Open source can save schools billions

[Netman]

Sorry if my article on FOSS savings in schools should have struck a nerve.

 

But really, given the unrealistic education discount bribes handed out to technicians to do nothing to change from their comfort zone status quo, do you think balanced pros and cons 'one the one hand ..on the other' rhetoric would have the slightest effect at all...it hasn't so far so what is different now?

 

Of course FOSS would save schools money the clue is it's free. The real savings though come from FOSS philosphy, do new things, embrace new technologies rather than slavishly upgrade to the latest vendor's new offer. How do you quantify this?

 

BTW I thought the article was funny, it was meant to be, got a few laughs.

 

Putting aside your insults for a moment - So you want us to all dump our existing systems and come to your company to switch us over to FOSS, paying through the nose to do so eh? Hmmm, let me think about that....

 

...no thanks - cheers anyway.

 

And you'd like the government to sack us all and employ companies like yourselves to run ICT in schools instead because that would be cheaper of course

 

Does your MD know you're trolling forums and bringing your company into disrepute? No? Thought not

[GrumbleDook]

For full article on why educational discounts and the G-Cloud spells trouble go to

 

Is the UK Government really set to shed 10,000 School ICT Staff? | Sirius Corporation plc

 

*sigh* the same way you claim to be feeling sorry for the Edu-Proprietary vendor ... I feel a tad sorry for you. You really are missing a huge chunk of the picture and I suggest you go and have a long conversation with others on SchoolForge-UK or Open Source Schools to get a healthy dose of realism. You think prices / discounts are a major chunk of the problem? No ... try the educational software which is media rich and is based on local (to the machine or school network) installation and use.

 

You are scare mongering, appear to have little idea of what else goes on to run a school network (even one under BSF which is heavily centralised) and belittle the additional work done by techies in schools.

 

Again, you also fail to mention educational impact ... and the same way that people have talked about TAs / LSAs having little affect on the progress of pupils it has already been publicised by the Govt and Opposition how important they are in other areas such as allowing teachers to get with their work, the growing roll of HLTAs, etc ...

 

The problem is the small amount of PR given to support staff in schools, but caretakers have had to deal with that for years.

 

I will raise your concerns at the OpenSourceSchools meeting later in the month and even ask the question of "What was Stephen Crowe really talking about?"

[mortstar]

For full article on why educational discounts and the G-Cloud spells trouble go to

 

Is the UK Government really set to shed 10,000 School ICT Staff? | Sirius Corporation plc

 

Vested interest much? Any actual real world examples? You don't even seem to be aware of how ICT support actually works in schools now, nevermind what the future holds...I will place a £1000 wager that a Government 'App Store' never ever happens.

[penfold]

Now I might be being a bit stupid here, but has the general gist of this thread basicaly been that all techs in schools have been doing a bad job and not looking at development of the schools network? Again, I've read the article and I cant help notice how close it is to some teachers expectations of their tech support without actually knowing what it is we do. And I mean shadowing a school tech for a day at least, see what demands are placed on us and unrealistic timescales working with little or no budget.

 

But taking away all the valid points that people have already made, one thing remains constant. You only talk about how much better and how much money you will save by removing the local techs, and change to open source. But how much money will it cost to train every teacher(of which there are far more than techs) to be able to use new systems and new software? Because one thing is for sure, there are a vast amount of teachers who will demand to have training available for such dramatic changes. How much will it cost to employ supply teachers to cover for all the teacher going on training courses? And who would actually do it?

 

 

As already has been said, the pupils will pick up changes quite naturally, but lots of teaching staff show a reluctance to move forward when it comes to technology.

[pete]

@Spannerman2

 

Should a school choose to move away from Sirius' offerings (say Bishop Fox's Community School), how many other vendors / support organisations could pick up the load at a similar price point (without saying "you'll have to go to windows")? Would Sirius ensure that said school wasn't left in the lurch?

 

I'm wondering if the lack of known suppliers who can provide schools with decent cross-platform integration would inadvertantly cause supplier lock-in in exchange for vendor lock-in? How many of your customers (or prospective customers) have been pressured away from you by LAs?

