Moving to Open Source Software in Schools

Schools are a proving ground for students. Children develop habits of all sorts while they expand their understanding of the world. Schools need to provide tools for students which give them flexibility and increasing self direction.

That makes school a perfect place to install tools that students can use both within the classroom and at home.

Migrating from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice has some issues, of course. So it is great to read information which makes it easier.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/libreoffice-every-desk-10-step-plan-215370

LibreOffice is a community-developed tool, steadily driving forward in capabilities. It costs only the effort to install on every computer in your school district. Make it a part of the hard drive image for your school.

http://answergarden.ch/view/52920

If your favorite “free” educational app isn’t there, add it. Think about your definition of “free” as you approach the task.

Are you thinking freedom?

March 27, 2013 is Document Freedom Day.

What’s up with that? Boring format stuff, for sure, but more.

Educators need to be activists in this issue.

If your school does not use open formats for documents, find out why.

If the answer is that “everyone” uses DOCX because Microsoft is the standard, complain. Using DOCX effectively ties your students to a single company. It does not free them to be independent adults.

Some posters to help promote open formats:
https://www.april.org/en/open-formats

Here’s good news.

A parent has a school where experiments are invited, even if they are from outside.

Parent introduced Gimp photo editing to a couple of middle school classes.

http://kearneyville.com/2013/03/01/introducing-open-source-to-middle-schoolers/

Anybody else have or know of a good story like this one?