Ubuntu, Edbuntu, Linux, Unix, et al
May 2, 2008 by Brad Edwards
I’ve been receiving listserv items this year that are full of comments about these different operating systems. There’s a lot of excitement in these posts, and the authors are enthusiastic, positive and seemingly determined. I wouldn’t call them evangelists, but some posts seemed to be “over the top” to me. I’m reminded of the platform “wars” of the 90’s when I see some of these posts. But it all got my attention, and today I began some “serious research” about their claims. Is free really better?
It doesn’t matter if the software is free or not. It only matters to me that it works, works well, consistently, does what I have come to expect and doesn’t leave me frustrated. If we as technology coordinators and technology specialists have to spend time tweaking the darn tools we use, we’ll never move forward. And the users we support will quickly head for the foxholes, head for the hills, build the brick walls, when we ask them to tweak the tools they would otherwise just use. “I don’t have time for this,” they will say, and you know what? They’re absolutely right.
Popular programs like Inspiration aren’t written for platforms other than Mac or PC. Good thing there’s Freemind from Sourceforge. And if the school can’t afford, or doesn’t want to pay for Photoshop Elements, there’s always Gimp. But I find it’s not as easy to use as Elements, especially running on a Mac.
I would love not to send money to Microsoft,Apple Adobe, etc. by using these free software programs, desktop systems and server systems. The question for me is still: Is doing this better? And are we seeing the beginning of a second platform war?
As school budgets are squeezed more and more due to rising fuel costs, insurance premiums and building maintenance, these alternative routes to technology are becoming more and more popular.
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The ability to work in a web browser with some of the new Web 2.0 tools, alleviates some of these issues. Not all of these tools are created equal, but if one has enough TIME, one can usually make them work. Won’t it be nice when we don’t have to worry about any of these compatibility issues?
I have worked with commercial software and free equivalents (Open Office, Gimp, etc.). I am completely sold on the benefits of using free, open-source software. It takes serious pressure off your IT budget, but it also allows students to learn the transferable skills that are so important today. For the most part, you can do the same things in Open Office as you can in Microsoft Office. I think it is more important to teach these skills rather than to teach specific software packages. It’s what you do with the software that is important. If I can teach my students how to work in visual layers using free Gimp rather than expensive Photoshop, then the skill is still taught and the IT budget is spared from a flogging.
I think the most important thing for technology integrationists to consider is the ease of use. If the end user is only the student, and they can get through the glitches of Gimp, more power to you. But digital immigrants, their teachers mostly, will retreat as soon as they hit some of those brick walls within programs such as Gimp. Gimp’s features are not apparent to the casual user, but students with only a little coaching can get it quickly. If the goal is to get teachers to use technology, we might have to pay more to remove the roadblocks or integrationists will be wasting precious time.