Education is something of a hot topic at the moment and if you work in the media it is hard to go even a day without encountering yet another well-meaning corporate education initiative.
Linux can be used to develop 'true` computing skills among our future technology leaders rather than just teaching them to be slaves to the applications offered by companies such as Microsoft.
Alastair Otter, journalist, ITWeb
In most cases, these magnanimous gestures involve donating a car-load of computer equipment to a suitably poor school in an appropriately disadvantaged area. A very few of them are more ambitious, with enormous corporate sponsorship and elaborate plans to turn kids from the 'townships` into the technology leaders of tomorrow.
Without being unappreciative of the donations made by these corporations, I suspect it is going to take a far more concentrated and co-ordinated effort to truly overcome the deficit that our education system currently labours under. To some extent, initiatives such as Gauteng Online go some way to achieving these ends, but a truly national technology strategy faces a number of obstacles, the most important of which is the cost of the infrastructure and the software involved.
All talk, no action
Having sat through many a presentation and discussion on the benefits of open source software, I have to ask a simple question: why are local open source organisations and companies not throwing their might at the problem of equipping schools with affordable and stable computing systems? No doubt there are companies doing something along these lines somewhere, but is it not time that the Linux and free BSD communities in SA form a co-ordinated strategy to convince those in power of the benefits of implementing an open source solution to the problem rather than relying on the magnanimous gestures of big business to fund the projects.
Besides the obvious cost savings - on both licences and copies of software - derived from using open source software, there are a host of other benefits to treading the open source route. Linux, for example, is not only free but also a scalable system capable of supplying a school`s complete system requirements, for the price of a single disk.
A Linux system can be implemented as a Web server, database server or even a comprehensive development environment with no additional overheads. But more than that, Linux can be used to develop "true" computing skills among our future technology leaders rather than just teaching them to be slaves to the applications offered by companies such as Microsoft. Linux offers children the opportunity to learn how a computer truly works as well as being a tool for research and interactive communication.
As projects such as Gauteng Online forge ahead, we may well have missed the first boat, but it is still important that open source advocates stand up now and be counted. It is time that we stop talking endlessly about the benefits of the open source model and start proving that it can work.
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