The provision of ICT services in schools is becoming strongly tied to the Building Schools for the Future programme, greatly reducing the scope for schools to be innovative in exploring the approaches that best suit their needs. The trend is to encourage – in effect to coerce – schools to accept managed service contracts which are uniform across the local authority or group of local authorities. To say this is causing friction is an understatement.

Announced by Jim Knight back at BETT 2008, the Government’s home access programme is designed to finally bridge the digital divide for school aged learners by ensuring that every family has access to a home computer and fast Internet connection. The idea is that those parents who might not otherwise be able to afford a computer will be provided with a home access credit card that they can use to buy a package with computer, software and connectivity, so that their children too can make use of technology, particularly the web, to support education at home. The packages will also be available commercially to everyone.

There are a couple of pilot projects under way in Suffolk and Oldham, and we’ve recently learnt that every single one of the six approved suppliers is offering OpenOffice.org as a part of their package. One of the suppliers has also specified that they will offer The GIMP as a standard part of their package too. Becta’s Vanessa Pittard commented at yesterday’s NCSL online seminar on how well the pilot seemed to be going, with a high level of uptake, and indications that schools were key channels of information and guidance.

The OpenEducationDisc is currently undergoing development for its next version.  We have a strong line up of software focused on the national curriculum and beyond. We are looking to add a few programs mentioned previously on opensourceschools such as Numpty Physics and Scratch.  if you would like to suggest any other software that you think teachers and students in Key Stage 1-5 would find useful please drop a reply to this thread.