*All* Russian Schools to Use Free Software

Gareth Evans said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

With 90% of companies using proprietary software to run their businesses it is better to educate our children on how to use this software. Let's not get hung up on all this geeky open source nonsense. If your kid gets a job in one of the limited number of companies that use it they can simply retrain them.

Glyn Moody said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Choosing Office discriminates against poorer families that cannot afford to buy a copy for home use. Free software is available to anyone with a computer – admittedly, still a barrier. Indeed, free software can be given out by schools to all pupils as a matter of course.

In addition, training children to use Microsoft Office is training them for the past: more and more companies are using Google Docs and OpenOffice.org, so it would be better to train children how to learn to explore and use *any* program – which is the point of education anyway.

Tim Duckett said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

There's a golden opportunity coming up to influence the take-up of open source in education with the pilot of the home access scheme about to kick off (http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2008_0234)

Of course, it's being managed by Becta who will be running an "approved suppliers" list, so we can pretty confidently predict it will be any-hardware-so-long-as-it's-from-RM and any-software-so-long-as-it's-Microsoft.

PL Hayes said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

And which (versions of which) company's proprietary software are most businesses using, Gareth? Let's not get hung up on all this pork barrel-ish school and market intervention nonsense and try to remember the difference between education and training. :)

http://www.schoolforge.net/education-case-studies

Glyn Moody said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Thanks for that link. As you say, it will be interesting to see whether this just turns into another MS lovefest - and hence another missed opportunity....

Glyn Moody said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Schoolforge looks a handy resource: but I can't find any RSS feeds.....

Gala Kuznetsova said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Today more than 1700 russian schools (~ 34 000 computers) migrated to free software. Additional information about this project: <http://altlinux.info/news/altnews>

Glyn Moody said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Great news - thanks for the link.

Nick said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

@Gareth

Saying you shouldn't teach children to use open source software because proprietary software is different is like saying, you shouldn't teach children the current version of Windows or office because the next version will be different.

Steve said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Glyn says "...As you say, it will be interesting to see whether this just turns into another MS lovefest - and hence another missed opportunity...."

From the website:
"Becta will invite suppliers to apply for approved supplier status by the end of Novembe...."

It's a missed opportunity then ;-)

Francois St-Onge said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

To Mr. Evans:
It's the other way around: in 5 years, in Russia, all companies will prefer to use open software because of the trained workforce getting out of their schools...

Alex Besogonov said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

A little translation grammar nazism: "According to Schegoleva" should be "According to Schegolev" ("Shegoleva" is genetive case from "Schegolev").

Glyn Moody said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

@Alex: thanks - interesting, since you would have thought that Google would have built that into the algorithms.

Helio M. said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

In Brazil, we soon have 50 million kid in school will use KDE/Linux which is modified in portogeuse for our country. As mroe and more kids become use to Linux, we have then more young developers/hackers who will be growing up in school useing free software and we will continue to have a free/free OS that will truly reflect our country but built at the base on a foundation of Gnu/Linux/KDE projects. We can share knowledge with the planet but have a distro (or more) that is us and whom we control. I think russians will like that. it is called selfdetermination.

C T Hun said on Thursday, 23 October 2008

Hey Gareth,

With that logic, people in the past would've been required to learn Wordperfect, XYwrite, EasyWrite, Word for DOS, or any number of other packages. The times are changin'. Better get yourself an OpenOffice training video!

Jack said on Friday, 24 October 2008

I love how people don't get that education is about teaching concepts, not tools. What is used today is not what is going to be used tomorrow. Point being that teaching a kid to use MS Office 2003 isn't going to help them use MS Office 2007. Teaching them CONCEPTS on the other hand it what it IS all about. It would be a disservice to teach them proprietary mainstream applications. 1. they have to pay outlandish prices 2. it's not educational from a technology perspective (no source code available) 3. skill/format lock-in. (you can come up with more, probably even better ones).

anonymous said on Friday, 24 October 2008

It should be noted that what google translates as free has in Russian the explicit meaning of free as in liberty, aka open source.

Hilton said on Friday, 24 October 2008

Hi

We are pushing open source software usage in schools in South Africa - www.tuxlabs.org.za using edubuntu. The guy from brazil can you please make contact hilton@inkululeko.co.za (inkululeko=freedom)

- said on Friday, 24 October 2008

furthermore (especially for general usage) - if you learn Linux, understand the concepts, maybe even programming, etc then even if you have to use an M$ based PC it's won't be a challenge. And you'll end up with a much better overall general knowledge on computing, pc's, etc.

