Re: [Staffslug] Moving my local Primary School to Open Source
2009/10/8 Gordon Burgess-Parker <gordon(a)gbpcomputing.co.uk>:
My local Primary school is currently paying large sums to RM and MS
for
their ICT setup, along with all the restrictive practices that RM seem to
operate by.
I was talking to the Head this morning, and it seems he might be amenable to
looking at Open Source as a replacement, particularly as the school is quite
small and doesn't have an actual ICT budget at all.
What I was thinking was, are there any folks who might be able to
voluntarily come along at some time in the future (I don't know when their
MS licences are up for renewal) to do an evaluation of how, what and when
and how much it might cost and the long-term cost savings?
The lack of budget is a problem, as money for ICT is paid out of the general
running expenses, and of course they don't have an ICT technician at all.
Any help would be appreciated!
Cheers!
I quite understand your concerns as I had to deal with RM when I was
at W'ton Uni. It was a case of you will have this spec' computer
whether you want/need it or not and you will pay exhorbitant sums for
the privilege.
What OS are they currently running? XP perhaps? The head will need
to know that by using stuff like Open Office on the MS platform will
be a short term thing. MS are planning to stop support for XP in the
next few years (I don't know exactly when) which will mean no more
security updates. By using stuff like Open Office it does start the
process of getting away from MS. Possibly the best thing, and there
others on here who are more experienced than myself with this, would
be to start with a couple of PC's running some flavour of Linux to get
teachers used to it (not pupils yet). The teachers may be reluctant
to devote time to learning how to use Linux but they may have to. I
only mean using as end user for the majority.
I suspect it may be an uphill struggle as teachers do tend to get
stuck in a rut...
--
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Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
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