On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 19:55, fsanta wrote:
On Thursday 30 October 2003 11:34, ian wrote:
On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 09:05, ICT Support Officer wrote:
Education authorities are also to blame as I believe they probably
receive a
slice of profits from industry by pushing commercial software into
schools.
I don't think that there is any particular evidence for this. Its more likely that they just take the line of least resistance. Its not their money so why cause themselves hassle? Why should they learn new things? (Obviously lifelong learning is for other people) Its incompetence more than conspiracy.
There is so much free and fully functional software out there for
education.
Yes but marketing is a key part of getting any product to the customer otherwise companies wouldn't spend masses of money on it. FLOSS has cracked the technical development side of things to a much greater degree than it has marketing.
I must repeat, I am so saddened to see so much money from schools
being
"wasted".
So what do we do about it? Better to put the time into constructive action than just worrying about it. Here are a few suggestions.
Join the AFFS (Association for Free Software) Come to the FLOSSIE conference in February and get as many others to as possible. Join the OpenOffice.org education project Make sure you buy as much equipment as possible from companies that also support non-Microsoft solutions in schools Educate the kids about FLOSS so they become better informed Run an after school IT club that supports a FLOSS project or producing FLOSS teacing resources. Use theINGOTs.org assessment for certificating pupils Get pupils involved in theINGOTs.org competitions Contribute some basic teaching materials in free formats to Schoolforge
Remember - Give a brick, get a house. All we need is every teacher who thinks like you do to get a dozen pupils to produce some a few resources.
-- ian
Hi Ian. Hi everyone.
It's really hard being ouside the uk and the acronyms you guys use really defeat us at times here in here in Spain.
Sorry, FLOSSIE is Free Libre Open Source Software in Education INGOTS are International Grades in Office Technology (Just need to translate the assessment criteria into Spanish ;-) )
We'd love to share stuff with you all and your point about getting involved is excellent. An example came about today as we've produced some good dtp stuff with Scribus which was the last stage on our road to gcse edexcel-and-having-to-do-what-they-say. We could certainly help with Spanish contact too.
I have a Language College that we are just installing a Linux thin client network with 64 machines in that specialises in Spanish. If you E-mail me off list, I'll put you in touch with the Head of languages. I'm sure he will be keen to make contact.
How about some fast webspace with a place to put the kid's work examples? Just thinking out loud as I have to install the OOo patch on 20 clients.
I'm doing some maths teaching things in OpenOffice.org Impress as a
start so I can send you the files. Since its maths it should be pretty
easy to translate into Spanish as its mainly diagrams.
If we can make a start other people can add to it and we can then mirror
it on Schoolforge UK, AFFS web site and perhaps OO.o
Carpe diem mañana
--
ian