"Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life." While this Jesuit maxim was originally conceived with religious fervour in mind, some technology companies are equally zealous about its relevance to IT adoption. The education sector is an enormously important one to technology companies not only because it is an extremely lucrative market in its own right but it also a way of influencing the technical proclivities of the next generation.
"For companies like Microsoft the school market is important because they're leading innocent young minds to love Microsoft technologies," says Ovum analyst Gary Barnett.
And it is not only the proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and IBM who have seized on the importance of reaching young minds. John Spencer, the head of education at open source consultancy SiriusIT, claims that the schools are a key to the wider adoption of open source.
"It's massively important. When [Apple] Macs were used in the education market in the US, people started asking for Macs in the workplace. Once children have seen other ways of doing things their eyes are opened," he says. "If more children can use open source, when come into the adult market they won't say: 'That's not what I'm used to.'"
Other reasons why the school market is important is its relative size — there are around 26,000 primary schools and 5,000 secondary schools in the UK, and the opportunity to influence consumer purchases of software — many parents will use the same software as is used in their child's school.
Although it is widely accepted that the school market is an important for open source, at present, few schools in the UK use open source software. SiriusIT claims that between 10 and 15 percent of secondary schools are using some open source, and less than 1 percent are using mainly open source. The consultancy collated its figures by monitoring public information about the use of open source in schools, such as postings on mailing lists and forums.
Outside the UK, the situation varies. Non-proprietary software is widely used in schools in some countries, such as the Spanish region of Extremadura, where Linux has been deployed on around 70,000 desktop PCs and 400 servers in schools and Norway, where it is thought that up to 200 of the 3300 schools in the country are using Skolelinux. But in many other countries the use of open source software in schools is less common.
Open source, children and usability
So, why if it is supposedly cheaper, is open source not used more in schools where price is a bigger factor than most corporations? Barnett from Ovum lays the blame on the lack of availability of open source educational applications and the usability of open source software.
"Linux is a long way from being appealing to ordinary users who want to surf the Web and write documents," he says. "Linux or OpenOffice must be significantly easier or more rewarding to use."
Barnett gave a few example of proprietary software that he believes is significantly easier to use than its open source equivalents. "Microsoft home networking support is far from perfect, but it's a doddle compared to Linux," he says. "Linux support for wireless is fantastic, but is a pain to configure."
There is a prevailing sentiment among many in the free software community that technology shouldn't be too easy and that people should invest the time to learn about it, says Barnett.
"With usability or graphics administration tools you can tell they're written grudgingly," he says. "There's also a belief that if you're not willing to open a terminal window and stay up till 0300 reading a 100-page manual, you're not worthy of the software. You can see this if you go to a Linux user group and ask a stupid question — you get...
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Talkback
What an Irony ?
This article is partailly covered with Microsoft ad
Good evening,
After reading your piece "Open source in education: Winning hearts and minds" I'm left with a question: When was the last time Ovum analyst Gary Barnett used Linux or open source? As a Linux migration specialist and open source advocate working with public schools in the US, I have found very little open source software could not accomplish in both usability and features. The OpenSuse project has put out an amazingly easy to use desktop OS where networking, desktop navigation and ability to "surf the Web and write documents" is as easy or easier than the latest offerings from proprietary companies. Does Ovum have any alliances with proprietary software companies?, would be my follow up question.
That being said, please feel free to explore my links to educational open source software, where over 600 individual education focused software projects are listed thanks to Seul/Edu. http://www.aptenix.com/education.html
If you have any further questions or need for resources when writing about the state of open source in education, feel free to contact me.
--
Chris Gregan
Open Source Consultant/Founder
Aptenix LLC-Desktop Solutions
New Market, MD
(240)422-9224
Not only is the Ovum rep clueless about Open Source, he is also clueless about schools. The reason school s used Acorn technology in the past was simply it was better for what they wanted to achieve and RISC OS was more advanced as a user interface than Windows 3. The main reason why mass migration to Open Source hasn't happened is simply confidence. The biggest influencer in that would be government and agencies like BECTA providing the required leadership. Instead of spending £100m a year on curriculum on-line which entrenches the status quo spend 50m on open source development projects and 50m on the curriculum on-line. That gives equal funding to the two development models. In 3 years I think we would find that there was no need at all for the COL database.
Schools are also wary about being seen as 'doing the wrong thing'. If you teach kids how to use a word processor and for your particular purposes you chose OpenOffice, you may have some fear of parents howling at you about 'not teaching WORD' and then you'll find yourself trying to explain that the program itself doesn't matter one bit and that it is the concepts that matter. Aside from all that, most people are hesitant to change until someone forces them too. Now and then you have extraordinary individuals who see that things can be done better and push for change - and these people really are extraordinary. For example, let's say one teacher wanted to use FreeDuc (www.ofset.org) because it's got all these neat learning tools suited for kids 6-12. Questions come up: who will support it, etc? Although it runs off a CD, it's far too inconvenient to boot from CD, save setting to a floppy, etc. You have a computer tech, but one who sees his position as just a way of paying the bills (some people are incredibly lucky and have competent techs who love their job and love being part of the education system) - so there's no hope of getting the tech to set up a system (not that he/she could).
There's never a shortage of problems that come up - so the best thing to do is read comments to see if there's something you haven't thought about and then push on with your plans for world domination by penguins,
One open source product which is being used increasingly in schools and colleges in the UK and abroad is Moodle - a Course Management System which is similar to a Virtual Learning Environment.
A number of educational insititutions are actually moving away from proprietary VLEs to use Moodle. This is as it's in many ways more userfriendly and it has features which have to be purchased as add-ins from other companies.
I would like to find the jobs that are paying Junior Techs £18K and Senior £35K!
Schools, in theory may have an independent budget, but their local authority can have quite an influence especially if they have no one to support Linux. Also, there is the shear inertial required to be overcome in any change. On top of that with the pressure on schools to 'perform' few will want to upset the teaching - learning balance by introducing new technology. Especially when it will be the staff who have the steepest learning curve.
Finally who would finance the training, both time and money, of the technicians?
Open source should be mandated by Governemnt and LEAs wherever possible. I dont want my taxes funding proprietary and closed source dead end solutions that have to be discarded every few years.
I’m a student at Orwell and my experience of open source through school hasn’t won my heart or mind. I have Mandrake on my laptop, but school was a nightmare. After struggling with a poorly implemented system for the last 2 years (my GCSE years), I have returned to do my A Level studies to find, not really as a surprise, that we’ve switched back to Windows. So much for the ‘potential cost-savings’.
The problems wasn’t really with system, which could have been a great move, but the fact that the school did a direct change, without training the students or *teachers*. Basically we had Windows, then the summer holidays, then Linux. That was it. Get on with your work. Stop asking silly questions.
So we’re left to do coursework on computers that would freeze up every 5/10 minutes, if you could get them to boot at all. And they had a strange habit of booting as Windows 95. Not something you expect from a Linux machine.
Inevitably, the overworked head of IT - and only teacher that had a clue - left before the end of this year. So did the technician (that’s right, there was only one). And I think Mr. Osborne died. So that’s left us with a half Linux half Windows wreck of an IT system. And shit grades.
Yeah.
Joseph.
I was skeptical about the previous posters comments. Claims of being a student and that the schools grades where bad.
This is what I discovered.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/cgi-bin/performancetables/dfe1x1_05.pl?School=9354038
Make up you own mind