i ran across this story from Mary Jo, a technology coordinator, with Linux in schools. Thought I'd share it here because I like her point that with open source, one gets MORE for their money:

As someone who went from essentially zero linux experience a year and a half ago to having a successful year with over 150 thin client stations primarily in grade 3-5 classrooms - generally 10 per classroom - it does take some work and learning but nothing like having to image 150 machines and working to keep viruses/spyware off of them... And now that students have their own desktops/home folders - no more requests to find files and no more excuses that they did the work but now they cannot figure out where it got saved..

One thing that I do hate to see is the focus on "saving money" per se - To me the important thing is that we are getting so much more for our $$$. Money is spent very differently - on servers and server memory - network infrastructure etc... Even power bars and network cables mount up. Sothere does need to be sufficent $$ available to support the overall program.

But Linux thin clients in the classroom not ready for prime time??? Hardly... But classrooms could be bigger to fit all those computers. Electricity and electrical outlets could be more available... One is always told that with real estate its location, location, location. For technology in education it's access, access, access...

If you have other success stories to share about using Linux or Open source software in K-12 education, be sure to share it at http://k12opensource.com/

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning