion board used by french teachers to exchange about OSS in schools (like this one, but with about 4000 posts)
* We dedicate a lot of our blog posts on the "Free Software and Open Educational Ressources" issues : http://www.framablog.org/index.php/tag/Education
* We still host some background articles about Education : http://www.framasoft.net/rubrique249.html (but most of our publications are now on the blog)
* etc.
So, we give a lot of attention to the UK initiatives (like the OSS.org.uk website) and we regret and deplore that there is no such organization like Becta in France, which leaves initiatives to communities (but without any financial/human resources as ours) think about these issues.
We also think to build a OSS.org.uk "clone" website in french, because it seems very clear and handy for the public.
Keep up the (really) great work!
Pierre-Yves
Hi Pierre-Yves,
This sounds really interesting! The USB key with open source software for Windows is a particularly interesting one: We are impressed by both Portable Apps and Accessible Apps, and it was great being able to distribute copies of the Open Education Disc at last week's presentation.
Very impressed by your site, the huge collection of open source software you've documented and such a vibrant community. Thank you so much for the positive review of our website, and obviously feel free to translate any of the content under the CC by-sa licence.
À bientôt
Miles.