[Nottingham] Interesting news: "UK tech specialist school pioneers open source switch"

[David Aldred]

On Tuesday 19 Oct 2004 15:46, Michael Erskine wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just read the following on The Register regarding a school's move to
> OSS...
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/19/oss_school_switch/
>
> ...perhaps we might have some influence over the choice of operating
> systems in our local classrooms!

I'll certainly be interested to watch this develop - at least a change would 
get them away from using MS Publisher to design their website

I'm a Governor of a secondary school in Nottingham: we haven't any specific 
plans to change our current IT just at the moment, but if certain 
developments work out over the next couple of years, the question is very 
likely to come up.   

The main potential problem I can see is finding the staff to go with a 
Linux-based solution we're currently unable to find a head of IT (and sole IT 
teacher)  as it is, there being few people with the right skills willing to 
go into teaching.  If the teacher we end up appointing is non-Linux friendly, 
the governors are unlikely to go for a system which a hard-to-find staff 
member won't work with... 

For the moment, I've suggested addressing one very minor shortage of PC 
equipment in the school by buying  a cheap PC and putting Linux on it: all 
it's really needed for is web browsing, and even one in there could start 
things for the future.....

-- 
David Aldred