On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 11:07 -0500, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > Hi Ian, > > On 2006-03-09, at 09:28 , Ian Lynch wrote: > > > BECTA is the British Education Communication Technology Agency > > funded by > > the Government to give the Department of Education Strategic advice on > > ICT. > > > > I have just had a meeting with senior people in BECTA and there is > > interest in devising ways of getting OOo onto all new PCs sold to > > schools. This isn't as straightforward as it might at first sound > > because schools buy independently from a vast number of different > > suppliers. I have some ideas but if anyone has any of their own let me > > know so I can provide some options. > > Hm. This is great news, but I'm curious, as I'm sure others here are, > too, about the details.What sort of ideas do you have? I'd be also > curious about support--it's the usual issue.
I have been asked to propose a work shop on Open Source issues in general. BECTA provide strategic advice to the Gov, and we will provide strategic advice to BECTA through the workshop. In broad terms it was suggested that it would be good if we could think of a way of getting OOo onto every new computer supplied to schools, BECTA and by inference the Gov are at least interested in this but its at that stage, they have no idea how it can be done, that's why they asked me and I have no magic solution. No real detailed talk of the practical barriers. Some possibilities I have though of are 1. Government advice to suppliers that this would be a good thing to do 2. Government supply every school with an OOo disc and installation instructions 3. Government instructions to Local Authorities to say they need to start promoting FLOSS in schools and that OOo is a good place to start 3. Government funding to development an education version of OOo suitable for primary schools - eg simplified user-interface, appropriate clip art, fonts etc. (Possibly cooperate with Sun and SO for kids) 4. Government fund a training programme for technical support staff on things like installing OOo to networks including security issues etc 5. Get Tony Blair to say publicly that he thinks schools should be trying out OOo to get kids to make comparisons between different software apps. 7. Provide some vital government documents that schools need in ODF format only and require schools to install OOo to be able to use them. Ok, just a few ideas and all have different implications. Getting funding for development probably isn't impossible as long as its not seen as too politically sensitive. The thing is that until we have the workshop its not too easy to predict the reaction. eg I suggested BECTA apply to join the OpenDocument Alliance. They said they would certainly want to work cooperatively with the Alliance but membership they would have to be considered carefully because of potential political issues. At this stage I just really wanted to get some brainstorm ideas to present. The workshop is about FLOSS in general, not specific to OOo but OOo has got strategic importance so I need to find something that is likely to be attractive to what is now a cooperative audience, so that they can put it to the Minister. Its certainly the best hope so far of getting government resource input into Open Source in schools, but its the beginning rather than the end of the process. -- Ian Lynch www.theINGOTs.org www.opendocumentfellowship.org www.schoolforge.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