 

Assuming IT techs within schools dissappear, who ensures the school gets value for money / can eyeball a quote or proposal to ensure the supplier isn't taking them for a ride or speccing something that isn't really what they're asking for? Do they pay another consultant to check it over? Do they ask county who (here at least) are very windows-centric and (if they were doing their honest best) may miss things?

 

Who are Sirius competitors (by which I mean suppliers of OpenSource solutions to schools) in the education space? Are there enough to keep you competitively priced?

 

Moving back to Bishop Fox's Community School, you flag up "£1,200 in energy saving a year", which is pretty good. How does that compare to cost spent on implementing the new system? Will the energy savings (over say, a predicted 4-5 yr refresh cycle) make up a reasonably significant part of the implementation? (by which I mean, paying for Sirius' involvement in the project - the hardware costs would be there regardless). Come the next hardware refresh, will it require Sirius' involvement or will you simply be a helping hand if it's needed? How dependent is Bishops Fox's on you?

 

Your website mentions providing web filtering for YHGfL, with no licence fees. I assume the RBC is giving you access to the IWF blacklist? Last time I checked (about a year ago), no open source filtering projects had been certified to use the blacklist due to the need to keep it secure. How did you fulfill their requirements?

 

And no, I'm not a windows fanboy. All software sucks, all hardware sucks - anything else is advocacy and I get enough of that from salesmen.

[ricki]

Hi

 

I agree that any business could save money on software buying but who is going to maintain this new software and pay for all the training. I find it hard enough getting teachers to use windows and remember how goodness knows what it would be like trying to get them to use new stuff and what would all this cost.

 

Also are colleges and it companies about to provide the training.

 

Then you go onto the software manufacturers do they have the range of education software on say linux to allow the move. Imagine for a moment teachers reaction when you told them we are say moving to xxxxx os and you loose most of your software.

 

Richard

[GrumbleDook]

As mentioned by myself and others ... I still struggle to see why you want to move away from one OS to purely OSS .... it is not about moving from one to another ... it is about getting a balance of all required software and systems.

[wesleyw]

You'd get greater savings on implementing a thin client environment but only on energy use even taking into consideration the servers needed to run this the 5-10 watts usage for the unit (A normal desktop machine on wake up on lan uses 10watts when switched off) would more than make up for it however even a large school how much of the energy usage is actually IT and not other items? When trying to calculate this myself for our rather modest sized school (700+ students) I think we accounted for around only a 1/3 of electrical energy usage (Including Projectors, Laptops, Desktops, Monitors, Printers, Servers, Switches but not speakers (I doubt this would have counted much toward the other 2/3 though) ) I worked out I could remove around a 1/3 of the cost of power consumption from here. An example would be say a school uses £30,000 of electrical energy per year IT equipment account for around £10,000 So we could bring the price down to £6,666 meaning the cost of electricity for the school would be £26,666 only a saving of £3,334 per year. Look at the cost of bringing in this technology and the fact that not everything would run via Terminal Services? If you needed VDI for some things then the cost escalates greatly and using fat clients for the rest means the savings are much lower than this and it would take many years to recoup the costs. Taking on board everyone else's statements about re-education of teachers for new software this would mean that it wouldn't be a problem but you've got to ask whether or not such investment is actually worth while? Another point though the government are introducing a new energy scheme which will have far reaching consequences for IT and school budgets called CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) this will be taking place soon and the idea of reducing energy consumption is valid even if the cost of doing so at first is prohibitive. The one thing I'll admit to with the Thin Client system would be longevity. 25 Years (222,000 hours) the Sun Ray boxes MTBF is. And of course this means reduced replacement costs for the school instead of changing hardware every 3 - 5 years (7 in some cases). You will need to update the servers but this will be much cheaper than entire labs.

 

 

Wes

[broc]

The most important aspect of school ICT is delivering the right applications to the end users to support teaching & learning. This needs to be done in an affordable and sustainable way. Technologies such as operating systems, thin & fat clients, virtualisation are all means of delivering applications BUT the choice is of secondary importance to the applications themselves.

