Applications. Openeducation. Repository. Virtualmeeting. Mediarelease. Gantt. Open_source. Windows 7 enabled netbooks for schools to include open source software - Microsoft, netbooks, NSW Department of Education and Training's netbooks tender, open source. The 267,000 Windows 7 based netbooks that the NSW Government has started rolling out to high schools will come pre-installed with open source software.
The initial roll out that began today will see the 70,000 Year 9 students in NSW schools each receive a Windows 7 enabled Lenovo IdeaPad S10e by the end of this year. Over the next four years, each Year 9 student will receive one of the devices as a gift, which they can keep once they have left school. A total 267,000 netbooks will be handed out over the course of the program, which is part of the Rudd Government’s $2.2 billion Digital Education Revolution. Many spokespeople from the free and open source software community feel that a Linux-based operating system would have been a better choice for students in Australia, but the netbooks will be pre-installed with a variety of open source software. BuddyPress » A Wordpress MU Based Social Network Platform. Couros Blog » Blog Archive » What Education Can Learn From Open Source.
Paul Graham recently offered the interesting essay, “What Business Can Learn From Open Source“.
It’s a worthwhile read, and our educational institutions could easily adapt some of idea from the essay. I have taken the liberty of adapting this essay focused on business to suit the educational environment. Re: school servers At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don’t. While there are various excuses as to why schools continue to use Windows on the desktop (mostly due to perceived ‘hassle’ and the cost of re-training teachers to the Linux environment), I know of very few reasons as to why schools should continue to use the costly and inferior Windows server environment rather than a LAMP configuration.