I’ve always thought that the premise of using windows and MS Office in schools because that is what they will use in the workplace is a crock. First of all it is not the job of the public schools to train kids how to use specific proprietary software packages. Any software tools that are used should be their because they meet a specific need related to the curriculum. If the kids are learning to plot data, the lesson is about ways to represent data in a meaningful way. There are many packages that can achieve this end some proprietary, some open-source. Similarly if the kids have to do research and write a report, they need to learn how to search for information, they need to learn how look up books in the library, and do effective internet searches. Whether they use IE or Firefox or Camino is irrelevant. Search engines work basically the same in all browsers. Learning how to write effectively is more important than learning how to use MS word. If the kids are taught how to write they can type a report or story in any word processor.

Since Michigan schools have had increasingly tight budgets in recent years thanks to the tax policies of the Republican legislature, it is ever more important to reduce costs. Ypsilanti schools got new computers about 5-6 years ago. For PC’s this is a long life span. At some point in the future they will need some upgrades. There are now several Linux distributions that are specifically geared to the needs of schools both for workstations and servers. There are also many open-source educational programs and also programs like GIMP for image editing, InkScape for drawing and blender for 3d modeling and animation. Of course OpenOffice provides all the functionality that is needed from MS Office at ) cost. As updates are needed the district IT staff should really need to consider moving to open-source solutions. Linux generally needs much less in terms of hardware resources than Windows (and with last weeks release of the hardware requirements for Windows Vista that one is out of the question without complete hardware replacement) The existing hardware could be updated with new open-source software at much less cost.