I have been thinking for a while about how to get more exposure for Free and Open Source Software. I work in a school district which, like most, is owned by Microsoft. I have tried for several years to get more FOSS on the desktops and I have had only minimal success. Firefox is now installed on most if not all machines, and we have Audacity, GIMP and even Blender on some machines. Open Office exists on a few that I have managed to infect, but that is about it. However, I have come to realize that Open Office is the one application that could really help to start a changeover.

One of my biggest complaints about technology in schools is that it is used almost exclusively to produce documents. There are some other isolated uses like video editing or producing school yearbooks and newspapers, but most classroom related activities almost always end up with students typing up a paper or a PowerPointless presentation. I believe this is an issue that sorely needs to be addressed before technology becomes an actual enhancement to education rather than what I suspect is mainly a detriment. Think about it. Learning is supposed to be hard and require effort. Students are supposed to be challenged to reach just beyond their grasp in order to learn and the bar is continually raised to encourage them to keep climbing (see Vygotsky’s work on scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development for example). Productivity software on the other hand is used to make things easier. (Note: the appropriateness of office software in education is an entirely different subject and not the focus of this post. I will take this up in the near future so stay tuned.)

Despite this flaw, MS Office is installed on all machines and it is the one application that everyone seems to feel is most necessary. Therefore, if one could manage to get large and entrenched educational organizations to move to Open Office, that would start a process that would not only save a good deal of money, but would also open the door to much more Free Software in schools - much of which is actually likely to bring about real learning opportunities. Once an organization dumps MS Office and adopts a free alternative, they have broken the keystone in the locked in, proprietary software model. Once MS Office is no longer viewed as essential, organizations can then start to reevaluate the need for Exchange and Active Directory as well and even the overall value of Windows based computers. Like any business, schools need to use cost-benefit analysis and really demonstrate that costly software actually achieves their goal of educating students, and if it they cannot they need to address that.

Therefore, I believe it is important for every parent and taxpayer to contact their school district’s superintendent and/or IT department and voice their frustration over the money spent on a fairly useless education tool like MS Office when entirely sufficient free replacements exist. Parents and taxpayers need to make it known that wasting public funds in this way is not appropriate and may very well impact their votes on future funding efforts like bonds and mill levies. The problem is that most people do not know there are free alternatives nor do they understand the relative uselessness of office productivity software in education. Those of us who do need to take the lead in our communities and get this conversation started. I recently did this and I encourage others to do this as well. The more a superintendent hears this, the more likely they will be to put pressure on IT departments to justify their spending and hopefully bring about a move to more Free Software and important savings as well.