These days, Georgia public schools districts are better at making sure their district is "Microsoft (tm) compliant" than they are making sure their students are able to freely have access to the same school software at home. No teacher or school administrator should be marketing boxed software to students or student's parents. School districts need to stay away from consumerism and limit its use in classrooms. If they cannot provide a copy of the boxed software on their servers,to a student without charge, then its time to seek another avenue of software. They should consider, test the usage of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) in classrooms.
FOSS requires no license and upgrade fees to be paid to vendors. Schools districts have gotten into the work time rut that all software has to be rented, as tho its a DVD from a movie store. Who is responsible for this action? The district's IT sector!! This sector is “keeping proven technology” from students and holding students back from advancements in technology. This sector loves to spend money that could be better used for the educational side of the house. They refuse to open up their network to an operating system that would save local taxpayers money. The one-to-one computer-to-student ratio can be achieved quicker, if they would let go and enter the world of FOSS for students.
The benefits of FOSS outweigh not doing so!! Presently, districts do not see the need to do so, nor do they find it beneficial. It takes open minds to transcend classroom technology for students and teachers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Post a Comment