Re: [Dfey-general-discuss] Fwd: [sf-uk-discuss] An 'open source manifesto' to counter the ICT cuts

[Tim Dobson]

On 23/07/10 21:36, Ben Webb wrote:
> Finally had a good chance to look through it. Seems good suggestions.
> I especially like this line:
> 
> "Think carefully about your filtering policy, bearing in mind that
> children have a right to "seek, receive and impart information and
> ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing
> or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the
> child’s choice."

Definitely. That caught my eye as well.

> and the suggestions that students are allowed to use their own
> machines is interesting.

Well especially with smartphones becoming considerably more prevalent.
"Back in my day" when I went to school, the school was the only way I
could get on the internet to check my email.
These days it'd be practical and affordable to get connected inside
school on your mobile.
Almost every new phone these days has a web browser and £10/month PAYG
gets you several hundred texts and (some) free internet.

The days when schools could block facebook and gmail on their firewall
is soon to be pretty irrelevant - getting online via ones phone is
rapidly going to change how relevant content filtering actually is.

I'm not quite sure what the implications of this are, but I suspect it's
going to start to become clear in the next year or so...

> All in all, some good suggestions, and a good article to point people
> towards I think. It will be interesting to see how much of this
> various schools do.

Well that's a discussion in itself!
Edugeek - a community of school IT technicians have been discussing it here:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/blue-skies/60124-open-source-schools-miles-berry-offers-radical-response-ict-funding-cuts.html