FLOSS for Education

"The most fundamental way of helping other people is to teach peoplehow to do things better, to tell people things that you know that will

enable them to better their lives. For people who use computers, thismeans sharing the recipes you use on your computer, in other words the

programs you run."

Richard Stallman, Founder, Free Software Foundation

Agenda

Freedom Freedom to Learn Freedom in Software Freedom in Content

Software @ Schools Why FLOSS @ Schools

Freedom to Learn

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan targets 192 million children in the age group of 6-14 years

Two thirds of the population remains out of schools in India 31 million out of 88.1 million children in the age

group of 14-18 as of 2001 census

Two thirds of the students drop out 61.92% drop out from a total of 37 million students

as of 30.09.2004

Freedom in Software

Freedom to use Freedom to study & tailor Freedom to distribute Freedom to improve

Freedom in Content

Creative Commons License Public Domain

Project Gutenberg Online &/or offline (CD & DVD)

Wiki Wikipedia Wikibooks

Online Textbooks List of Indian Textbooks online

Software Types

Computer Aided Instruction Conventional Subjects Computers & Programming Engineering & Advanced Sciences

Exam helpers Online Tests Question Paper in Vernacular Question Banks

Software Types (Contd.)

Administration School resources Students registry Library assets Time Table

Servers Thin Client Servers DHCP, DNS, LDAP, Web, Mail, Proxy, Web-Cache Web apps – Moodle, SchoolTime/OpenAdmin

Why FLOSS @ Schools?

Liberates students to learn how software works Proprietary S/W forbids learning how they work

Liberates school funds for more worthier causes – e.g., science lab/sports equipment

Allows schools to distribute a copy of the software to all students Students can practice & learn more

Allows students to co-operate with each other Builds better neighbours & citizens of the world

Why FLOSS @ Schools (Contd.)

Proprietary software are mostly pirated by students in personal environment/context Forces Piracy/Theft

Free copies of Proprietary software are provided to addict students to them Only the schools get the free license, they cannot

extend this to students Students have to buy the software for use in

personal environment

"It is a strange world when educators need to be convinced that sharing information, as opposed to

concealing information, is a good thing."

http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html

Compiled by ScorpFromHell [http://scorpfromhell.blogspot.com]Distributed under CC 3.0 License