The simple answer is 'yes' we could do it now and we will save the taxpayer millions of pounds.

In previous posts I have documented the exponential rise in school ICT costs over the past 20 years. The articles focussed on costing ICT fully. This meant summing the costs of software purchase, software licensing, hardware replacement cycle, support costs and for the first time, electricity costs. The latter now make up 20% of the total ICT spend of a secondary school's £100,000-£200,000 annual total.
 
Missing from the earlier work, for which I apologise, were peripherals such as printers and photocopiers.

My motivation for revisiting the topic  came from finding out that laser printer and photocopiers use identical  technologies and typically draw 1.5 kw when active and 200 watts on standby. As I happen to be working with a secondary school at the moment I was able to investigate further. 
 
The school's electricity cost accruing from printing and photocopying was under £1000 per year at current prices: I confess to a being a little disappointed I had imagined it was more and it did not amount to more than an extra few PCs.
 
The shock came, though, when the total  number of sheets of A4 that passed through plain paper faxes, photocopiers and laser printers were calculated. It came to 4,450,000 per year. Or, in this school, 8,000 copies per child and one copy every 2 secs per year with a total cost of just below £100,000! The entire T5 airport terminal project only produced 8,000,000 copies per year and they ran 24/7.
 
The question was instantly begged 'is this normal for schools?'. It turns out it is.
 
Chosen at random, a City Academy and a few 'bog standard comps' (not my choice of phrase) produce similar numbers of prints as does my test school and have similar bills. To be fair, my  school had 700 students and the others more like 1400, so they are more 'economical'.
 
Simple sums produce scale-up figures for the UK schools, these are: 20 billion prints at 500 million pounds per annum.
 
Let's take a step back. The last 20 years has seen the massive development of ICT in schools from a standing start to a ratio of one computer for every four students. The same period saw the first photocopier in schools and the first laser printer ( I remember carrying our one in ). 

It would seem that the paperless office does not extend to the paperless school. In fact it appears quite the opposite. As ICT costs have grown so have paper related costs. Neither yet show any signs of abating.
 
It does not have to be like this.

Back at the office, (where I work as an ICT consultant) I cannot, hand-on-heart, claim that it is 'paperless'. But truly it is an event when the printer has to be run and usually associated with some cursing. Also, being an Open Source company, we get all of our software as downloads so not much is copied to disc either.
 
Obviously, everyone has a computer (laptops have replaced desktops by choice) and interestingly a notebook and pencil/pen at the ready. We have a library of well thumbed reference books too.  Like us UK secondary schools all have networks and Internet access, but obviously they do not have a computer each.
 
Solution: give everyone one of the new open source netbooks and fully wirelessly connect the campus.  Stop handing out work sheets, printing homeworks and e-mails etc etc, look at a flat screen screen instead.
 
To give every child in the country a new Linux notebook,  would cost less than the annual printout bill.  Within a school the old PC's and all but the web server would wither and die from lack of use (except for specialised applications) thus saving further millions.  No more digital divide, no need for paper and no need for text books (they would all be on the server).
 
Thinking 'is this how it has to be?'  is what really defines Open Source thinking.  The new low cost, low energy computers came out of  possibilities created by Open Source software development. Open Source software itself appeared as if from thin air as a result of thinking 'is this how it has to be, lets change it' 
 
Schools are very conservative, they like to keep on doing what they have always done, and no one likes to think they got it wrong, but does anyone feel in a position to defend school ICT as it is, on a benefit-cost quotient? 

ICT spending in UK schools is unsustainable but it could be cut by 90% with the help of Open Source software and the latest innovations in personal computing dubbed NetBooks.

ARM wars?

The latest salvo in the new chip war gives some indication of what is to come and just how soon it will happen. NVidia’s release this week of their ARM-based Tegra CPU uses an astonishingly meagre 1 watt of power and rivals Intel’s new 2 watt Atom chip.

Both chips are technical wonders (low enough in power to make photovoltaic devices a reality) and both signal a clear break away from Microsoft’s dominating influence in Desktop-PC-CPU specification.

New devices based on these chips will use Open Source applications and sport Linux operating systems. No one, surely, expects otherwise? Windows XP continuing to 2010 is hardly a solution to Microsoft’s empty OS larder for this new market sector.

So called NetBooks are being designed and launched by all major manufacturers. The new chips make last year’s 6 watt Asus EeePc seem rather greedy.

The coming of the NetBook will make the PC obsolete in schools except where specialist applications such as CAD are needed.

Education is the target market

The impact will be felt in education first. RM has lead the way in the UK with the amazingly successful Linux based EeePC. Other suppliers will follow.

As for the OLPC (One Laptop per Child Project) these new low cost, low power computers will be aimed at children and education where resistance to adoption is low and interest in innovation is high.

What is the ideal NetBook for schools?

