Why isn't there somebody out there challenging the basic notion of having to pay high prices for administrative school software? It seems to me that with the budgetary pressures facing school districts, that some company will surface and provide quality open source software that can be supported and maintained for far less than the commercial alternatives. Why isn't it happening?
Am I way off base? Somebody challenge me and let's get a useful debate going on how we shift K-12 to an open source community software industry. Education is a collaborative community anyway on many other things. Why not open source software?
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
Open Source in Use at K-12 Districts
I recently wrote a post discussing the slow rate of adoption of open source alternatives in K-12. For this post, I thought I would give some examples of actual districts using open source alternatives in their districts as business as usual. Let's start with Plano ISD in Texas.
Plano ISD is actively researching and using open source software. Since 2000, they have been building and converting on-line courses to the Moodle open source course management application. For graphical work, Plano has rolled out Gimp, an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. They are using Open Office and WordPress, an open source blog tool and weblog platform. In the back office area, Plano is using Linux in its server farms. You can read more about Plano ISD and its use of open source in this interview done with Jim Hirsch, the CIO.
Saugus Union School District located in the Santa Clarita Valley in Northern Los Angeles County decided to move to Linux as they encountered dwindling support from some of their application providers for the Novell platform. Saugus has become a case study for the CoSN open technology initiative. Saugus has converted 9 critical network related applications to open source alternatives and arer realizing multiple benefits including lower TCO, easier maintenance and better efficiency. You can read the case study here.
The State of Indiana is another example rolling out Linux desktops across the state. I spoke with Mike Huffman about it at the CoSN conference and what used to be minimal interest is now turning into majority interest with vendors coming from around the country to see it in action. You can read more detail about this effort here.
While adoption of open source is moving slowly in K-12, there leaders who are taking the first steps and realizing the potential of open source and the collaborative community model. If any industry can truly benefit from open source, it is K-12 education. If you are an educator, have you investigated open source? Try some of these links to popular open source web websites:
The Open CD - A project capturing quality open source applications and distributing them to interested organizations (http://www.theopencd.org/)
Moodle - Open source course management solution in widespread use around the world (http://www.moodle.org)
Open Office - A Microsoft Office like free productivity suite containing all of the same basic applications, and more, as MS Office. It is absolutely free and it absolutely works. I use it everyday. (http://www.openoffice.org)
Edubuntu - From the makers of Ubuntu, one of the easiest to install and use versions of Linux, comes an education specific version of Linux. It is excellent and easy for non-technical people to get installed and running. (http://www.edubuntu.org/).
Open Source Alternatives - A great website that allows you to find open source alternatives to popular commercial products. Includes links to the sites where you can get the open source software. (http://www.osalt.com)
School Forge - A Source Forge like site collecting open source software information specific to education. (http://www.schoolforge.net).
Plano ISD is actively researching and using open source software. Since 2000, they have been building and converting on-line courses to the Moodle open source course management application. For graphical work, Plano has rolled out Gimp, an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop. They are using Open Office and WordPress, an open source blog tool and weblog platform. In the back office area, Plano is using Linux in its server farms. You can read more about Plano ISD and its use of open source in this interview done with Jim Hirsch, the CIO.
Saugus Union School District located in the Santa Clarita Valley in Northern Los Angeles County decided to move to Linux as they encountered dwindling support from some of their application providers for the Novell platform. Saugus has become a case study for the CoSN open technology initiative. Saugus has converted 9 critical network related applications to open source alternatives and arer realizing multiple benefits including lower TCO, easier maintenance and better efficiency. You can read the case study here.
The State of Indiana is another example rolling out Linux desktops across the state. I spoke with Mike Huffman about it at the CoSN conference and what used to be minimal interest is now turning into majority interest with vendors coming from around the country to see it in action. You can read more detail about this effort here.
While adoption of open source is moving slowly in K-12, there leaders who are taking the first steps and realizing the potential of open source and the collaborative community model. If any industry can truly benefit from open source, it is K-12 education. If you are an educator, have you investigated open source? Try some of these links to popular open source web websites:
The Open CD - A project capturing quality open source applications and distributing them to interested organizations (http://www.theopencd.org/)
Moodle - Open source course management solution in widespread use around the world (http://www.moodle.org)
Open Office - A Microsoft Office like free productivity suite containing all of the same basic applications, and more, as MS Office. It is absolutely free and it absolutely works. I use it everyday. (http://www.openoffice.org)
Edubuntu - From the makers of Ubuntu, one of the easiest to install and use versions of Linux, comes an education specific version of Linux. It is excellent and easy for non-technical people to get installed and running. (http://www.edubuntu.org/).
Open Source Alternatives - A great website that allows you to find open source alternatives to popular commercial products. Includes links to the sites where you can get the open source software. (http://www.osalt.com)
School Forge - A Source Forge like site collecting open source software information specific to education. (http://www.schoolforge.net).
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