Open source in education: Winning hearts and minds

...omitting potentially hundreds of educational applications for Linux.

"TuxMaths is a great maths program for kids, but it's not in there. In fact nothing is in there. So if you were a teacher and you wanted to use Linux then this official site tells you that there is no software for it. It's a shambles," says Jenkins.

Spencer agrees that Becta could do more. "It says the total cost of ownership is worth it, but it never gives overt incentives to move to open source software — schools need cash incentives," he says.

The problem does not just lie with Becta, but goes much higher, according to Jenkins. He complains that the UK government has given schools too much money, which has not encouraged them to look for lower cost open source products.

"The problem in schools is that they have too much money. In the last few years [secondary] schools have been getting £10,000-15,000 pounds to build up their IT infrastructure. If you have a lot of money thrown at a problem, you don't buy what's the best value," he says.

However, primary schools are a "different kettle of fish", according to Jenkins, as they receive significantly less funding from the government, and are therefore more likely to consider open source.

Orwell High School's Osborne agrees and says that one of the primary schools that have visited his school is looking at deploying Linux thin clients.

"A lot of primary schools are in deep doodah — many are still running Windows 95 machines and have no big budgets to replace them and no technician — they can't afford one," he says.

The way the government earmarks funding for particular types of IT spending has not helped open source either, claims Jenkins. "The government gives out e-learning credits, which schools can only spend on software, so they end up simply buying more software for their Microsoft suite," he says.

Cost isn't everything
So, what lessons can businesses learn from schools that have successfully adopted open source? SiriusIT's Spencer has found that children in schools have easily learned how to use the software, and often found it easier to use than applications such as Windows XP.

"Businesses can relax about the training barrier — it isn't anywhere near the barrier that people think it is," claims Spencer.

He agrees with Osborne that Linux thin clients are more resilient — at one school where SiriusIT has installed thin clients, there is no technician to support the technology, but due to the resilience of the technology this has not been an issue.

"With Linux, IT isn't an issue any more — systems don't crash. The thin client environment is quicker to boot and if someone pulls the plug it's back up in a few seconds. Also, they don't blue screen any more," he says.

He claims that schools are a "great test bed environment" for software in general. "Youngsters are the most probing of users — if they can't break it, nobody can," he says.

For businesses, this resilience could mean less downtime and higher productivity. Businesses may also be able to replicate the savings made by schools in the reduced need for support staff. Rishab Ghosh, the programme...

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