Ken Hansen said on Friday, 24 October 2008

Here in my US school district the technology teachers are *demanding* MS Office 2007access now, and they expect that MS Office 2007 will replace MS Office 2003 in next year's district-wide system image. This despite the factt they have neither the training or classroom materials to properly teach students in MS Office 2007. The cornerstone of their argument lies in the frustration that we don't have the same tools our kids have at home!

The Open Sourcerer said on Friday, 24 October 2008

This is an even better and more interesting article *because* of the comments above.

This is great stuff!

Thanks Glyn and contributors.

darryl said on Friday, 24 October 2008

and russia is such a good international leaders and representation.

all the good work they do, countries they invade, reported they have assinated.

but hey as long as they are flogging Linux/FOSS all is forgiven right.

Bout time said on Friday, 24 October 2008

and America would never invade another country and take advantage of it's political war machine for it's own use...

Not that that has ANYTHING to do with this article.

The point is that education is about computing concepts. I was taught wordprocessing at school, and spreadsheeting. If you understand the concept it isn't relevant what the implementation is.

The problem is that so many Gen Y's have been spoon few MS for so long that they no longer learn concepts. They learn software. That's the best way to stifle creativity and advancement.

It's not about supporting MS or Open Source. It's about learning and if the education system had any real intent to teach concepts you would at the very minimum need to expose children to both technologies.

Given the extortion MS wields on the Global education system it would seem logical that GNU/Linux should be used as a teaching aid for 90% of concept teaching with 10% exposure to Windows for completeness.

Ivan Petrov said on Friday, 24 October 2008

You can find additional information about integration open source software in russian educational system on http://liberatum.ru/go/edu

Troy said on Friday, 24 October 2008

I like this 'Pay for it yourselves' approach. Eh saves government money for stuff it doesn't even need to be spent on.

Glyn Moody said on Friday, 24 October 2008

@Ivan: great link, thanks.

Steve said on Friday, 24 October 2008

If you can learn OpenOffice, you can learn any word or spreadsheet application. In the computer field and pretty much every field, with very few exceptions for specialized courses, schools are not around to teach a certain product, they are around to teach theory. A student's job is to take that theory and advance him or herself with the application they choose to use. Why pay for the software when you can get very similar (i.e. Photoshop vs GIMP) for nothing? It can only help the budgets or schools, companies, families etc... of this or any country. Even Windows has some very good free software in pretty much any type of application like GIMP.

Some of the best books for some topics have not changed for 50 years, like english and basic math.

Jim said on Saturday, 25 October 2008

@Garth. Sorry but you are sadly under-informed about how education works. The goal of education is not to teach a specific tool but the skills one can apply to any tool. If students learn the underlying skills of word processing or doing a presentation and if they have basic computing skills, then they can learn to use any word processing tool with minimal effort. My school seems to feel that office 2003 is THE tool but every student we have graduated for the past 4 years or so is now faced with an unfamiliar tool when they use 2007. Had we instead focused on teaching basic computing skills (like how to teach yourself an app) as well as basic office app skills they would be able to quickly adapt. Unfortunately, most of them only know click here for this task and now that the menus have changed they are lost.

Therefore, why focus on teaching expensive apps when the same skill set can be learned for free?

Lennert said on Saturday, 25 October 2008

It's a good hint to the rest of the world about how well a school; goverment; company can work with free software and without commercial, closed software.

Grtz Lennert
http://openbron.blogspot.com

Henry Wertz said on Saturday, 25 October 2008

"With 90% of companies using proprietary software to run their businesses it is better to educate our children on how to use this software."
No it's not, this software is overpriced and underperforming. XP's obsoleted by Microsft anyway, Vista requires RIDICULOUS resources, which most educational computers will not meet.

"Let's not get hung up on all this geeky open source nonsense."
Free software is not nonsense, it costs less and performs better than propreitary software. And it's not geeky unless you make it geeky.

"If your kid gets a job in one of the limited number of companies that use it they can simply retrain them."
If your kid gets a job in ANY company they can simply be retrained. Oh, you think companies years from now will STILL use XP and Office 2003? (Or Vista + 2007?) Hah! A normal Linux distro + OpenOffice will work fine to train for using a computer + word processor..training for Office + Windows specifically is pointless.

Wladimir Mutel said on Sunday, 26 October 2008

Microsoft would give near-100% discount for schools. To keep them on its needle. Simple as that.

Telic said on Monday, 27 October 2008

@Gareth Evans

No, because then there's an implicit requirement that students' parents should provide MS software to do homework, thus families are forced to pay Microsoft for their children's education. In contrast, it's the student who benefits when a school deploys GNU/Linux, as they're free to use the same applications at home.

