Software Free

Although not much noise has been made about it, the Russian migration of schools to free software is potentially a hugely important project. Here's an update:

The pilot project to migrate schools of three Russian regions to Free Software has recently expanded its geography. Now it is possible for the schools outside of Tatarstan, Perm krai and Tomsk region to voluntarily apply for participation by completing a special form (Russian) published on the project website.

The project, if successful, may be the first step towards large-scale migration of Russian secondary education instutitions and, consequently, of the other state agencies to Free Software as President Medvedev stated last year (Russian) while being the First Deputy Prime Minister.

I've got a pet peeve. I love reading "Why GNU/Linux should be used in schools" articles. My pet peeve is the fact that the main focus of most of these articles is cost. The way it is portrayed by the media turns it into a cheap “alternative” that you use if you can't afford Windows or hate Microsoft.

The open source community is up in arms today following Becta’s decision to award its open source schools project to a little-known consultancy firm.

As schools analyze alternatives to hefty licensing fees, LUGs and Linux-in-education organizations are pointing out that Open Source solutions are better suited to the educational environment, and are only a fraction of the cost.

"Kerala is all set to become the first state in the country to completely banish Microsoft and allow only GNU/Linux free software to be used in the mandatory IT test at the state SSLC examinations that half a million students took in March. Till last year, they could take the exam using either free software or the Microsoft platform.

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Edubuntu is a customized version of Ubuntu aimed at children in educational environments. According to the distributions homepage, Edubuntu is "Linux for Young Human Beings." That works out well for me, since I have three of those in my house. I homeschool my children and use Edubuntu on a couple of our computers.

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About 70,000 students and their 7,000 teachers in the Geneva school district will gradually be moving to Open Source. The decision to move to Open Source was taken by the Geneva Public School District in March 2006. Eventually all teachers will be supplied with laptops running Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

When 3Ghz dual core computers running 2GB of RAM weren't being used for many heavily CPU-intensive applications in a Victorian secondary school library, the school's IT department initially joked about replacing them with older and previously abandoned hardware. Then it saw the serious side.

It's always seemed to me one of the biggest problems for free software that it's not well known in schools. As Microsoft understands - and as Apple first learned - if you get them young, you've pretty much got them forever. So it's good to see efforts being made to spread the open source word in the educational world, like this new effort by the Portuguese Ministry of Eduction:

Potenciar a utilização de software livre nas escolas, aumentando as oportunidades inerentes à sua adopção, é a base para a criação deste portal.

Procuramos divulgar e apoiar as Escolas na utilização de software livre para os vários Sistemas Operativos.

O Portal estará em constante actualização, pelo que convidamos todos os utilizadores a enriquecer este projecto submetendo novas ferramentas, notícias e hiperligações, assim como, estão também desde já convidados a participar no fórum.

The schools of the Canton of Geneva are going to switch 9000 computers from Windows to GNU/Linux in September according to this article which is in German. Here is the google translation: http://google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pro-linux.de%2Fnews%2F200...

Alexander Ponosov, director of the school in the village of Sepych, Perm Territory, who has found guilty of installing pirated Windows software in 12 school computers, has changed jobs. He is now engaged in popularizing the free Linux operating system, Window's biggest competitor, after winning a competition held by the Russian Federal Education Agency (Rosobrazovanie) to test Linux in school computers in three regions of the country. Ponosov received wide attention after the local prosecutor charged him with installing pirated software in school computers.

Educational institutions will increase spending on open-source software and services over the next few years, but that doesn't mean proprietary software will be left in the dark, according to a new report covering 14 countries.

I am inviting you to see the schools in my district.There you can see how reachers handling linux .Of course there is some problems in Printer Driver but it can be solved in the new versions .You must realise the Propreitory Rights .It is a new OS it will take some time to establish .You are listing the problems are your problems only

"...Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson. It also teaches students the role model of public service rather than that of tycoons. All levels of school should use free software." -- via edte.ch http://edte.ch/2008/01/13/why-schools-should-exclusively-use-free-softwa...

In September this year, the Macedonian government announced one of the most ambitious educational technology projects ever proposed: to provide 180,000 of its school-age children with computer access.