Education strategy

[Ian Lynch]

Has anyone else got a strategy for developing the use of free software in 
education in their country? It strikes me that expecting Governments to take 
the initiative when there are apparently few test sites, is at best going to 
take a long time. In England, (Scotland has a completely different system so 
its not sensible to talk about UK education) there are government targeted 
funding initiatives involving ICT that we can use to get some significant 
presence. So far we have two 30 station networks in primary schools and 
another 5 or 6 in the pipeline. We have just installed a 120 station network 
in a City Learning Centre, one of the Government flagship projects with high 
profile. Once we get sufficient sites running satisfactorily we can then go 
to other schools, local and national government and say look it works. 
Without a number of successful and working desktop sites, few people are 
going to take the risk. The main problem is inability to run Windows based 
education software - WINE is a possibility but we have to get hold of the 
software to test and testing takes time. For the time being we are 
concentrating on low cost thin clients to do the things that are needed 90% 
of the time and provide advice on covering the rest of the curriculum using 
existing equipment. What would be more helpful to us would be transferring 
some of the effort from the umpteenth word processor (most are going to use 
open office or StarOffice anyway) to some specific support for focussed 
applications for education. Getting education titles to run under WINE is a 
high priority but difficult for a small company.

In broad strategic terms, getting a good presence for free software in a 
market sector such as education provides a profile to show others. I believe 
that critical mass will be achieved by getting focus in a particular sector 
rather than a scattergun approach. Once established in one sector the methods 
can be repeated in others.

-- 
Ian Lynch
Education Management Consultant.