01/16/2006

 

Good evening,

 

What a wonderful conversation. It seems as if two questions draw to the surface.

 

Should we buy in to the $100 laptop - one-to-one computing?

&

Why are we always buying/wanting the new commercial software and hardware?

 

One-to-one computing with $1200 laptops is not even a dream at some schools where computers are 5+ years old and more cuts are being asked for. The State grant programs are an exercise in politics. If you watched States such as Michigan over the years you would see how future funding for all the laptop programs fades in and out with the politics and economics of the State and/or school system in question. To see the future you only need to view the past. Many school systems can not afford to even repair their bathrooms, let alone buy every student a laptop.

 

For every study about the value of one-to-one computing there is another that shows no significant gain in test scores and some that show losses. So why are we surprised that administrators do not want to commit the funds required? Now if the laptops were $100 to $200 would that change?

 

I feel that at this time the point is moot. With programs such as Renaissance Place (Accelerated Reading, Star Reading, Accelerated Math, etc.), Compass Learning, RSCCC, and oh so many others exclusively being written for Windows there is little use for non-windows computers except in niches. This does not even begin to count all those little software packages that staff members bring/donate to their school computer.

 

Then there is the CATE view. What are businesses using? Should we train the students on the software they will use when they find a job? How many school board members are business owners who count on their local High School training their clerk, secretaries, data entry people and more? Will they wish to change over so easily?

 

Of course as trainers we should recognize our largest problem. The resistance of staff to be retrained on "free" software when the software they know is still available. Encouraging upgrading is difficult enough. On top of that are the studies that show the "free" software is not free. All of the trainers and technical staff will need retrained.

 

Oops! Did I forget that we still have all this other equipment and software? They will ask us what to do with that. Should we maintain two completely different platforms? Surely no one will want it all discarded. I believe a large number of us have already dealt with this over the years. MAC vs PC or Novell vs Windows or (for us old-timers) Mainframes with terminals vs personal computers - some of us have heard many of these arguments before. It is also interesting to hear the "thin client" arguments and realize how much they sound the same as the terminal arguments.

 

Ok - so maybe there are some good reasons not to embrace one-to-one computing everywhere. But why do we still move to the new technology so much?

 

Technology Director at some school --> new antivirus software that no longer works on Windows 95/98, staff using a web site that only supports latest Internet Browser snap-ins that require more memory, curriculum director purchases new software with Federal grant that needs 256mb of RAM, Windows XP and a minimum of Pentium 4 to run, teacher vertical team purchases new math assessment software that needs a special scanner for all the math teachers that requires a newer computer than they all have, and so on.

 

I like the idea the other day for the Curriculum department and the Technology department to be together, but I have seen that fail also. We are almost all government employees who are a part of the bureaucracy that we fight against. I once worked for a superintendent who was very computer literate and yet he still made bad technology decisions because they were good political decisions, even knowing that it would make my job more difficult. (The nice part was that he would explain to me why he did it. Too bad he retired.)

 

You know how I hate all negatives and no positives. Everyone understands the problem, but who has solution. I don't, but maybe I can suggest a start. We need to help the open source movement. Start the computer science class on a little Linux, add Linux to the networking curriculum, add OpenOffice to the BCIS classes as an extra or one week section, create a "Geeks Get Rich" club, build a lab here and there with all open source for web browsing, research, and non-curriculum work and much more. (How about some ideas? I bet many of you are doing these things.)

 

To help, I have recently negotiated a $151,300 grant for Westbrook ISD to distribute SUSE Linux 9.2 for free to schools and colleges in our area. (The area is Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.) We have a press release on our web site.The package comes with quite a bit of open source software, including OpenOffice, Firefox and much more.

 

I have quite a bit of the software reserved for ESC12, ESC14, ESC18, TSTC and some other partners. If you work with these ESCs please feel free to contact them about receiving some of the software. If not you can contact me directly at school. The press release is on our web site - www.westbrookisd.com - and has contact information, although officially it has not been released.

 

I do not feel that open source is the only answer. However, if we want to move toward ubiquitous computing and toward a more sustainable technology architecture we must start forcing the market to bring prices down. Supporting open source exerts a tremendous amount of pressure on the commercial market and will lower our own costs. If we are careful about how we do it and move slow enough for our own schools, we can start the cost saving now and allow those who are ready to take the first steps. Small moves on our part can create significant currents of change.

 

I know that many of you are already moving along this path and I encourage you to share your success stories and your pains with us.

 

Thanks,

 

Dirk D Dykstra