School’s and Tech.

I recently got an invitation to join a new “community” within my childrens school to talk about and be a part of how the school chooses and runs technology within the school.  So, I went to one of the meetings.  My expectation of the meeting was to discuss were the school stood on the use of technology (mainly computers) and to talk about improvement.

To make a long story short, the “Tech” person in charge at the school introduced us to a person whom the school had hired to “manage” the computers and network within the school. (The “school” consists of 4 different schools, 2 elementary, 1 middle, and 1 high school).  This person went on to tell the group about how the school “must” replace all the computers in the school so that they can all be upgraded to Windows Vista.  (By the way, this community was given “authority” to make budget recommendations to the school board concerning all technology matters.)  This upgrade of all the computers and software would cost the school 10 of thousands of dollars!

To shorten this further, I spoke up and asked if using Open Source software (software that is fully customizable and without the need to pay huge licensing fees to proprietary companies) was a viable option.  The response that I received from the third party tech guy was “a laugh”.  He went on to tell me how that type of software is “impossible” to manage.

In conclusion, doing my own research into the third party company, I found out that this company was a Micro$oft sponsored company and that they made money by getting schools to go exclusively Micro$oft.

I was subsequently “uninvited” to any future meetings.

Personal feelings:

Feels like the big bureaucracy of big companies like the pharmaceutical, oil, and big corporate America coming down and squashing innovation and progress.

Side note:

My kids’ school is a private school that is not government funded (except for the food program).  Money is tight to say the least.

Click here to read about the tax savings of Open source in schools (we are talking Billions…yes, with a B)

Click here to read about the philosophy of “Free” software in schools