Too late for open source in schools?

[spannerman2]

Came across this paper on Open Schools by Gary Clawson:

 

Today sees the publication a report from NWLG CEO Gary Clawson on the savings that would follow from a move to open source, open services and open content in schools and across local authorities. Gary argues that a switch to open source and open content would offer 25% savings on IT spend with relative ease, with a further 30-35% if LAs looked seriously at re-modelling how ICT is implemented and supported. Across a local authority with some 20 secondaries and 120 primaries, this would amount to over £1.4M pa.

 

Oh yes, and you get more flexible, sustainable IT and systems which support generic transferable skills in the classroom.

 

http://www.nwlg.org/downloads/docs/papers/openservices.pdf

 

Trouble is having tussled with edugeekers too often myself I found that when I read it all I thought was 'yeah yeah'

 

Argh! what had happened to me?

 

Truth is, what Gary said was true enough but seemed so old fashioned, like five years ago when I was banging on hard about the same thing. The trouble is, if it really happened (schools and LAs going FOSS) even with you guys 100% convinced it would still take probably three years to achieve.

 

Things have changed so much in the last two years... so in three more?

 

Already, as I constantly posit, the existing proprietary model is anachronistic (but not because it is proprietary), therefore it follows

 

'why replace one dead model with a cheaper dead model?'.

 

This issue will be the FOSS problem for the older generation

 

So I would guess it is too late for Gary's FOSS revolution, shucks.

Edited September 17, 2010 by spannerman2

[glennda]

Beaten to it i think Open Source Software in Schools

[spannerman2]

well beaten i would say