[OT] *PING* anyone in the UK

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Whats the deal with UK public schools going Open Source? How's the
general consensus?

With the US schools having its share of budget woes, wonder if we (as a
group per se) should help promote freeware / open source as an
alternative to our local schools (such as OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.)
 
Whats the deal with UK public schools going Open Source? How's the
general consensus?

With the US schools having its share of budget woes, wonder if we (as a
group per se) should help promote freeware / open source as an
alternative to our local schools (such as OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.)
Click to expand...

Not from UK, but from Germany some information you might be interested
in: In 1996 started a governmental initiative to get schools to the
internet. The computer magazine c't thought about supporting that idea
and assembled a server solution customized to the needs of schools on
the basis of Linux.

Over the years they and moreover some teachers issued updates with more
functionality and better security adjustments.

The project is still alive and can be reached here:

http://www.arktur.schul-netz.de/ueber.php

The whole site is in German. But you should be able to read it through
AltaVista or another translation service. And if you contact the team:
There sure will be someone speaking English. (At least I think so.)

I can't tell you any more, myself, because I never had anything to do
with that project. I just read that magazine. ;-)

BeAr
 
thats awesome. curious as to what the public schools from other
countries are doing?
 
Whats the deal with UK public schools going Open Source? How's the
general consensus?

With the US schools having its share of budget woes, wonder if we (as a
group per se) should help promote freeware / open source as an
alternative to our local schools (such as OpenOffice, Firefox, etc.)
Click to expand...

For many state schools the debate is immaterial. A lot of curriculum
software has to be tailor-made, and schools are 'required' to buy into
a goverment-approved software package.

Sounds rather draconian, but in practice it ensures that a competent
educational software package can be rolled out nationwide and be
guaranteed to function in terms of the needs of the curriculum.

In practice though it's not really the software that the schools are
particularly worried about - it's having a tailored support package
that can be budgeted for in advance that really counts...and year on
year this is what schools really spend their IT budget on.

I can see that for the Public schools ( aka Private education ) there
might be some advantage in terms of cost - they're likely to small to
medium sized enterprises - but IT support will still be a necessity,
and I wonder just how far that would extend when it comes to open
source. After all, freeware is free...but technical support is a
completely different matter.

Regards,
 
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