FKFT - 2008
Free Knowledge Free Technology
The SELF Conference 2008
| Speakers | |
|---|---|
|
Alexandre Martins |
| Schedule | |
|---|---|
| Day | Third FKFT day (2008-07-17) |
| Room | Room2 |
| Start time | 16:30 |
| Duration | 00:30 |
| Info | |
| ID | 58 |
| Event type | |
| Track | Educating in Freedom |
| Language used for presentation | en |
Using Free Software at a Portuguese Secondary School of Arts
The authors have submitted a full-length paper:
http://fkft.eu/2008/papers/martins.pdf
Abstract
Escola Secundária ArtÃstica de Soares dos Reis (ESSR) (http://www.essr.net) is a secondary school of arts, located in Porto, Portugal. Since 2002, our school has been adopting free software, starting with its information system and servers to its course labs.
In this article we describe the use of free software in ESSR, beginning with a short description of our school and its Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure.
In relation to the use of free software, the article starts with our school information system. Due to the lack of reliable and versatile school management software in the Portuguese market, ESSR decided to start the development of this software and release it under a free software license (http://sie.sourceforge.net/). Nowadays, several schools around Porto are using this information system.
Then, we describe our usage of free software in our courses and labs and make a particular remark to a LTSP Edubuntu installation. An art school has specific software needs such as multimedia, web design, video. In these areas it is difficult to find good and stable free software alternatives to proprietary solutions.
In order to have students feedback we have built a questionnaire about their views in relation to the free software usage at our school. We got 170 answers from the 220 students attending the 10th grade ICT subject. These are some of their main findings:
- 60% of the students had never heard about free software
- 74% have installed the software used in classes
- 57% intend to continue using free software (39% probably)
- 64% find the free software used equivalent to other software (24% better)
- 79% see freedom of installation as the main advantage in free software
- the main difficulty in its usage is the language/translation
- 45% totally agree and 50% agree in the use of free software at schools
One may conclude that students understand the concept of free software and agree with its usage in schools. They install free software tools in their home computers and are aware that they are free to do it.
From our experience we think free software is a very good choice for the Education sector. Its main principles are tightly related to Education. Students understand them and the advantages in the use of free software at schools.
Although in some areas (e.g. multimedia, CAD) there is some delay in free software development when facing proprietary software, the pace of evolution might suppress this situation in a short term. In more generic areas, free software has already reached a level that allows its usage in a great set of courses.
The authors wrote this article as a recognition to the Ubuntu team and community and to help other schools change into free software.
Copyright Copyright (c) 2007 Alexandre Martins (http://www.essr.net/~amartins) and Fernando Leal (http://www.essr.net/~fjleal). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html) or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.