[Edu-it] Promoting Free Software in schools

[Loic Dachary]

        Hi,

        I'd like to find out what was the impact of the Peruvian
Congressman letter regarding education & Free Software. I understand
you're very invovled in promoting Free Software in the education field
in Italy and figured you'd be the best person to ask. Would you mind
sharing your thoughts with me on this specific subject ? That may help
us in France to find better strategies.

        Thanks in advance,

---- http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/peru.en.txt

You  then state  that:  "12. In  the  Forum, the  use  of open  source
software in  education was discussed, without  mentioning the complete
collapse of this initiative in  a country like Mexico, where precisely
the State employees who founded the project now state that open source
software did  not make it possible  to offer a  learning experience to
pupils in the  schools, did not take into account  the capability at a
national level to give adequate  support to the platform, and that the
software  did  not and  does  not allow  for  the  levels of  platform
integration that now exist in schools."

In fact  Mexico has  gone into reverse  with the Red  Escolar (Schools
Network) project. This  is due precisely to the  fact that the driving
forces behind  the Mexican  project used license  costs as  their main
argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which
are far more  essential. Because of this conceptual  mistake, and as a
result of  the lack  of effective support  from the SEP  (Secretary of
State for Public  Education), the assumption was made  that to implant
free software  in schools  it would be  enough to drop  their software
budget and send  them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux  instead. Of course this
failed,  and   it  couldn't  have  been  otherwise,   just  as  school
laboratories  fail when  they  use proprietary  software  and have  no
budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill
is  not limited  to making  the use  of free  software  mandatory, but
recognizes the  need to create a  viable migration plan,  in which the
State undertakes the  technical transition in an orderly  way in order
to then enjoy the advantages of free software.

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      address@hidden
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          address@hidden
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt