[education-wg] Karen Cator

Thu Apr 8 14:12:22 CDT 2010

As a vendor of open source Student Information System, I am faced with these
same questions(issues) trying to educate a potential customer to implement
our software. We take several steps to demonstrate that. I am going to go
point by point with my two cents..

How do we invest in open source?

Identify a school or school district that is cash strapped (easy to find,
most all of them are) and identify key measurable metrics for open source
pilot implementation.

We establish the following to make an adopter feel comfortable first:

.         Open source software built on matured technology is stable, safe
and scalable

.         There are plenty of human capital available to support and enhance
open source apps

.         When you compare feature to feature, open source apps are similar
or better than commercial apps

.         There are no license fees ,  forced upgrades or vendor shackles

.         With source code, a lot of customization can be done rather than
using APIs

Then we run pilot for one or two quarters. I like Mike's idea of using
either a full open source stack or just apps built on open source. At the
end, let's look at the measurable metrics and see if it worked.

Let's look at some of the most common industry problems:

.         High Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of software

.         Unfunded federal and state reporting mandates putting financial
and technology pressure on schools

.         Absence of data driven decision making ability

.         Inadequate parental involvement due to lack of visibility into
child's educational information

.         Application islands - multiple applications without integration

.         Inadequate home grown systems

.         Inadequate technology skill sets

Bottom line is  instructional funds diverted to support administrative
applications that don't impact student education. We can easily demonstrate
that open source can solve these problems.

How do we determine if open source software is effective?

I think it's easier to establish that open source software is effective than
commercial alternatives. Due to zero license fees and very low
implementation cost, schools can pilot many latest open source applications
and make them available to the students, faculty, staff and parents. You
will see that the adoption rate will climb significantly when the right
tools are given. For example, if a school implements Moodle and asks
students to take online classes for extra credit, the usage and benefits are
easily measurable. Another example would be an engaging Parent Portal. You
will be surprised to learn that most parents do not have access to their
kid's academic and school information due to lack of parent portal offering
by their school's Student Information System. Implementing teacher blog,
wiki, and class forum takes peanuts and can increase student stickiness by
huge percentage.

http://www.osalt.com/  might be a good reference site for schools to choose
apps.

Is the model sustainable?

Yes, the model is sustainable. In fact, the whole eco system of software
life cycle exists for open source software. Schools just use the wrong
vendors.or rather the lobby from Commercial vendors are so strong that
clients are blindsided.

The awareness for open source is increasing and more and more schools are
jumping on the bandwagon...we just have to formalize the marketing and
education of open source to schools.

Thanks.

Bob Ghosh

Co-Founder and CTO

Open Solutions for Education, Inc.

Anytime: 404.431.0091

Skype: bobghosh | YIM:bob.ghosh

 <http://www.os4ed.com/> http://www.os4ed.com |  <http://www.opensis.com/>
http://www.opensis.com

From: education-wg-bounces at opensourceforamerica.org
[mailto:education-wg-bounces at opensourceforamerica.org] On Behalf Of Mike
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 1:51 PM
To: education-wg at opensourceforamerica.org
Subject: [education-wg] Karen Cator

"Karen Cator is the Director of the Office of Educational Technology

for the US Department of Education.  She is very interested in the
idea of open source, but she has questions.  "How do we invest in open
source?"  "How do we know if open source is effective?"  "How is the
model sustainable?"

How do we figure out what Karen's goals are, and position open source
as the best tool to help her achieve those goals?  If I should get
another meeting with Karen, what should I say when I get into her
office besides "open source is awesome"?"

I think it's a positive thing that Karen Cator is now the office of
educational technology director. Her questions are valid and need answers. 

Let me take a stab here at putting together some ideas that may respond to
her questions or raise new ones.

How do we invest in open source?

Identify some funding that can be used for projects in K-12 schools that
rely on open source software. This is clearly this first step to making
anything significant happen. This is also a good way to develop some working
models. Perhaps various models should be explored. One model would include
full open source from operating system forward. Another model might consider
open-source products on proprietary OS's. We need to get to the point that
we can take schools where they are and help them to move forward. It is
unrealistic to think that schools will discard all products currently in use
and move to new, different products.

How do we determine if open source software is effective?

In my opinion this is the wrong question. Do we ask "is Microsoft software
effective?" "Is Apple software effective?" No. We tend to look at
achievement levels after students have used various types of software. Our
experience in Indiana showed little difference between proprietary software
and open-source software. (Although we ran out of time to fully document
this information before the program was substantially changed.)  

The biggest challenge is ACCESS.  We found that the average high school
student averaged 30-45 minutes per WEEK using technology in schools.  At
that usage level it would be hard to determine if brushing teeth was
effective, let alone the more difficult issue of technology.

Perhaps the question should be, how do we determine if technology is
effective? How do we gauge the effectiveness of software compared to its
price? Would we be better off taking the money we spend for software and
hardware and putting it into additional personnel? Should we look at the
types of software that we are using? The fact that a school project has
technology does not necessarily mean that it is successful or desirable.

Is the model sustainable?

This is a difficult one on several levels. I am hoping that her main concern
is sustaining the model that is established for K-12 schools. The ultimate
model should consider everything: hardware costs, software costs,
professional development costs, and implementation practice. I am not
certain that we are looking at these things now as we implement systems in
schools. Although it is a good idea and we should be doing this, the
question needs to be be more broadly applied to technology used throughout
K-12 education.

I think it will be reasonably simple to put together some basic strategic
guidelines for developing open source projects in K-12 schools. Some
discussion on this would be helpful and this may be a great starting point
to get us going to provide guidance and leadership for people like Greg D.
who may come in contact with Ms. Cator again. I think would also be good to
contact the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA) and
include them in regular mailings from this group. Dr. Mary Ann Wolfe is the
executive director of the organization.

-- 
Mike Huffman mhuffman at comcast.net

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