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Story: Microsoft rubbishes school open source report

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What about the benefit of student participation?

Open source software gives kids the opportunity to become involved in developing the software they use. True, this is more relevant in high schools. This is good both for the kids that get involved, and if the use of open source software becomes more widely used in schools, it would also be good for open source, as many talented kids would learn how to participate. High school kids have plenty of spare time they can use to contribute.

The MS spokesman said that the study was biased because some primary schools had access to support from secondary schools. That's wrong, of course. ALL primary schools can get support from secondary school students if they would organize. They would be able to get better support if some of the secondary school students are actively involved in development of teh software. There's a threshold to be surpassed, but eventually it would be much better for teachers when they can ask students to make them the software that does what they want instead of telling them what they can and what they cannot do with MicroSoft products. Studentsw can even get credit for creating tools for their teachers to work with, or for customizinf existing tools for the school environment.

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