Technology & Learning - April 2009 - (Page 32) FEATURESTORY source desktop programs that impose change on most users can face major resistance, he says. Yet another hurdle looms for districts thinking about a switch to open source: expertise. It’s clear from numerous interviews that the technology director must be a champion of open source—not just a champion but also a Linux guru, adds Orwin. Even Orwin is stumped as to how to eliminate the need for double log-ins from a Linux desktop (once to the desktop and again to the network) to access home folders without going through a Web browser. Striving to make the Linux experience as Windows-like as possible, Orwin has hired consultants to fix the problem by means of custom programming this summer. “It’s hard to describe the quirky things we deal with on a daily basis,” he says. “It’s probably not any harder than any other network operating system, but it is not as well known and requires a different skill set.” Code to Go For Michigan City, IN, students, getting free software is as easy as withdrawing money from an ATM machine. They simply visit the school’s custom-made six-foot Freedom Toaster, select one or more open-source applications from the touch screen, insert a CD, and burn the software onto the disk. “We believe open source is the best solution and want to make our community aware of what Linux and open source can be,” says Kevin Maguire, Indiana’s school technology director of the year and Michigan City’s self-proclaimed Freedom Toaster community advocate. “We offer this because we live in a high-poverty area and it allows students to burn [free] software much faster than downloading it on dial-up connections, if they even have dial-up.” Large-scale deployments like Michigan City’s are rare. Also unusual, although apparently growing in number, are schools that are teaching students not just to run open source but also to learn open-source applications and to write programs of their own. Jeff Elkner, a computer-science teacher at Governor’s Career and Technical Academy in Arlington, VA, likes to get students involved in real-world projects and prefers open-source software because there are no restrictions, he says. For example, some of his students used Python open-source programming language to write CanDo, a massive Webbased application for tracking several student competencies, which the state of Virginia will launch this month. They also helped convert a computer-robot project from Pascal programming language to Python, he says, and will modify the code to run on Sugar, the open-source operating system for One Laptop Per Child. “By the time they graduate, the students are professionals,” says Elkner. Although Elkner used to be a “lone eccentric” when he began teaching opensource software a decade ago, his classes aren’t as unusual these days. “The rest of the world is catching up,” he says. Best Open Source Resources for Schools ■ openSUSE: Licensing-free way for schools to provide authentication services, file and print services, database and Web-server systems as well as application-delivery services. ■ Dan’s Guardian Internet filtering and proxy services: This project replaces the customary subscription-model filtering system with an add-on module to the popular SQUID Internet proxy and cache system deployed with every major Linux distribution and frequently Dan’s Guardian see is what you get) that makes it easy for teachers to learn to modify their Web presence with a few minutes a week or day to keep the public informed to assignments and events. ■ Elgg: social interaction site like Facebook, but for the purpose of schoolwork collaboration. ■ Moodle: This project replaces products like Blackboard and makes it possible for small private and public schools to offer an online classroom. It works like many of the modern social-networking sites yet is organized and manageable, like a real classroom. ■ openSIS: an open-source studentinformation system that costs $1 or $2 per student. *Courtesy of the openSUSE Education project (http://en.opensuse. org/Education_ERP) Moodle Elgg installed on commercial Web sites. ■ openBiblio: A library-automation system that is flexible enough to handle DVDs, online, and e-book subscriptions and credentials and a list of other tangible and intangible learning assets. ■ Joomla: an easy-to-manage replacement for the traditionally farmed out, usually static, one-directional Web page most schools project. It presents a very-easy-to-understand word processor interface known as a WYSIWYG editor (what you 32 | TECH & LEARNING http://en.opensuse.org/Education_ERP http://en.opensuse.org/Education_ERP
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