Real Open Source Applications for Education?

openeducation writes "I have been researching open source solutions for K-12 education pretty heavily for the past year and have been disappointed to find no real alternatives to the large administrative applications like student information systems, data warehouse, ERP, etc. But recently, I ran across Open Solutions for Education. This group appears to be making a serious effort at creating a stack of open source applications that are alternatives to the large and costly commercial packages. Centre, an open source student information system that has been around for a while, is part of the solution stack. They have a data warehouse and are proposing an open source SIF alternative and an assessment solution. While the proof is in the pudding, these guys have working demos and they look pretty good for a first run. K-12 education is in dire financial straits and solutions like these could help with lower TCO. Plus, education is a collaborative industry already, which makes it a good fit for open source."

Re:Necessary?

[cheater512]

So we can analyze the source code and figure out how to change our marks. :D

Re:Necessary?

[man_of_mr_e]

Why? Skyrocketing costs for compliance with regulations like "no child left behind" combined with growing numbers of students and less and less funding means looking for solutions that allow more money to be spent on educating the children rather than adminstration.

Have you been to a high school recently? They're little more than prisons that let their inmates go home at 3pm.