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AW: Education strategy
From: |
Wilfried Römer |
Subject: |
AW: Education strategy |
Date: |
Tue, 7 May 2002 23:37:14 +0200 |
Have a look at www.openwebschool.de (the Union Jack leads you to the English
pages). Until now this site is basically German with the overview pages
translated to English. It should be easy to incorporate other languages.
Wilfried Roemer
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Ian Lynch [SMTP:address@hidden
Gesendet am: Dienstag, 7. Mai 2002 09:49
An: address@hidden
Betreff: Education strategy
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.
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- AW: Education strategy,
Wilfried Römer <=