In an attempt to reduce licensing fees of existing software, by 2009 all school children in Russia are to be taught using the free and open source software Linux . It will be tested first in three pilot regions, while other regions will have the option to use it as a second operating system.
Could be a lot of political positioning with this effort, nonetheless, it is one huge migration to keep an eye on.
The UK’s largest Open Source email system for schools has gone live. Carmarthenshire County Council chose to build the new email system using Open Source for the following reasons.
Always seem to the same reasons that organizations move to open source software.
Case study can be found at the Sirius Website.
Gregg Ferrie manager of information technology for the school district believes it to be the “largest on-the-desktop implementation in Western Canada”. Also generating interest among British Columbia’s 60 other school districts with their thin desktop client.
They ran into the standard glitches when adopting or changing to a new technology. What was the difference that made the transition successful?
I can definitely see how a advocate within the system who understands the needs, can make the difference between success and failure. Hope we can hear more about this.
Novell’s Suse Linux has been selected by San Diego Unified School District as their standard platform to help children achieve academic success. Why was Suse Linux selected?
They are the second largest school district in California.
This snowball started when the police arrested a Sepich headmaster who bought a computer with Windows, that was apparently pirated. So instead of going after the group selling the PC’s they arrested the end user. As you can imagine Schools in the i Perm region are now using Linux rather than Windows for fear of the Gulag.
According to Karpushin, schools would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps, Ekho Moskvi reports.
Nice.
In Windsor, California, District IT administrator Heather Carver is migrating the district’s 70 servers and most of its 5,000 PCs to SUSE Linux and Wyse Linux thin-client terminals. When complete they will have 2,000 SUSE Linux Desktops, and 2,700 Linux thin clients.
Miss Carver’s quote when concerning the children’s ability to use a new a OS and software.
She is also talking with another district to share her success and resources in order to help each other.
Japan has around 400,000 computers in schools that run either Window 98 or Windows ME, which Microsoft no longer supports. They now have a decision on what to do for their next upgrade cycle. The prohibitive cost of replacing all these machines along with the rising price of proprietary software has prompted then to look for alternatives. Linux has now become a viable option for them.
A school district in Ohio is opting to go with Linux rather than upgrading all of their existing systems to Windows XP. Covered in a local paper http://www.thisweeknews.com/
“For a school district, this issue is compounded by the volume of computers it has to maintain. However, Dr. Anne Hyland, director of curriculum and instruction for Bexley City Schools, said the district is switching to a new operating system that will save the taxpayers a lot of money.
Hyland said Bexley will switch all of its computers over to Linux, an open-source operating system. Open source means that the code for the software is available for anyone to procure and manipulate, unlike Microsoft operating systems.”
Would be very interesting to see how this project ultimately turns out.
