Although this rant is impassioned and detailed it's almost comically misinformed. What's happening in education IT(C) is the imposition of a £45bn corporate cash cow called Building Schools for the Future (BSF) - through which the government is shamefully entering into yet more PFI relationships. The scorched earth Christopher suggests is impossible is already happening as more than 20 local authorities have struck deals with managed IT service suppliers such as RM under BSF. As a consequence local control, flexibility and in-school knowledge about IT services is evaporating. BSF schools will have what the supplier supports (essentially Microsoft) at prices determined by long-term monopoly contracts. The issue of Open Source remains important - Btw it is not true that OS is unknown in education - Moodle.org is a good example
Moodle is an unusual exception to the rule, and I think it's been as popular as it has become mostly due to the fact that it's web-based. People are already familiar with Intranets, and no two school intranets will be the same. FOSS is the king of web-based solutions for sure at the moment, especially when you have LEAs hacking it apart, hosting entire collections of resources on it and making it work very well for their own (eeeeeeeevil! ;) ends. And "moodling" is a nice verb to slip into common parlance :) I wish there were more varieties of platforms in schools - my Uni currently has way more Macs than PCs, but that's another angry discussion I'm raring to have with the first person who foolishly puts their head above the parapet - but the sheer volume of computers that most schools have today almost requires that the common denominator is OS and platform. If you have 400-500 PCs, just keeping them all running smoothly is a sheer nightmare. This number can rise significantly if a school has more than 1,000 students and is well funded for ICT (most Technology College accredited schools will likely have at least 1 computer to every 3 people, my old school has almost 1 for every 2). When I was at primary school, our IT room had BBC Master systems, Acorns of all shapes and sizes (my own A3000 is still tucked away in the loft) and some IBM PCs. Every kid wanted to use the PCs because they had the best games on them (The Incredible Machine!) Of course, they weren't networked, secured or anything like school computers have to be these days, because those pesky kids will always sniff about trying to find holes in the system to get through. Given the added demands of policing the network at all times and a disparate set of platforms becomes a nightmare. Sure, you can get VNC for all major and minor platforms, and no doubt there are FOSS monitoring solutions out there - but most proprietary monitoring systems (that sit on the desktops and monitor keystrokes, take screengrabs etc) are for Windows, and the best-supported ones will be proprietary. My sixth form (at a different school) had that kind of monitoring software which also looked for keywords entered and disabled your username if you exceeded a threshold! That was a pain (the sysadmin knew me by how I knocked on the IT Support door after a few months). Oh, and I almost forgot... Once you've sorted everything else out, you then have to add in UK.gov policies, including its most recent creation, RIPA, dictating strict rules and policies for educational establishments to adhere to - and woe betide if you cross them and Mr. investigating officer doesn't like the cut of your jib or how you've handled the enquiry. So, compliant monitoring, data retention and archival becomes almost as key as providing a stable base for students and teachers. Although I don't have intimate knowledge of each and every solution I certainly get the feeling from what I've read and seen that most solutions either have to be completely bespoke or an off-the-shelf, proprietary solution... Which quite often will work on a proprietary OS. Reiterating the point I made earlier, and Michael picked up on, until all teachers are as au fait with every kind of platform and software as the kids are (or may be), there's no point forcing a move to FOSS, because the kids will be doing stuff the teachers can't even understand and it'll just waste everybody's time and money plus lower the quality of teaching. Who cares if MS is de facto in the school setting if it serves its purpose? Even if on the face of it FOSS could replace it, all that existing knowledge is gone because people have to relearn how to work the computers to a standard they were at before. A phased migration is the only workable solution, and even that becomes harder and harder when you have outsourced service and support from third parties as Neil mentioned. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
