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Should Free/Open source software be adopted by the school system? (Discussion)

jza said – Thu, 22 May 2008 18:50:52 -0000 ( Edit Link )

GNU/Linux and free software is usually referenced as a great oportunity to the school system to: a) save money b) teach students about technology and not about a specific product.

There are efforts internationally to bring Free software to the people. The most famous and recent is the One Laptop Per Child OLPC project.

However there are also pure software projects designed to teach students using Open Source. KEdu is a project that exist within the KDE project ( a free software project) that design tools for specific subjects.

You are not teaching technology but teaching your class USING technology.

Kedu currently takes part on these tools: - Algebra - Languages - Typing - Astrology - Chemistry - Geography - Vocabulary

..and many more. So why shouldn’t the school system adopt this technologies that are freely available? One of the reason is training, the school system lack’s trained profesionals on the Linux platform.

Here is where e-Educators can provide this training and accelerate the adoption of these technologies.

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JohnPhilipGreen said – Fri, 23 May 2008 14:18:03 -0000 ( Flag Edit Mark / Unmark Best Link )

I agree! In addition to costing less (tax/tuition dollars!) the tools are often much better for learning.

The most successful use of open source in high education that I’ve been a part of is NACHOS, which my Operative System Prof at Waterloo used to teach the course. We also used Linux and BSD… it was one of my favorite courses.

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