I wonder if this in any way ties in with the PM's announcement about giving "poor" children eithre laptops or Broadband access?
Ian -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of alan c Sent: 23 September 2008 18:52 To: British Ubuntu Talk Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] heads up - UK schools frameworks accepted Rob Beard wrote: > alan c wrote: >> Open Source makes historic UK breakthrough >> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/22/open-source-makes-his toric-uk >> >> to date: >> Sirius, Novell >> more to come I believe > > I was involved with a SFD event on Saturday in Torbay. A couple of > school technicians turned up to the event. In discussion with them they > mentioned that they'd love to use Open Source software but part of the > problem was that some of the educational applications weren't supported > by Linux (mainly Windows based stuff) and that a real barrier to change > was the teachers who would get in a flap when they used something > different (I got the impression that some teachers even the younger > teachers haven't got very good IT skills). > > If you ask me, I think there should be a big push to some of the > developers of educational software. For instance, Granny's Garden > (http://www.4mation.co.uk/cat/granny.html) which was around in the days > of the Beeb has a Windows and Mac version but no Linux version. > > I did suggest looking into LTSP with a couple of beefy servers and maybe > for Windows compatibility a Windows 2003/2008 Terminal Server (surely a > few Windows 2003/2008 Terminal Server cal's and a couple of servers > would be cheaper than a load of PCs running Vista). > > I think the most amusing thing that came out of it though in terms of > wasting money was what one of the other guys in the LUG told me. A > friend of his went to look at a local secondary school which his > daughter was moving to. He said that the school had a suite of Intel > based iMacs (and not the cheap ones either!) and guess what they were > running.... nope, not OS X but Windows XP instead!!!!! > > (Why anyone would want to buy an £800 iMac to run XP when something like > a £300 Dell desktop would do the same. > > Sounds to me like that particular school was putting style over cost. maybe there will be a linux os variant called 'Credit Crunch'! Well done for the SFD in Torbay! We need a few more in UK! ( I was in the Bracknell SFD event) -- alan cocks Kubuntu user#10391 Linux user #360648 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