• Think the Asus’ EeePC to get a feel for the size; make the screen fill one side of the clam shell and think along the lines of Amazon’s Kindle e-book for readability.
• Make the keyboard-side the same thickness as the screen side. Now fit a wireless interface, embed an OS and a few useful applications including a browser and a decent terminal server client. If you turn it on its side hinge vertical) it’s a e-book. When horizontal it’s a notebook PC.
• Let the screen flip (a la Apple), and give it 7 hours battery life.
• The NetBook is not only a PC-notebook but a thin-client and a universal text book.
• The Netbook will access content wirelessly from the School’s File Server, Intranet and Publishers electronic textbooks.

Maybe this machine will turn up this year, maybe next year, but turn up it will and soon: the new chips have made this a certainty.

ICT procurement

That ICT in schools will change radically is obvious but less obvious is the effect it will have on the procurement of ICT in schools.

Very recently schools have undergone a sea change in their attitude to ICT. E-learning credits have gone, ring-fenced ICT budgets have gone. They are now in stasis, unsure of which way to go, discouraged from entering the latest upgrade cycle by official Government advice and facing cuts in their budgets.

The love affair with network rooms full of expensive power hungry PCs running the latest bloated software is over. Shrinking budgets and steeply rising energy costs have seen to that.

Furthermore the pedagogical claims of proprietary ‘interactive learning software’ are dying away and anything that is remotely useful is on the Web.

With the emergence of Free Open Source Software and genuine low cost personal computing devices, schools can quite simply do the following:

1. Stop paying for software and software licences.
2. Stop buying any computer equipment that draws more than 30 watts when operational and extend the life cycle of existing computers.
3. Stop the printers and the photocopiers.

It is not really necessary to elaborate on the above. Previous posts have done so at length.

Possibly, paper addicts may wince at point 3 but in terms of cost these devices are the biggest single equipment/electricity/consumables technology in a school.

It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict that the above developments may mean many traditional ICT vendors will simply not exist in five years’ time.

Emerging business-models

In a previous post I described ‘the great VLE scam’. VLE or learning Platforms have been slow to get a grip of teachers’ enthusiasm. In most cases they are forced upon schools. The sticking point has always been content. The problem is solved by deals such as those made by the content publishing house Pearson.

Quite simply the VLE will be delivery device for a publisher’s e-text book market. Expect many other VLE-publisher exclusives in the near future.

Schools have to pay for text books even e-textbooks. A new gravy train is departing on the back of an ever diverse curriculum.

Schools and LA’s will have specific requirements for applications in education. The Open University provides a good example. The OU decided to use the VLE Moodle for part of its distance learning provision. Moodle, like all VLEs, did not do exactly what the OU needed. However because it's Open Source software the OU simply paid for it to be changed to meet their needs - an impossible notion for a major proprietary product.

It follows that the future vendors will be knowledge-based companies able to develop and customise products as required by the users. This means Open Source software. No user adapts proprietary software to their needs, you adapt to what it can do.

Summary

In five year’s time it is likely that:

1. There will be no proprietary software or hardware market in education capable of sustaining even a medium sized company.
2. Schools will have slashed their ICT expenditure.
3. Publishing houses will reclaim their pre-eminence in content provision through quickly updatable e-textbooks delivered through VLEs.
4. Specialist suppliers will adapt and develop Open Source software for a new emerging market.

How things change so quickly.

If you are a student looking for an Office suite for college, let me inform you that Open Office 2.4 rocks; it's smart, easy to use, supports open standards, is free, can be distributed freely to your friends works on virtually any computer and now you can even get free training through the QCA approved INGOTs.

Best of all, Open Office.org's engineers have done a fantastic job reverse engineering MS's .doc, .xls and .ppt formats so that OO has an unparalleled ability to handle a range of file formats with fidelity, including VB macros. This achievement ranks with the other great interoperability open source project, SAMBA. The SAMBA team's duplication (improvement?) of MS's SMB networking protocol liberated Mac, Linux and Windows machines from their isolation.

Are Microsoft worried? I think they must be...

If you are a student and go to your favourite online today you will find something pretty similar to this; Vista Ultimate rrp £249.00.. student price £64.95; or amazingly, Office 2007 Pro rrp £395.95... a snip at £79.94.

These are some discounts, especially if we take into account that virtually the entire cohort of 16-19 year olds and 50% of the under 21s in the UK qualify. Education discounting has increased steadily over the years so lets run with this trend and see where it leads.

The trend is to zero; free, no-purchase cost, nothing; can this be a possibility?

If you're a very rich company and money is no object, heavy discounting is quite possible, maybe not sustainable on a global scale and maybe not a great way to promote your brand value either but it's the old story, market share versus profit. Can you grab/keep enough before you go bust?

Obviously, market share of the next generation of 'Office' users is everything: de Facto standards depend on near monopoly.

Imagine then Vista and Office 2007 is offered to students free (a bit like Linux and Open Office but with proprietary licencing).

