Open Source Initiative of the Year
From Schoolforge-UK
Schoolforge-UK has entered for the CNET Technology Awards - Open Source Initiative of the Year.
Below is the text of our entry.
Contents |
Person Submitting entry
John Ingleby on behalf of the members of Schoolforge-UK?
Nominated Person or Organisation
Schoolforge-UK - c/o The Learning Machine
Person who would collect the Award
Awards Category
Open Source Initiative of the Year
Nomination
Please provide a brief description of the nominated product, service, project, person or company (250 words max.):
Schoolforge-UK is a voluntary, non-profit association formed in June 2003 for the purpose of bringing together individuals and organisations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for UK schools and colleges.
The association's membership today comprises 146 individuals and 26 organisations, and includes ICT staff and teachers working in schools and colleges, as well as representatives of IT companies and others who support Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) for education. Most of our activities are coordinated through our web site at http://www.schoolforge.org.uk, and email discussion groups.
Our principal activities cover:
- Promoting the benefits of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) to the UK educational establishment
- Implementing FOSS applications in schools and colleges
- Collecting Case Studies of successful FOSS applications in education
- Supporting schools and colleges that are starting to use FOSS in their IT infrastructure
- Representing the FOSS community in education to the relevent government agencies
- Building close relationships with other organisations in the FOSS community
- Organising conferences and meetings for all who support FOSS in UK education
Explain why this entry deserves the award (750 words max.):
With your entry, you will need to show proven innovative thinking, successful implementation and return on investment. Our judges will also be looking for examples of real user benefits.
Our members have worked to:
- Implement FOSS applications in more than 40 UK schools. This has offered the schools sustainable expansion of their ICT facilities at low cost. Among many notable examples are:
- Dover Grammar School for Boys allows schools to visit and try out Linux server systems, running the Karoshi project. So far around 10 schools, ranging from Primary, Specialist and Secondary schools are using Karoshi and contributing back as visitor schools. Students from DGSB promote Open Source to other students, one has managed to convert 18 friends to use Linux at home.
- Handsworth Grammar School, reported in The Guardian on 11th January 2005, now has over 90 Linux thin client workstations, and successfully applied for Specialist Schools status in Maths and Computing.
- Leigh City Technology College, which offers public courses on the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as several well-documented "HowToz".
- North Chadderton High School, which hosts http://www.becta.org - "Bringing Educational Creativity to All", providing a large number of downloadable free educational resources for students, which was mentioned in the TES Online article of 6th June 2005.
- Orwell High School, Felixstowe, which appeared in the BBC "Working Lunch" report on 10th February.
- Powys LEA which has been using open source networks to provide Internet connectivity between all their schools for several years.
- Skegness Grammar School where open source is used for all key stages of secondary education, also reported in TES Online on 6th June 2005.
- Demonstrate the financial and other benefits of using FOSS in education. We have shown in our own work the potential savings and this has been independently verified in the report by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta). Work indicates that 20%-40% cost savings are available to schools within the first 2-3 years of deploying FOSS with ongoing savings offering approximately twice the number of computers for the same annual spend. In other words, we have shown that FOSS will enable government to double the value of its annual £1 billion IT spending in schools and colleges.
- Affiliate with the Association For Free Software and Open Source Consortium to form the Education Working Group, which represents the FOSS community to the Becta. The presentation of a single point of contact to the government agency associated with ICT in education has been one of our primary objectives, which we have now met.
- Organise the FLOSSIE Conferences in February 2004 and July 2005.
- Build and develop a widely-used repository of FOSS links and resources at our website
- Communicate to the wider educational community the benefits possible by deploying FOSS, through meetings and conferences, business presentations and word of mouth.
- Provide technical support to those developing new FOSS applications in schools and colleges, mainly through the medium of email, but also through visits and telephone calls.
- Raise funds to support development of the database component in OpenOffice.org, the widely used and internationally acclaimed open source office productivity suite.
- Collaborate on developing freely available open source software for school administration
- Lobby MPs and government officials to ensure a "level playing field" for selection of schools' IT equipment, which is often supplied with proprietary software automatically "bundled" in the selling price.
- Show how FOSS, such as the OpenOffice.org suite, can be freely given away to students for use at home. One school (Parrs Wood Technology College) gives a free computer loaded with FOSS to any student who needs one.
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