Technology & Learning - April 2009 - (Page 30) FEATURESTORY What to watch for According to Steve Hargadon, director of K-12 technologies for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and other school technology directors, several trends are emerging on the open-source front. Go to techlearning.com to access the author’s bookmarks: ■ Although it started behind the scenes, in back-end operations, the use of Linux and other open-source software in schools is growing and will accelerate in the current tight fiscal climate. Not only is it being used in more schools, but leading schools are using it to enrich education, enabling students to do new things that costly proprietary software puts out of reach. ■ Open-source software really is cheaper—it’s often free!— but it has to fill a gap or meet a practical need to convince districts to switch. Often the lack of Linux-based course materials, users’ opposition to change, and the lack of a local Linux champion/guru outweigh the promise of saving money. Even IT staffs can be roadblocks to open-source adoption, especially in big cities. ■ There appears to be a growing education-based opensource ecosystem. There are more opportunities to share information and expertise (Hargadon’s Open Source Pavilion at the National Education Computing Conferences and the hands-on summer workshops of Vassalboro [Maine] Community School’s David Trask, for example). There is also a growing group of consultants, like Quebec-based Revolution Linux and Resara LLC in Keene, NH, that can provide turnkey Linux support for school districts. ■ Leading schools are teaching kids not just how to use open-source programs but also how to write their own opensource programs. ■ Innovative schools in Brazil, Spain, and, to a lesser extent, Michigan City, IN, are using free open-source software not only for back offices and desktops but for normally costly IT infrastructure implementations, such as centralized software deployment and upgrades, disaster recovery, and other functions for thousands of desktops. Michigan City, an early adopter of Indiana’s Access 1-to-1 desktop initiative more than three years ago, opened a brand-new elementary school in January that runs entirely on free open-source software, and it will open a second one this summer. majority of whom have now been won over, he says. Despite his strong open-source advocacy, Orwin points out that this software has its limits, particularly the lack of open-source curriculum materials, a gap vendors tell him is 18 months away from being filled. “We need to use what’s best for teaching and learning,” Orwin says. “Open-source [curriculum] applications aren’t on the same playing field. That’s the biggest hurdle in moving over all our desktops from Windows.” Another hurdle is the pervasive presence of Microsoft Office. “If you have templates, training, and curriculum built around Microsoft Office, you can’t just snap your fingers and switch,” says Steve Hargadon, director of K-12 technologies for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). “Typically, open-source adoption occurs when there is no existing [proprietary] solution.” Challenges to learning aside, Orwin’s guideline is to use as many open-source or cross-platform applications as possible, he says, so that when the district eventually converts to an open-source operating system, the changeover will be invisible to users. Most schools now use open-source software use primarily in back-office functions, such as the Apache Web server and Drupal content management for Web sites, says Hargadon. It’s slowly becoming more visible in schools, however, in applications such as the Firefox browser, which requires minimal user adjustment, and Moodle, the popular Web-based open-source-curriculum alternative to Blackboard, which many schools simply cannot afford, he says. “Moodle has bridged the chasm,” Hargadon says. “Everyone might not be using it yet, but there isn’t a district IT director who doesn’t know about it.” Finances, though, remain a strong incentive to at least explore open source. Hargadon estimates that typical districts can save $60,000 to $200,000 a year in software-licensing fees by switching to free open-source alternatives (not all open-source applications are free, remember), including Open Office word-processing and spreadsheet programs. But switching to open- 30 | TECH & LEARNING http://www.techlearning.com http://www.lanschool.com http://www.lanschool.com
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