school with useless computers
Peter Martin
Pete
Tom Watson
What you will need to do is:
- Find a champion at the school. School Bosrd Member would be best, or an/the administrator or several of the most influential teachers
- With the championn, work out a business case over several years, including replacement of the MS stuff at least once.
- Expect to have to demo Open Office and whatever other crossover apps you will need
- Look at the existing apps (teaching tools, etc.) and look for the ones that have no analog in Linux (they will love to bring these up and catch you)
- Does the current class grading app support linux (or is web-based)
- If they are not willing to be flexible, it is a lost cause. It won't be JUST the same.
- Essentially they have to be begging you to help them do it if you are going to be successful.
None of this has anything to do with computers. It has to do with change. If you can get them to drag you forward, you can be successful.
Good luck!
Tom Watson
Member Manager Support
Peter Martin
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Warrick Wilson
Tom has some excellent advice. You’re not really looking at a technical problem from the school district’s point of view – it’s a political and logistical issue. I’ve had this discussion with North Kitsap School District as a volunteer on their budget review group a couple of years ago. You’d be surprised at how little a school board pays per PC for their software and operating systems – it’s about $35 to $45 total per year per PC for Microsoft software. That’s pretty much any software – OS, Office, etc. What you’ve identified is that a lot of the hardware can’t keep up with the newest software. Not a surprise – my work laptop still has Win XP and IE6, so corporations are slow to modernize, too.
The bigger concern at a school district level is the on-going support that these machines will need. Most districts don’t have someone familiar with Linux (and, ironically, I suspect districts that DO have such a resource are already along the road that Tom outlines in terms of champions, etc.). The teachers certainly aren’t familiar with the setup you propose, and these are the people that need to be telling the students what to do. So you face an issue where the cost per PC isn’t a compelling issue, and the support and training required to have the Linux-based system have a serious logistical implication. In fact, one of the attractions of the Microsoft licensing agreement they have is that they can get the older software for those older machines that can’t run XP, even. What the schools really need is some low-cost hardware options.
I’m not trying to say to “give up”. Instead, you have a longer-term project, in most cases. Maybe the school district has a Tech Steering Committee that you can approach and work with. See about getting something related to Linux added to a technology bond or levy when the district runs one (here’s where you can try to get the people, training, etc.)
(I’m assuming you’ve already done the next part, but for completeness…) You might want to find a “success story” to take as part of your pitch. Find a school district that has already made the switch, and talk to someone there (or read a case study, if available) on how they managed it, what the results are, and what they wish they’d done differently. Tom’s point about getting flexibility about expectations is key. Bainbridge Island School District switched to OpenOffice to reduce costs for Microsoft Office. Talking to people there gets a mixed review. I know that there are some groups that require document interchange with “the outside world” and OpenOffice doesn’t cut it. So there are some places that have/need MS Office. Other people are happy that students use something simpler, where they can focus on what something says/does, rather than get dragged into the rabbit hole of what something looks like. That’s a bit of a digression – Tom’s point about setting expectations is very important.
Good luck with this … it could be very beneficial to the students.
Peter Martin
In fact I don't have a case study or know of any schools using Linux, so I certainly could use some help here too. I had just heard about this on Friday, so I'm just starting to get into this. So please keep hints, sources etc coming!
Interchangeability is somewhat of an issue, for sure. Seems the doc files are ok with the latest 'upgrade' from MS if you use OOv3, but the spreadsheet files, especially with macros do leave something to be desired. And with PP, I'm not sure about. Those are arguably the 3 major items that would be an issue, plus the host of other applications they may use.