Blog Entries

The Future of ICT in Schools

jspencer — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

The future of IT in UK schools is a subject which pre-occupies me, as any reader of this blog will know already. The reason is quite simple; on one hand we see fundamental changes in the way in which new technology is being used, 'on the streets' as it were and on the other we see an institutionalized attempt to fossilise students' IT into a particular way of doing things (circa 2001) and to peddle this, ad infinitum, to the next generation.

The result has been a near co [...]

Has Becta presided over the collapse of the UK PC industry?

tcallway — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Last summer the list of ‘thriving’ UK PC manufacturers contained a very familiar list of players. These were RM plc, Akhter plc, Evesham Computers Ltd and Viglen Ltd.

The industry collectively had concentrated on the public sector market, especially the education sector, since it was becoming clear that retail selling in an ultra cut-throat market was untenable.

The dangers of retail se [...]

Can we give every school child in the UK a Linux notebook and still save money?

jspencer — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

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&nbs [...]

NetBooks

jspencer — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

When Windows and Office are given away

jspencer — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

Who destroyed IT in UK schools?

jspencer — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

This post is prompted by some outstandingly depressing UK statistics:

The summer 2008 will see fewer candidates taking GCE Computing than even the previous year's low, approximately 5000 out of the total of 800,000 GCE's, of which barely 600 are female; secondly the drop out rate for Computer Science at University is now the highest of all subjects at over 10% and [...]

Interview: Steve McIntyre, Debian Project Lead

tcallway — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images. McIntyre ran for the post of Debian Project Leader in 2006 but was defeated by Anthony Towns by only six effective votes. In 2 [...]

Thin-Clients Revisited

jspencer — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The future is green, Open Source and Nintendo!

My principle interest has always been the use of Open Source thin-client solutions in an educational context. Its worth stating, again, what is really the blindingly obvious - thin-client work stations use one twentieth of the power of a typical PC (10-20 watts versus 200-400 watts), require no maintenance or technical per-machine support and [...]

The Learning Platform Stitch-up Uncovered

jspencer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Big business appears to be closing ranks in order to force UK schools to use non-interoperable Microsoft-based databases despite determined efforts from the UK Government to introduce the UK Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF). The dominant vendors, Capita and Serco have withdrawn from Becta's SIF trials and are lobbying the Government to support their opposition to SIF.

In order [...]

Linux in schools can save the planet

jspencer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

In the past few weeks I have written several articles for this blog deprecating at length the wasteful power consumption of ICT facilities in schools and suggesting alternative strategies to tackle the problem. I do not intend to do go over the ground again because you can only hector folk for so long on one topic. In any case I don't need to, since wonderfully, the Cardinal Wiseman CTC in Birmingham has recently deployed the UK's first zero carbon ICT facility.

The facility went l [...]

Interview: Aaron Seigo, KDE Project Lead

tcallway — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Aaron Seigo joined the KDE project in 2000 and is sponsored by Trolltech. Based in Calgary, Canada Aaron spends his time thinking about KDE project and its client-side software. Here he describes how porting KDE4 to Windows and MacOS will enable Kontact, the Open Source groupware application, to challenge the dominance of Microsoft Outlook in the enterprise.

How long have you been w [...]

Microsoft Tax on Linux in Schools must end says Becta

jspencer — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

John Spencer talks to Dr Stephen Lucey, who having joined Becta in 2000 is now their Executive Director (Strategic Technologies). Becta is the Governmental organisation which has oversight of all things ICT in UK schools. Specifically, apart from being a general advocate for ICT in schools, it is charged with providing strategic leadership, technical direction and advice on obtaining best value.
[...]

Is Becta loosening Microsoft's grip on UK schools?

jspencer — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Becta's massive school database interoperability project (SIF) will create huge opportunities for Open Source software companies.

Hitherto, competition in the school's database market has been minimal due to schools being locked-in to proprietary, non-interoperable software normally based on Microsoft MS-SQL.

Capita-SIMS, the powerful and dominant schools database provider, has been instruct [...]

Interview: Tim Pearson, CEO at RM plc on interoperability and software patents

jspencer — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

John Spencer talks to Tim Pearson Chief Executive of RM. RM is the largest
most successful supplier of ICT to the UK education market and, for good measure, is British too. Tim has been there from the start and so is really now Mr RM. This autumn he gave the school ICT world a jolt when RM announced its Asus miniBook. It retails to schools for only £169 and runs Open Source software throughout. The miniBook has preceded an ava [...]

Interview with OpenLDAP's Howard Chu

tcallway — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Who is Howard Chu?

Howard Chu is the Chief Architect of the OpenLDAP project and its main corporate sponsor Symas Corporation. OpenLDAP is a free, open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) which provides an enterprise with shared address books, single sign-on functionality, automount of home directories and file sharing for Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows clients.

Q: Can [...]

Open Source software is the only way to deliver sustainable savings in public sector IT

mtaylor — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Things could hardly be tougher in the Whitehall front line. Last year Gordon Brown made it clear in his budget speech just what he expects – 4% annual growth in spending on front line services financed out of just 2% overall budget growth.

Enacting this latter day miracle of loaves and fishes is not going to be easy. But it will not happen at all unless Whitehall ends its chronic failure to use mar [...]

Open Source in schools could save the taxpayer billions

jspencer — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

In a previous 2005 report the Government quango Becta showed that schools could effect considerable savings by making use of Free Open Source software such as Open Office. In their study they simply looked at 'like for like' software replacement using existing networks and computers.

Since this study we have seen the emergence of the new breed of ultra-portable Linux-based computers aimed squarely at the education sector and the inexorable build of Web 2 services such as Google Apps [...]

Howto: 100% Search engine friendly URLs in Joomla!

tcallway — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Implementing 100% SEF URLs in Joomla! can be a little tricky so we've written a step-by-step guide that includes how to correctly configure your LAMP server.

There are some differences in implementing SEF URLs in Joomla! 1.0.* and 1.5, principally the requirement for third-party plugins.

We'll deal with the generic LAMP server configuration issues first and then deal with the [...]

Freewash, fake beards, and the enclosure of the software commons

mtaylor — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The 20th February 2008 was one of those 'Microsoft moments', when suddenly, the world changed. Just like when they 'got' the network (and we got NT), or they 'got' the Internet (and we got 'Internet Explorer'). This time they 'got' Open Source and Open Standards and the company is about to make another of their legendary radical transformations... or so they would [...]

Linux will dominate UK schools within 5 years

jspencer — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Yes, it does seem unlikely doesn't it? Windows has been the only reality for several generations of computer users. But is the tide finally beginning to turn?

At the Education Show held in February 2007, the talk was of 'sustainable' computing and how schools could use technology to reduce their 'carbon footprint'. Nobody had any idea of what was to come – a host of Linux-based, ultra-portable, incredibly cheap and very green personal laptops.