How did you get involved with Open Source Software? What have been your experiences of using it in schools? What sort of things have you done with it?
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This project interests me.
I cannot understand why the good message about open source falls on the deaf ears of folk who don't really know how computers work.
With 30 years front-line support of IT systems under my belt, I know from experience how reliable an open-source server is. Reliable means even less cost computing! (More money to spend on books and other useful resources.)
Tell someone they should use open-source and the reply is typically 'who's going to support it when you get run over by a bus?'
I would like teachers and education system folk to know that unless we teach our children about open-source there will not be a future for them in IT!
Already the world's leaders in IT have adopted open-source. They could never have afforded their businesses if they had to pay licences to Microsoft.
Good luck with this project!!! Educate the educators, liberate our children!¬
Gary.
Hi,
I echo Gary's thinking.
I think that the message falls on deaf ears because they see something as being 'free' - and people think that someting that is free is no good; when in this case the exact opposite is true.
Alan
Hi,
I echo Gary's thinking.
I think that the message falls on deaf ears because they see something as being 'free' - and people think that someting that is free is no good; when in this case the exact opposite is true.
Alan
I think the heart of the problem is the way we teach technology and the low levels of expectation of technology learning. In UK schools we start with ambiguity and confusion over the word technology. Ask anyone in the street what technology is about and they will talk about computers, i-pods, the internet etc. In UK schools technology is more associated with craft skills, cookery and teaching children to be mindless consumers of highly promoted and highly subsidised software products. There is no apparent strategy other than to pump massive amounts of tax payers money going into ill-thought out schemes like curriculum on-line or lumping IT infrastructure deployment into building projects that decimate local small business IT provision. Technology in schools is market driven (anyone visitig BETT?) when it should be educationally driven. Rather ironic given the current financial situation. Furthermore, there is little real evidence that most of this "investment" actually raises standards. So for me, until we develop higher expectations of learning in the field of technology we will always end up being victims of dependency on the strongest commercial interests. There is a wider educational principle at stake here. It goes beyond technology and crosses into value systems such as social inclusion, equality of opportuinity and the ethics of brain washing children with market brands. As an example, you will find files on DCFS web site in .pdf, .rtf and .doc. The internationally agreed ISO standard .odt is missing despite the fact that World Trade agreements make it mandatory to use ISO standards where they exist. Even Microsoft is building in odt support in its next version of MS Office. So the DCFS is happy to promote a proprietary stabdard like .doc but it is unwilling to provide any leadership in helping establish the agreed international standard.
Does any of this matter? In the short term yes because it will cost the tax payer even more money at a time when we need every penny we can save and many children will be less well-educated technologically than they could be. In the long term the UK will have to follow the rest of the world and all the analysts say that the shift to Open Source is the most significant change taking place in the industry since the 1980s. Educationally, the philistines' approach that equates knowing anything technical with being a social outcast perpetuates a culture that will at best confine UKPlc to be a nation of bankers and look where that has led.
So..., answering the questions:-
> How did you get involved with Open Source Software?
I took a career break from supporting IT in local government to read a Computer Science degree early 1990s. Before I started I
When I finished I was setting up sendmail, apache, and using range of open source desktop software, etc....
> What have been your experiences of using it in schools?
Moodle, Open Office -- these are such obvious choices for schools -- I would suggest buying proprietary 'equivalents' may evidence a certain negligence in the evaluation process, although I have to say there was a bit of resistance in a previous school where tech support didn't really get it, and ICT had already invested in proprietary software to train in proprietary software for gcse (before open source really became mainstream). Where I have been last few years (Pebble Brook School, Aylesbury -- secondary moderate learning difficulties) pupils have access to Open Office and a similar proprietary program. Strangely they prefer more intuitive interface of Open Office which has all the ICT capability they will ever need.
> What sort of things have you done with it?
We are getting started with http://theingots.org/ and make use of moodle.org on school website for pupils to:
Also, one of my things is setting up and maintaining Drupal websites. I can see we will be doing things with Drupal modules CCK and Views as time goes on.
Hi Jocelyn,
Interesting that children with moderate learning difficulties seem to be able to cope with Open Source. The sterotypical accusation of being for geeks and techies is well and truly shot down in flames. I have visited your school and it was a really refreshing change to have such positive attitudes and friendly children taking an interest in the technolies they are using. Keep up the good work :-)
The use of open source software/applications should be part of every schools' IT vision and each and every LEA should see it as their priority to enable their schools to make as much use as possible.
I installed Open Office on our school machines and saved a fortune. Easy to use. But why oh why did I continue with Windows??
My own use of Open SOurce software has raised my IT levels considerably.
The use of ICT in schools is multi-faceted.
As a platform for developing pupils' ICT skills, open source is the obvious 'best value' choice. Explicit recommendations from Becta would help to overcome the misgivings of teaching staff who are suspicious of anything they are not used to.
As a platform for delivering resources across the curriculum Open Source has a long way to go. Most National Curriculum - targeted subject software is still written exclusively for Windows. This is where we really need strong national leadership if we are to make any significant impact on the cost of ICT resources in schools.
Most administration software is only supported in the Microsoft environment. If staff are tied to Microsoft there are a lot of issues to deal with if we give the pupils something different.
Much of the infrastructure in schools already runs on one flavour of Unix or another - webcams, switches, NAS, and in the case of our school, curriculum file servers.
I think it is interesting to see what some industry pundits are saying about virtualisation as well - if you listen to Nik Butler talking about the topic of disaster recovery and virtualisation here - about 5 mins in:
http://continuitytalk.com/archives/2007/09/20/continuitytalk-episode-2/
and read his blog post here :
http://www.loudmouthman.com/2008/10/26/you-should-fire-your-web-agency-w...
written earlier this year, it seems this is not only restricted to the education sector.
http://www.jumpbox.com seems one of those new virtualisation solutions that can provide more control over apps as opposed to data...
