Enterprise open source Toolkit

Open source in education: Winning hearts and minds

Tags:
Linux

Ingrid Marson ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 07 Mar 2006 15:00 GMT

"Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life." While this Jesuit maxim was originally conceived with religious fervour in mind, some technology companies are equally zealous about its relevance to IT adoption. The education sector is an enormously important one to technology companies not only because it is an extremely lucrative market in its own right but it also a way of influencing the technical proclivities of the next generation.

"For companies like Microsoft the school market is important because they're leading innocent young minds to love Microsoft technologies," says Ovum analyst Gary Barnett.

And it is not only the proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and IBM who have seized on the importance of reaching young minds. John Spencer, the head of education at open source consultancy SiriusIT, claims that the schools are a key to the wider adoption of open source.

"It's massively important. When [Apple] Macs were used in the education market in the US, people started asking for Macs in the workplace. Once children have seen other ways of doing things their eyes are opened," he says. "If more children can use open source, when come into the adult market they won't say: 'That's not what I'm used to.'"

Other reasons why the school market is important is its relative size — there are around 26,000 primary schools and 5,000 secondary schools in the UK, and the opportunity to influence consumer purchases of software — many parents will use the same software as is used in their child's school.

Although it is widely accepted that the school market is an important for open source, at present, few schools in the UK use open source software. SiriusIT claims that between 10 and 15 percent of secondary schools are using some open source, and less than 1 percent are using mainly open source. The consultancy collated its figures by monitoring public information about the use of open source in schools, such as postings on mailing lists and forums.

Outside the UK, the situation varies. Non-proprietary software is widely used in schools in some countries, such as the Spanish region of Extremadura, where Linux has been deployed on around 70,000 desktop PCs and 400 servers in schools and Norway, where it is thought that up to 200 of the 3300 schools in the country are using Skolelinux. But in many other countries the use of open source software in schools is less common.

Open source, children and usability
So, why if it is supposedly cheaper, is open source not used more in schools where price is a bigger factor than most corporations? Barnett from Ovum lays the blame on the lack of availability of open source educational applications and the usability of open source software.

"Linux is a long way from being appealing to ordinary users who want to surf the Web and write documents," he says. "Linux or OpenOffice must be significantly easier or more rewarding to use."

Barnett gave a few example of proprietary software that he believes is significantly easier to use than its open source equivalents. "Microsoft home networking support is far from perfect, but it's a doddle compared to Linux," he says. "Linux support for wireless is fantastic, but is a pain to configure."

There is a prevailing sentiment among many in the free software community that technology shouldn't be too easy and that people should invest the time to learn about it, says Barnett.

"With usability or graphics administration tools you can tell they're written grudgingly," he says. "There's also a belief that if you're not willing to open a terminal window and stay up till 0300 reading a 100-page manual, you're not worthy of the software. You can see this if you go to a Linux user group and ask a stupid question — you get...

For more, click here...