200869
submission
Peter Parker writes:
Jim Klein, Tech Director for Saugus School District in CA writes an interesting piece on the open source software in education, with a particularly scathing assessment of the decision making processes of education IT. Quote:
"I believe it's important to emphasize to all education technology people (or anyone else, for that matter) that they should not view open source simply as a cheap replacement for something else. There is no need or requirement to switch any core application, business process, etc., if one's organization is unprepared to do so or finds it otherwise unnecessary. However, when an opportunity or initiative is in play, then open source should absolutely be in the mix for consideration. The arguments against doing so simply don't hold up to any sort of honest evaluation."
and:
"[begin rant] largely because our technology decisions are based primarily on the needs of the IT department, rather than that of the learning environment, since, after all, the deciding factor in most ed tech decisions is what IT thinks it can do, at the expense of learning and creativity — but don't get me started down that path...[end rant, thanks for your patience]"