 

Now, given that our application base in schools is (for the moment) heavily dependent upon a Windows environment, whether we like it or not we have to provide an infrastructure that supports Windows. I realise more and more media-rich content is being delivered via browsers but it still has a long way to go yet.

 

If the exponents of Open Software were to convince all of the education software developers to embrace an open platform maybe schools could consider migrating, but in just my school we would need major vendors such as Adobe, Capita, and Promethean to deliver products that would work in an Open environment, or have serious alternatives available before anybody would seriously consider moving from Windows.

 

I cannot this happening anytime soon.

[webman]

The most important aspect of school ICT is delivering the right applications to the end users to support teaching & learning. This needs to be done in an affordable and sustainable way. Technologies such as operating systems, thin & fat clients, virtualisation are all means of delivering applications BUT the choice is of secondary importance to the applications themselves.

 

Now, given that our application base in schools is (for the moment) heavily dependent upon a Windows environment, whether we like it or not we have to provide an infrastructure that supports Windows. I realise more and more media-rich content is being delivered via browsers but it still has a long way to go yet.

 

If the exponents of Open Software were to convince all of the education software developers to embrace an open platform maybe schools could consider migrating, but in just my school we would need major vendors such as Adobe, Capita, and Promethean to deliver products that would work in an Open environment, or have serious alternatives available before anybody would seriously consider moving from Windows.

 

I cannot this happening anytime soon.

 

Quit thinking in the past. Educational transformation means we should be trying new things. If that means taking away things that's been tried & tested then so be it

[GrumbleDook]

Quit thinking in the past. Educational transformation means we should be trying new things. If that means taking away things that's been tried & tested then so be it

 

But it doesn't mean throwing the baby out with the bath-water. Looking for change is good, and there are lots of good web 2.0 based tools out there that can really move things on, but there are also lots of good resources prepared locally, run locally and hosted locally.

 

Of course ... the wonderful world of thin client and cloud hosting does nothing for graphics editing, audio editing (and production) and video editing ... and more and more of this is going across the curriculum. I'm all for the point and click generation of video then upload to youtube, but that doesn't teach the full extent of storyboarding, and the planning that often needs to to into this.

 

The same way we shouldn't throw out handwriting just because we have computers, having the cloud doesn't mean we throw out local applications. I know there was a smiley ... but there are some people that would actually use this as an arguement which they think is unbeatable!

[broc]

Quit thinking in the past. Educational transformation means we should be trying new things. If that means taking away things that's been tried & tested then so be it

Stop thinking like a narrow minded technologist

 

Think about what the end user needs ..... School ICT needs to be solutions led, not technology led. By this I mean 'the school' decides what is best for the student & then we worry about what technology we need to deliver the solution.

 

If the 'Education ICT industry marketplace' only develops solutions based upon the Windows platform don't get hung up about the technology ....... the end user should not have to worry about what platform his solution runs on, as long as it delivers what he needs.

Edited October 1, 2009 by broc

[spannerman2]

Gosh, a lot of posts to read through.

 

I do have a few general comments so forgive me not taking the trouble to do the @soandso bit. If it does not apply to do please don't be offended.

 

1) No I'm not trolling this forum, let alone without the boss' knowledge..I was told to sign up to join in the debate.

2) Really really surprised at the general level of hostility to FOSS and lack of knowledge about it. The thread seems dominated by a few 'great and the good' opinion setters.

3) I really do know exactly how school ICT support works, having been a Windows SysAdmin even until quite recently so I know what a lock in looks like, I know what fear of change looks like, and I know when edu-discounting amounts to bribery

 

For the record the stuff I write is meant in general to be provocative, but not in nasty way, more to stimulate debate and raise some tough points in what I hope is a humorous way.

 

Nor, am I scaremongering.

 

It was us at Sirius that got the BBC to back off from a Windows only I-player, we also got the Cabinet Office to admit they were planning a Microsoft Only fully outsourced G-Cloud and forced them to change direction (which is why you are getting a Private Cloud rather than US/Dublin version)

 

Trust me I am not making stuff up about loss of jobs but you have to write in non-straightforward way or the lawyers turn up ..and they do.