I see the whole landscape as evolving and it will evolve because of economic necessities and the rise of Social Media and how to bind those into the mainstream education system.
The work involving Elgg, ODD, Mahara et al also reflects this move towards having the best of both worlds.
There needs to be a culture change not only in practice - where teachers have to take more responsibility for their own CPD and the rollout of smarter, more personalised content for their students but at LA and RBC level where responsibility for apps and their use can be devolved to schools whereas data can be held centrally. The break away from silos into the wider world where more opportunity for innovation and change will be more apparent.
The 'Social' codes and protocols can be managed by schools as they always have been but the difference is that the software is more tailored to the local and global school communities and culture. Of course this involves a complete change management vision on behalf of those with the power and inclination to do this. It will no longer be a one stop shop in terms of software licences and provision but rather, a subset of smaller but more focused services provided by OSS businesses which probably have yet to emerge - I'll be on the lookout for them at BETT.
But I wouldn't be surprised, before long, to see a whole new industry based around these concepts - we have to remember that it is needs driven - we can't continue in the top down mode for much longer without massive stasis brought on by escalating costs, poor provision and centralised lethargy.
The OSS site is a start but new ways of templating this change also needs to be documented and disseminated - if the mainstream commercial sector does not rise to the challenge then I am sure new businesses will evolve to provide solutions in this area - it's only a matter of time.
Don't forget the larger funding for provison by BECTA will not always be the model in the coming years and the emphasis on smaller but scalable solutions will have to reflect this new economic necessity.
You may well find that the larger organisations such as CISCO et al will begin to produce startups in-house to reflect this distributed thinking and work towards a more defined scalable solution using smaller but more discreet and personalised units to deliver what schools want. But schools have to have a vison of what they want so it all and well talking about OSS but we need to have as many exemplars of use to track this evolution over time. OSS is extensible and scalable enough to do this but it starts and ends with the school community and works outwards from there.
The revamped site is excellent as are the regular mailouts I am now getting - I think this is one small acorn that is going to continue to grow in 2009 which does seem to be the year of change.
It all comes down to leadership. At least keeping out of the way would be better than further entrenching the status quo. We know big government centralised IT projects are of dubious benefit and highly risky simply from the capacity to deliver. We know that a major part of the internet effect is to enable individuals to be far more influential in social, political and technological terms. We know that a good part of this shift is intertwined with Open Source methods and technologies. Yet government persists in throwing money at large projects that inevitably reinforce the closed source model through massive government subsidy. Then they wonder why Open Source is not spreading as fast as it could. ELCs and curriculum on-line have ensured transition to web based learning apps is slowed down by years. So we have spent over 500 million making things worse for the long term for short term political expediency. BSF has much the same effect. Driving technology through building contractors that cosy up to large suppliers themselves locked into closed technologies is hardly likely to produce an environment for change. And these projects are fundamentally focused on infrastructure not the important things like people, learning and social impact. So what is invested in Open Source? 250k for 2 years supporting the development of this web site and even in that process BECTA demonstrated fundamental ignorance of anything to do with Open Source communities. Until the leaders in the DCFS actually get what is happening with Open Source it would be far better for them to keep out of the way and let the market work things out because it will eventually no matter what they do. The only effect of incompetent interference will be to cost us all a lot of money and more importantly damage the technological learning of several cohorts of children.
There is also the 'free as in freedom' aspect of open source software. The ethos and culture around the open-source movement is in tune with some of the things we want to be developing within the education system: collaboration and the coming together of individuals with a variety of skills to solve a problem, and the giving back to the community and sharing of knowledge and experience as part of the deal.
I do not see proprietary and open source as mutually exclusive- there is freedom of choice and often good reasons for choosing specific items of software be they paid for or open source. However, to exercise proper choice, one needs to feel confident and supported. Paying for something can give the impression of confidence and support when you are not fully sure of the options or future implications of the choices you are making. Here is the need for open standards, some form of regulation and wider training for education professionals and those supporting them.
Rather than arguing whether OpenOffice is more suitable that MS Office, I see more opportunity for supporting teachers in being magpies and bringing digital resources, students and others together through technology; in developing an understanding of how open standards facilitate and promote this, and in working together to use the technology to make a real impact on learner outcomes. Thereby exercising freedom of choice and hopefully contributing back to their own localities or online groups with similar interests or circumstances.
I look forward to the next Ofsted review of virtual learning which praises rich, wide and creative combinations of web-services, content and resources and the hard evidence of impact it is having ;-)
I first heard of Open Source Software in 1997 when, as a 16-year-old I was looking for free software I was using with my PC. I didn't have any money to spend on software other than that which came with Windows 95 and my parents certainly weren't going to be spending any money on software.
It was then that I came across Linux. I was fascinated by the idea that a community could produce something as complex as an operating system. With my birthday money, I purchased a book called something like 'Learn Linux in 24 hours' which came with a free CD-ROM containing Red Hat Linux.
I had real problems ever getting it to work, and therefore I only ever tinkered with various Linux distros until the dawn of Ubuntu. That was so easy to install, configure and use that I've been a fan of it ever since. I use the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu on my Asus Eee 1000 and love its simplicity.
Although I can now afford to buy software, I still try to use OSS wherever possible. Why? Well...
In terms of getting OSS adopted in my school, it's an ongoing struggle. Colleagues can see the value of the 'free' side of it, but not the other aspects. I'm working on it...
I've been interested in it since I started university and found that there was an alternative to windows. I've got going with openoffice, firefox and geogebra, but am struggling to get others interested. My department (maths) is getting interested in geogebra, but getting anywhere with anything is not going so well.