For students and developing markets, it's well understood that Microsoft uses drug-lord tactics to create their next generation of addicts, locked into propietary formats...

<http://tinyurl.com/4z2wkt>

norseman@hughes.net said on Monday, 27 October 2008

To this Westerner Russian mandate is one way to get ahead in a hurry. Take one down, fix it a bit, pass it on... The encouragement of freedom in what was once 'behind the iron curtain'. It's a wounderus time.

Garth Elliott said on Thursday, 30 October 2008

Most office suites are similar in design, tools, and function, especially OpenOffice/StarOffice and Microsoft Office. Skills learned on one can usually be transferred to the other, so there is not much need for 'retraining'.

There are only two main differences between these two, cost and default file format. The cost issue is obvious -- even the 'have-nots' can 'afford' OpenOffice (it's free). Proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office saves files (by default) in .DOC format (for Word files), while OpenOffice uses (by default) .ODT format. OpenOffice can open both types of files, and can save as both types of files. Microsoft Office cannot (with a 'patch' it can open ODT files).

The problem here is that proprietary formats (like DOC) can be changed from one version of Word to another (forcing you to constantly re-format documents, or upgrade your version of Word -- at a cost). DOC format may be an industry standard, but ODT is a worldwide open format.

Garth Elliott said on Thursday, 30 October 2008

Most office suites are similar in design, tools, and function, especially OpenOffice/StarOffice and Microsoft Office. Skills learned on one can usually be transferred to the other, so there is not much need for 'retraining'.

There are only two main differences between these two, cost and default file format. The cost issue is obvious -- even the 'have-nots' can 'afford' OpenOffice (it's free). Proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office saves files (by default) in .DOC format (for Word files), while OpenOffice uses (by default) .ODT format. OpenOffice can open both types of files, and can save as both types of files. Microsoft Office cannot (with a 'patch' it can open ODT files).

The problem here is that proprietary formats (like DOC) can be changed from one version of Word to another (forcing you to constantly re-format documents, or upgrade your version of Word -- at a cost). DOC format may be an industry standard, but ODT is a worldwide open format.

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Dave said on Wednesday, 10 June 2009

When I was in college, one of my teachers forced all of us to hand in our assignments on 3.5 floppy disk using MS Office. I used Star Office at home and always liked it better than Word Perfect or MS Word. However if I wanted to pass I had to go and buy a $300 piece of software. He just would not even accept the assignments printed out and turned in that way.
Now I am not that big into open source or "free" software but I do indeed remember how much I hated to part with my hard earned money just so that I could turn in assignments to a teacher who insisted that everyone do that same thing as him.
Now I am the teacher. I remember well the policy of insisting that the students use the same software as the teacher. I use Open Office since it is the came from Star Office. In insist that students email assignments in ODF format done with Open Office. If a student sends me a .doc file, they fail. I won't even read it. Open Office cost $0 and I have free CDs so there is no excuse.

Kinshuk Sunil said on Monday, 26 October 2009

Great Initiative taken
Congrats from the team of OSSCube- leading Open source developer.It should be expanded to other countries as well.
<a href="http://osscube.com "> </a>

Marty R. Milette said on Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Fast-forward to TODAY -- where the Russian program has been declared "in jeapordy" and neither the teachers nor the schools WANT software that will cost them many times more in retraining of teachers and administrators.

PLUS that the students don't want because Linux isn't used in business -- so what is the point to learn something that won't help you in the real world.

I LIVE in Russia -- and can see the writing on the wall. At the better schools, there will be no problem -- the parents will fund software purchases. They want the kids to have the best. In the other schools it won't matter -- because they don't have computers anyway.

Derek T. said on Monday, 28 December 2009

"it performs better than propreitary software."
Bullshit, sir. Most commercial software (ie: Microsoft Office and Photoshop) beats free software (ie: OpenOffice and Gimp) in features, perfomance, efficiency and user-friendliness, and only a blind Open Source fanboy would fail to see it.
There are exceptions (ie: Firefox), but usually you get what you pay for.

"If your kid gets a job in ANY company they can simply be retrained. Oh, you think companies years from now will STILL use XP and Office 2003? (Or Vista + 2007?) Hah! A normal Linux distro + OpenOffice will work fine to train for using a computer + word processor..training for Office + Windows specifically is pointless."
Yeah, maybe companies will start using Linux... in about 100 years, assuming that it manages to surpass the 1% market share it has today.
Then again, even that is EXTREMELY unlikely. People who claim Linux is the future are all delusional Linux zealots who live in a bubble.