 

Finally of course we are FOSS evangelists so are RM PLC, they for example only supply Windows Exchange E-Mail if it is specifically requested !

 

And lastly I do not negate/ spoil my arguments with a bad tone or a few inaccuracies..be easy on that just hear the general message..all is about to change are you folk ready?

[webman]

2) Really really surprised at the general level of hostility to FOSS and lack of knowledge about it.

 

There is no general hostility towards or lack of knowledge regarding FOSS here. We're simply stating it has to be used correctly; not just for the sake of using FOSS so you can turn around and say, "Look at me, I'm using FOSS."

 

The investment that has been made into (usually Windows-only) educational software over the years cannot just be written off on a whim because "FOSS is cheaper." As already pointed out by many in this thread, there is a cost (time and money) when moving from one to the other (FOSS to proprietary or vice-versa).

 

Just because we aren't all installing Linux on all our workstations does not mean that we have no clue about FOSS. A lot of us are just using it wisely, and to great effect.

[Guest Guest]

1) No I'm not trolling this forum, let alone without the boss' knowledge..I was told to sign up to join in the debate.

 

Well you can report back to your boss that Sirius PLC are on atleast one persons blacklisted companies list

[penfold]

Gosh, a lot of posts to read through.

 

1) No I'm not trolling this forum, let alone without the boss' knowledge..I was told to sign up to join in the debate.

2) Really really surprised at the general level of hostility to FOSS and lack of knowledge about it. The thread seems dominated by a few 'great and the good' opinion setters.

3) I really do know exactly how school ICT support works, having been a Windows SysAdmin even until quite recently so I know what a lock in looks like, I know what fear of change looks like, and I know when edu-discounting amounts to bribery

 

 

Can I just pick you up on point 2. To state that there is a general level of hostility and lack of knowledge is a little short sighted. If you read the posts, and other subjects on this forum you will see that the whole point of this website is so tech people can help each other in progressing and developing skills using ANY technology that is available. Many people work with a very limited budget and will welcome anything that doesn't actually cost to use. Being in the type of job we are in, it would be very stupid of us to resist new technologies, in fact if we did that I'm sure we would be out of a job very quickly.

 

What we are asking is for you to validate your points that you are trying to make with a balanced discussion. When you are talking value for money, free isn't always the best value if it doesn't do the job.

[sahmeepee]

Finally of course we are FOSS evangelists so are RM PLC, they for example only supply Windows Exchange E-Mail if it is specifically requested !

 

Ohohohoho.

[DrCheese]

I wish I could get away with posting picardfacepalm.jpg on here.....

Wake up folks..saving in ICT is the order of the day..we all agree on that..did anyone mention that means no more IT technicians or Network Managers?

I mean seriously now. Even with cloud computing someone is going to have to be employed somewhere to manage (physically and software wise) all the thin clients in schools and all the other pieces of equipment that IT is expected to manage nowadays (AV equipment) so all your really doing is... shifting the cost.

So yeah, picardfacepalm.jpg

[AngryTechnician]

Yeah, but in my school, all the apps we use run fine on Celeron 2Ghz machines running XP. They won't take Windows 7 or Vista so I have to either pay a fortune to upgrade them (how much would 100 sticks of 1Gb PC2100 RAM cost?)

 

You're certainly right that throwing an extra 1GB of RAM in each one would not be cheap (just over £2,000 for a 100 sticks), but have you tried Windows 7 on the existing hardware? I've run Windows 7 satisfactorily on a 1.6 GHz machine with 512MB of RAM.

