THE two reasons why we do not use Open Source in Education
If you do nothing else with this post, check out the artist (Brett Dennen) that I link to below. He is GREAT - in concert and on CD. In fact, you can bet that his Mosaic Project CD (which can also be found on iTunes) will be a staple in my children’s playlist’s! How can you RESIST a CD titled: Children’s Songs for Peace and a Better World??? 
This is a really spontaneous post, originating from a dialog in my head, an entirley separate (forced) conversation and my own personal feelings on the matter. Read at your own risk:
Open source in education has been on my mind this week and I keep wondering more and more - why do we not make the move to open source software in schools? Every day, I do more of my work on Internet based applications then the day before, so what is holding us back? A working browser? I can boot up a version of a Linux operating system off of a CD and do everything I’m doing now (writing, posting, email, etc) on it. (AND, I am NOT a person with very much knowledge on open source!!) I’ll toss out two reasons that I believe are the primary factors in keeping us from using open source.
- It’s the way we’ve always done it. Brett Dennen - one of my favorite artists - says it best. Go to his MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/brettdennen) and click on the song, ‘Ain’t No Reason’. For those of you with MySpace blocked in your district (like us), grunt a short/quiet yell, let your anger go, and view it at home.
- Our technical/hardware/network support staff is a product of a Microsoft/Big Business knowledge network that keeps them engrained in supporting the systems that make these companies money. There are control issues involved, learning a new way of doing things and trying to replicate the current systems with a new structure. But these can be overcome.
So, let it go, people. Give each student a CD/access to the image and make them resintall their own OS if they have problems. Give them rights to do the things we THINK we need to do for them, and save some money in the process. Seems so simple … so why is it so hard to get over our hang-ups? 
February 8th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
The reason we don’t use free software in education is because there’s no [insert name of commercial educational software package here] available. Yeah, it’s great you can run free software equivalents of productivity software (old hat now with all the web-based apps), but what about the educational software that teachers want to use? I’ll admit I’m a bit removed from the K-12 environment, but I imagine there are many titles out there that teachers wouldn’t be willing to give up. As someone who vowed to never use Microsoft software at home, I find myself dual-booting into Windows so my daughters can play their online games that require shockwave and activeX.
It’s important to remember, too, that there is free software that runs on Windows. In the 4-5 years I’ve been pushing these things, the people I work with are more likely to accept the notion that free != inferior. My suspicion, though, is that we’ll see the continued movement to online applications and storage, so we’ll have even more choice.
Regarding purchasing/support decisions, it’s not much of a surprise that folks would choose commercial solutions with support systems. I know there’s community (and increasing commercial) support for free software projects, but our IT staff doesn’t want to be googling and trolling the forums; they want a 1-800 number.
Note that I’m a big advocate of free software–so much so I avoid using “open source” whenever possible–so I don’t mean to rain on your idea. You pick the tool that fits your needs; sometimes it might be free software, other times not.
February 8th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Dood - what about Brett Dennen? That’s the whole reason for the post, anyway…