Lesson 2

FOSS In Schools

The lesson addresses these topics:

  • Impacts on Schools and Families
  • Roadblocks to Adoption
  • Alternatives to Proprietary Applications

Advanced Organizer

During the lesson, look for answers to the following questions:

  1. How does a school’s FOSS adoption (or lack thereof) impact families?
  2. If FOSS can save schools significant money, why aren’t more educators aware of this?
  3. What are the real or perceived impediments to schools adopting FOSS?
  4. How are school decision makers distanced from software licensing costs?
  5. How and where can technical managers upgrade their skills to include FOSS solutions?
  6. What were the drivers behind the successful FOSS implementation at Albany Senior High?
  7. Is it feasible for schools to implement large-scale FOSS adoption in the United States?
  8. What FOSS titles sound interesting, given your current or intended role in education?

Walk-through

To be able to fully participate in next week’s synchronous meeting you will need to complete all of the readings in this week’s walk-through.

1. Read Why Aren’t Schools Adopting Open Source?

A parent’s reflection on his daughter’s hurdles to using OpenOffice for school assignments, this article raises several questions about school support for FOSS. Last week, we read in Benefits of Open-Source Software in Education that family finances can be impacted dramatically, and this is one parent’s reflection on the issue. Note his additional concerns over divergent versions of software in school computers and learning materials.

2. Read Getting Open Source Software into Schools – Strategies and Challenges pp. 1-4

This article explores five sources of resistance to FOSS adoption: Awareness, Politics of Payment, Dynamics of Change, Ethics, and Technical Personnel Skills. As you read, think about your own role in schools and how your input or silence affects these.

yiko4udk3. Read The Open School House pp. 20-64

  • Beginnings and Foundations
  • An Open Technology Team
  • Linux is Elementary

4. Review OSS Options for Education

This site presents set of FOSS alternatives to various proprietary software in the education sector. It is an “ongoing collaboration between OSS Watch, the UK education community, and open source software communities”. The authors provide comments and links to examples of real-world use cases. Software is listed by category, including:

  • E-Learning, Assessment,
  • Classroom Tools,
  • Library Systems,
  • Mobile Solutions,
  • Enterprise Architecture,
  • Management Information Systems, and
  • Subject-specific tools -music, film/media production, theatre/drama, art/photography, design, computing, psychology, geography, engineering, and religious studies

5. Read Open Source adoption in Education Sector: Interview with Patrick Masson from OSI, questions 1-8

Using hypothose.is in our class group, highlight and comment on anything you either don’t fully understand, or believe is a key issue for FOSS adoption in education. We can use your questions and comments as a discussion starting point in our HOT session.

Assignment

blog-icon-png-218Blog Post #4 – FOSS Search

  1. For this assignment, you will identify FOSS applications you believe will be useful to you in your career. For example, a science educator might choose Nightshade for for teaching and exploring astronomy, Earth science, and related topics. A math educator might choose Geogebra for teaching interactive geometry, algebra, statistics or calculus.
  2. Review one or more categories of software in OSS Options for Education, the Wikipedia FOSS list, sourceforge.net and alternativeto.net. (Alternativeto.net allows you to specify an application you want to replace, then filter your search by open-source license and by operating system)
  3. Identify 3 FOSS titles you are interested in exploring.  Install them, and try them out.
  4. Describe your 3 titles and answer these questions:
    1. Why does this software interest you?
    2. What are the proprietary software competitors?
    3. Where and how is the software in use by educational institutions? Or, how would you propose to use them in a school?
    4. Link to the projects’ websites, and cite the license used (verify that it’s FOSS).
  5. Write a review for each title on openhub.net (you’ll need to create an account).  From any project (software) page, find “Ratings and Reviews”, lower right in the footer. Link to your reviews from your blog (like this).

Synchronous Meeting

indexCollaborate Web Conference

Please join the web conference 15 minutes early to re-test your microphone and headset. During class; we will be discussing some of the material from the past two weeks. Be prepared to ask questions and to participate in answering those posed. You should be socially present and participate – that means listening, “raising your hand”, responding in a manner that evidences that you’re familiar with the past two weeks of material.

Additional Material

  1. Wikipedia’s List of Free and Open-source software (Wikipedia)
  2. The KDE Education project (HTML)
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