[ubuntu-uk] Is the demise of Becta an opportunity for FOSS?

[Colin McCarthy]

Smart Technologys the makers of 'SmartBoards' one of the two popular interactive whiteboards already do a linux client. Its almost exactly the same as the windows version and works perfectly. I have used to many times at our LUG meeting which occasionally meets in a school.

Capita recently bought Ramesys (a large education IT provider) so there is little chance of BFS, Building Schools for the Future, schools to have any local control and choose Open Source software.

FOSS does stand a chance in private or indepenent schools.

Mark Thomas and SiruisIT do a lots of FOSS stuff in schools.  Maybe they could be on the Ubuntu UK podcast to talk about it.

Colin



Sent from my Nokia E71 phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Greenwood
Sent:  25/05/2010 00:19:32
Subject:  Re: [ubuntu-uk] Is the demise of Becta an opportunity for FOSS?

BECTA was championing open source whiteboard software and had a project
under way but I can't remember what it was called off the top of my head.
Moodle is becoming quite popular as a VLE but doesn't have much support in
the schools IT support business, which is dominated by RM, who are very much
a Microsoft house these days.

A lot might depend on how school management goes on. I can see that the IT
budget might be decentralised. My partner works in a PFI school and has told
me that the city infrastructure provider has doubled their intranet bill
this year, so there might be space to shop around for savings in future.
Office tools are fairly standard though and I can't see MSOffice being
replaced by OpenOffice or similar any time in the future

On 25 May 2010 00:03, "Mark Brocklehurst" <dragon-rider at o2.co.uk> wrote:

On 24/05/10 23:24, Chris Rowson wrote:
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Just a thought I wanted to put to the li...
Hi,

I know I've not contributed to the list before, but I thought say a little
something about this as I work as an IT Technician at a sixth form college.
Not quite the same as a school, but would still look to someone like Becta
for guidance at least.
I have to admit to not knowing a lot of detail about certain things,
however:

Yes, a lot of schools use SIMS, but there are alternatives that do the same
thing with varying success rates, and yes I believe they are expensive - my
college are on at least their fourth alternative since leaving SIMS behind
many years ago.  Who's to say an Open Source alternative can't be created?

The same goes for Interactive Whiteboards - I've not tried plugging one into
my Linux box, but from a programmer's perspective, it's another peripheral
with either serial or USB connectivity, the only problem really is the time
it might take to write such software.

As far as most software is concerned, the majority we use is proprietary,
usually MS or Adobe.  I believe this is mostly due to staff being afraid to
try something new - the students do use alternatives like OpenOffice at
home.
There are a few teachers happy to use Open Source, but to try and persuade
the entire college to do the same would prove difficult.  Also, at college
level I'm not sure what the situation might be with "computerised" exams
where an examination board provides files to be used during the exam - from
experience most such files are MS orientated, (eg. MS Databases).
Having said that, with budgets being cut recently it may be give more weight
to the Open Source alternative.

I do agree that the support staff delivering IT solutions are the ones who
drive a lot of what's used, but I think they should also listen to the
requirements of the teachers themselves.  Maybe teachers themselves should
also be made more aware of the possibilities of Open Source.

Mark.


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