Imagine also a soupcon of brand-loyalty gewgaws (aka lock-ins) such as a quirky interface (eg Mac Office 2008 ), quirkier file formats (.docx). Finally even better, one may predict that if you signed up to MS's MESH you can also expect a free laptop from an obliging ISP to run all that free software.

Is there any evidence other than the price crashes mentioned above to fuel this scenario?

In fact there are a few indicators.

For example this April, as reported in a previous post, UK Gov in partnership with Microsoft launched a Microsoft-funded £6,000,000 computer literacy drive to bring office skills to those on the other side of the digital divide. For another, Vista comes with a trial Office 2007 suite which can only save in .docx format. As an aside .docx, (possibly one of weirdest, least interchangeable, impossible to reverse engineer format currently around) very quickly puts school ICT teachers in a spin when their students bring in their work and it won't open. Yet another indicator: one ISP already offers a free Dell Laptop with a broadband account.

Finally, the famous OLPC sub $100 (£50) notebook project has just 'joined forces' with Microsoft and now sports a Microsoft Windows XP hack. Just how much of the £50 is the cost of the OS. One suspects not very much.

All circumstantial evidence, not enough to convict anyone, but it will do to be going on with. Here is a plausible scenario:

We are witnessing a live race - Open Office versus Free MS Office. The latest generation of phenomenally successful education-targeted sub-notebooks and diskless workstations are all running Open Office on Linux (excepting now of course the OLPC).

Within a very short time a great many young users will have been exposed to Open Office. QCA approved companies like INGOTs in the UK will supply training (if needed) and the dominance of MS Office is threatened in a critical sector; future users.

So who will win this race? Open Office and MS Office are now both free for 'bona fide' students. Which would you choose?

Well, three and more years ago this question would have been a no-brainer, you would have chosen MS Office. What about now? Is this still true?

Open Office looks set to follow in the footsteps of Firefox and achieve significant market penetration.

If, in this case, say 20% are OO users, 5% MS Mac Office 2004, 70% MS Office 2003 and a handful were MS Office 2007/2008, then how does your student's decision look?

Both OO and MS Office 2007/8 (in our imaginary scenario are free of purchase cost to the student), the 'something expensive for nothing principle' is very strong, so free MS Office (which costs industry and the public sector hundreds of pounds per go) still is pretty compelling, especially with that free laptop!

And, after all, the young don't think too hard about the future of vendor lock in and they also always save in the application's default format (.docx). To cap it all Becta has just signed up for another three years of the now infamous MS MOU.

It looks like a win to 'free' MS Office.

Two things may be pivotal, the need for MS to protect loss of revenue and a potential backlash from a cash strapped Public Sector and bottom-line conscious business sector.

MS Office related revenue is a serious bedrock of funds for Microsoft. It can't just be given away to everyone. In the standard proprietary software business model free, or nearly free software has to be subsidised by those paying full rate. Microsoft subsidises education hardware vendors in the UK very generously already, even so their profit on turnover ratios are wafer thin. Any loss of perceived value for bundled MS products could well further erode profits, some firms will fail. Why, for example, would a school buy a desktop computer with Vista and Office 2007 from say RM plc when a 'student' could get the whole lot pretty much for nothing and bring it in on a laptop?

Meanwhile as stated before the Public Sector and Industry are paying full price.

To the mix above add a failure of OOXML to become a Standard Format and the inability of MS Office to use already standard Open Document Formats. In which case, as in much of mainland Europe, we may see a sudden and massive, corporate and public sector switch to Open Office as firms address their bottom line and worry about backward compatibility of their legacy files. Many still use Office 2000, not the ideal software to add a .docx compatibility patch to. Open Office however has first class legacy file support.

Circumstantially it looks very much like MS's strategists are relying on 'just one more generation' of Office users before revenue streams from the on-line Web 2.0 world crank up. The strategy may not work for another reason though, one that MS is acutely aware judging by the resources it is committing.

Uptake even of free software has its own problems. The Free Open Source software world has always struggled with the lack of cost of its products! Marketing 'free-stuff' as enterprise quality equivalents to 'very expensive-stuff' is not always easy as those of us in this industry know very well. It's counter intuitive and a lot of breath gets wasted explaining how FOSS even got to exist at all let alone how it became so good.

Open Office itself gets better each version, but soon I guess it too will be as glossy and as over featured as MS Office. Then how do you chose between two products other than by familiarity and personal preference? Why also would you stay with one product, unless you were locked-in by some odd format?

A strong feature of high quality Open Source Software has been adherence to open standards and the endorsement of really major companies supporting such standards. Factors like open standards have enormously helped the deployment of OSS solutions into industry. It follows that software with idiosyncratic non-standard file formats can't even be given away...

... now I understand. That's what all the fuss is about: ODF versus OOXML! No standard means no product differentiator which means dwindling market share even when you give it away. Exciting stuff.