[sted]

i dont think almost anyone (theres always 1 or 2) has a problem in using open source WHERE APPROPRIATE so italc/open office/ paint.net ubunto on pcs that are only ever used for say internet and so on. As always with anything its the right tool for the right job and like it or not for most people windows is the right tool as users know and are comfortable with it (main reason users often dont like change where as most techs are quite happy to play round with stuff (thats what makes them tecs to a degree weve all spent silly amounts of time trying to get some piece of junk software/hardware working cos we arnt going to be beaten by it)). Most school i go into dont buy software that often and have libraries of stuff they have been using for years (so textease 5/sherston stuff/ etc) so the cost of software is low (and you get a windows licence with new hardware (yes i know its possible to get hardware without) so cost of staying with windows is actually low whereas to change would require a lot of time in testing and training users and techs (i can get by with linux but at the end of the day ive spent years playing with windows from 3.1 upwards to get that sort of knowledge with another os would possibly be slower as id probably always be looking for things where id expect them in windows as i do a lot of that with my brain turned off) if nothing else

[GrumbleDook]

Strangely enough the session I will be doing at the OSS day for LAs at Bletchley will be about how support teams are using a variety of FOSS to compliment their existing systems and helping to follow FITS. There are plenty of examples from members here (both the 'great and the good opinion setters' and the less frequent members) and I look forward to showing that FOSS works perfectly well, is not ignored and is chosen for specific tasks and functions.

[spannerman2]

completely in tune with both posts;

 

a) see you at Bletchley it should be a good day out..cool location

 

b) Couldn't agree more about using FOSS where appropriate. Evangelism invariably goes too far and self defeats. I guess we suggest that more FOSS is possible than is generally accepted in some schools. Sometimes get a bit rough about it.

 

 

Our corporate motto is 'control through freedom'. (corporate and freedom = oxymoron ..I keep telling our CEO) but...

 

We all need control over our lives, careers and so on, often it's a aspiration more than a reality. I truly believe that FOSS is more than just free stuff but that in there somewhere is real freedom...sounds all a bit idealistic but hey that's the well-spring of inspiration mes amis]

 

John

[muppet]

I know that this point has been raised a few times already but I just cant seem to find the answer in anyone’s replies.......

Once all the NM's and Techs have been made redundant to save money (how much will that cost in payouts / settlements?) just who is going to respond to "the PC in my classroom wont work and I need to use it now to deliver my lesson!" or "I cant seem to do (whatever) with this new OSS software, I need you to show me how"? And just how free and cost effective is that support, if there is any, going to be?

 

And as for the bribe thing.....Well just for the record I've never been offered or taken anything and take exception to the fact that you intimate that I have. I’d like to know how many bribes large outsourcing companies (cant think of the name of one at the moment, but feel free to use any you like!) have made to ensure that they get government contracts. Definitely a pot and kettle situation if you ask me.

[spannerman2]

..with G-Cloud you only need browser-enabled kit on school site or at home.

 

-This does not need maintenance or technical support at all.

 

-the viewer can be anything from a smart phone to a netbook to a 6watt thin client.

 

that's why they are so keen

[GrumbleDook]

..with G-Cloud you only need browser-enabled kit on school site or at home.

 

This needs to be purchased, configured, distributed and maintained ... school techies are cheaper than outsourced support (eg Home Access) in this respect.

 

-This does not need maintenance or technical support at all.

 

Devices are not at the point where they are disposable to say this. The only solution would be over 3G and that is not sufficiently reliable to be used at this time or for the next 3 years minimum. This means WiFi instead ... and this requires networks and appropriate technology.

 

-the viewer can be anything from a smart phone to a netbook to a 6watt thin client.

 

that's why they are so keen

 

Viewers are one thing ... production devices for anything other than text or simple media require a more powerful device. I am not saying that mobile devices are not usable or appropriate but they usually are for given tasks and building of certain skills. More details of what can be done can be found at the Handheld Learning Conference next week and I expect EduGeek reporter extraordinaire to feedback some handy info from this.

 

And as mentioned before (and above) the G-Cloud is not there ... will not be there for some time ... will not be the answer to all requirements and will be as limiting as only allowing Windows 95 to be used in schools!

 

Ok ... if you don't mind me suggesting a strand of arguement for you ... how about talking about how we will get from A (the present situation) to B (the G0Cloud with all the stuff you reckon will happen)?

 

After all ... this is not going to happen overnight so there will be significant changes in the technological approaches in education for this ... funding changes ... a changing role and stance for the National Education Network ...

 

If you can start to talk through that journey then people might not write off your comments.