[Gllug] UK schools education and FOSS

[Chris Bell]

On Fri 21 Oct, Martin N Stevens wrote:
> 
> >On 20 October 2011 20:42, Chris Bell <chrisbell at chrisbell.org.uk> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >   I am not an expert, but I feel that the UK is falling far behind the rest
> > of the world at least partly because many teachers and schools are totally
> > ignorant of what is available, so provide little or no help to students.
> 
> Far from it, I think you will find that there is lot of excellent IT
> in schools, with highly skilled ICT Managers and Technicians
> running what amounts to a large networks on very small budgets.

   Agreed, but I have visited almost every BETT show and speaking to people
at random am not convinced that is generally the case.

> The curriculum and examinations are OS agnostic, however it's up to
> the teachers how they teach the curriculum.

   Is the curriculum set by individual examination boards or the government
education department?

> Then you have all the thousands of applications that teachers want to use.

   I have been told that many are web based, so also OS agnostic.

> So from a support point of view I run as much of the backend on OS
> software as I can e.g FOG, Moodle, Zimbra, and offer teachers open
> source alternatives when they want to
> i.e. gimp, audacity.
> 
> > Some stands with individual Open Source packages have appeared in the two
> > main education exhibitions, the BETT show in London and the Education Show
> > in Birmingham in recent years, but would there be any support for a larger
> > FOSS general demonstration area with space for entire distributions, an Open
> > Source Village?
> 
> Distributions don't help, what is required is market leading
> applications, that integrate.
> 
> I have been watching various open source apps for the education market
> for coming up 10 years now, and very few are worth using.
> 
> MIS Systems - Schooltool - a joke for use in the UK. Although I'm sure
> Mark Shuttleworth thinks it's money well spent.
> Library Software - Nothing really worth using.
> 
> What would probably actually make a difference is if
> http://www.openzis.org/ and the SIF format was implemented by all the
> major software suppliers to the education sector.

   I am thinking more about the education gained by the students, and
whether they leave with some knowledge that there is something other than
Microsoft.

-- 
Chris Bell www.chrisbell.org.uk
Microsoft sells you Windows ... Linux gives you the whole house.




-- 
Chris Bell www.chrisbell.org.uk
Microsoft sells you Windows ... Linux gives you the whole house.

--
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug