Ubuntu - Conférence Ubuntu pour les écoles English version

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Text by Fernando, Slides are here http://slides.com/ferlanero/libertad-3#/ Text is under CC BY SA. French version aviable here

LINUX IS EDUCATION, LINUX IS SCIENCE

UBUNTU TO FREE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

My name is Fernando, I’m a computer science teacher in a school with one thousand and two hundred students in a city of the North of Spain.

Eight years ago, before the economic crisis, our school got a grant from the Ministry of Education. That grant consisted in a donation of Eighty computers whit Windows XP (good for those years, but Epic Fail just now)

But things changed 2 years ago with the release of Ubuntu 14.04.

At our school, all computers have Ubuntu right now.

In addition, there are 2 computers, which have been migrated last week. In my opinion these two are the MOST IMPORTANT and more sensitive in the School.

I’m talking of the Secretary computers, that had not being migrated due to administrative reasons. Now everything is working fine.

From my point of view, one hundred and twenty computers it is a very considerable amount of machines in an environment as the region of León, a small capital where I live and work and without major technology companies.

L I N U X I S E D U C A T I O N

Our computers at school are used for teaching duties, for use by teachers in video projections, use of interactive whiteboards, technical drawing, etc... And there are another Sixty computers spread across the computing and languages classrooms. And Ubuntu now integrates perfectly in those tasks.

USING UBUNTU IN SCHOOL GREATLY INCREASES THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND IT TAKES STUDENTS TO A NEW DIMENSION IN THEIR EDUCATION.

It’s not really a surprise that schools are switching to open source, even if there is still a lot of inertia from all those years of proprietary software.

Surprisingly, one of the biggest hurdles is not a financial one, but a human one. Users don’t want to change how they do things on a computer, but most of them don’t realize that Linux is not all that different. It’s safer and much more stable, but not all that different.

W H Y ?

Free Software is not just a technical question ; it is an ethical, social, and political question. And these aspects are much more important than the technical question. KEEP THIS IN MIND.

W H Y ?

TECHNICAL REASONS :

 AUDITABLE You already know that anyone who has the right knowledge can read the source code of the free software. I won’t speak more about this topic.
 MALWARE RESISTANT By switching to Linux, incidents such as computer viruses, system degradation and many diverse technical issues disappeared instantly.
 SAFE AND SECURE FOR CHILDREN USE
 ALLOW TO REUSE EQUIPMENT
Ubuntu in particular and Linux in general perform much better than Windows does in old hardware, so we don’t have the need of being constantly buying new hardware.
 GREAT SUPPORT FROM THE COMMUNITY You just have to see us here.

The change also helps the school save money. Not having to purchase licences for proprietary operating systems, office suites and anti-virus tools has already saved about EUR 35,000 in the 2014-2015 school year. “Obviously it is much more interesting to invest that money in education.”

W H Y ?

NON TECHNICAL REASONS :
 IMPROVE EDUCATIONAL DIMENSION
Software freedom plays a fundamental role in education. Educational institutions of all levels should use and teach Free Software because it is the only software that allows them to accomplish their essential missions : to disseminate human knowledge and to prepare students to be good members of their community.
The source code and the methods of Free Software are part of human knowledge. On the contrary, proprietary software is secret, restricted knowledge, which is the opposite of the mission of educational institutions.
 FREE SOFTWARE SUPPORTS EDUCATION, PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE FORBIDS EDUCATION.
 TRANSMIT A SPIRIT OF COLLABORATION AND COOPERATIVENESS
 MORE COHERENT WITH SCHOOL VALUES

Free Software is not just a technical question ; it is an ethical, social, and political question. It is a question of the human rights that the users of software ought to have.

Freedom and cooperation are essential values of Free Software.

The GNU System implements these values and the principle of sharing, since sharing is good and beneficial to human progress.

W I T H W H A T ?

 FREE SOFTWARE IS AN IDEAL TOOL TO UNDERSTAND HOW OUR TECH-ENVIRONMENT WORKS
Remember : The source code and the methods of Free Software are part of human knowledge
 FREE SOFTWARE IS EDUCATIONAL ITSELSELF
As I said : SOftware Libre is to disseminate human knowledge and to prepare students to be good members of their community
 UBUNTU PROVIDES THE EASINESS TO ACHIEVE THESE SKILLS IN ANY SCHOOL LEVEL
With a wide range of educational software and certified hardware, Ubuntu provides secure, cost-effective, accessible computing for students, teachers and school administrators.

W H E N ?

Is it now a good moment to change things ? Let’s see.

W H E N ?

 THE MAIN OPERATING SYSTEM AT SCHOOLS WORLDWIDE IS WINDOWS XP
The end of support for Windows XP runs a real crossroad for hundreds of educational institutions and their computer systems. Ubuntu is the change that cutting edge education needs.
 WINDOWS XP IS AN OUTDATED AND PROPIETARY OPERATING SYSTEM
Windows XP is obsolete and would receive no more updates from Microsoft. At school the highest security problem resides in the malware that is spread through removable storage devices, because people basically works with USB sticks for the transmission of documents, being an authentic greenhouse for viruses.
 SO THE FUTURE IS NOW
Now we have the real opportunity to introduce Ubuntu at school. Children are the future of a society and if they know what Ubuntu is, they will be more "open minded" in the future when they become adults. This is what Microsoft has been done during years. Windows isn’t easier to use : Children are accustomed to use it.

F O R W H O M ?

We must make the change for the PEOPLE. Let’s see

F O R W H O M ?

 FOR PUPILS Kids are naturally curious. Among them there is a very pro-Linux culture. Throughout these years I have managed to create the idea that Linux is cool, that it’s used by people who are really interested in learning and who know the real functioning of things and that really attracts their attention. They are not at all reluctant to change. They seek novelty and change.
 FOR TEACHERS Switching to a new desktop PC environment was harder for staff than for students. “Students are eager to work with GNU/Linux, because of its association with hackers. It is adding to their motivation. You cannot imagine how well Wikileak’s Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, a former contractor at America’s National Security Agency, are helping to promote free software.”
 FOR THE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS OF OUR STUDENTS When a teacher teaches with a proprietary application it’s placed in a real crossroads, because it forces students to buy software or copy illegally. However, if the teacher does not let you copy the program he is denying their help, and if him leave copy he is violating the laws. That’s not education. isn’t it ?

With free software teachers have the control of the situation and they can focus in education itself, not in legal processes.

H O W ?

 INVOLVING PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL WHO BELIEVE IN A GLOBAL VIEW OF EDUCATION If you explain benefits of free software to other people of your school, they probably like the idea and helps us with the migration.
 EXPECTING THE COMMUNITY Free software has a wide community of users ready to help you, remember. In my case, teachers of others schools in Spain, help me a lot with all the problems I faced during the migration.
 USING ANY RESOURCE WE HAVE Students, teachers, computers, local media, companies... Imagination must be our main tool to success. IMAGINATION, remember.

T H E S T E P S

 TAKE A BREATH OF AIR Migration it’s not easy and you’ll find much more problems that you imagine at the beginning
 ASSESS NEEDS, COSTS AND SAVINGS Major problems were caused by proprietary documents, especially spreadsheets. Some of the more pernicious issues were temporarily resolved by using a cloud-based proprietary office solution, says Lanero, giving the IT department time to complete the switch to open standards-based office solutions. The school now mostly uses the LibreOffice suite of office tools.
 START MIGRATING SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY If you are looking for a successful change, start first changing programs inside Windows like Internet Explorer to Firefox, Office to LibreOffice and so on. Then the change to Ubuntu will be the natural way
 TRAIN TEACHERS FOR USING UBUNTU AND NEW APP After two years, we are still imparting training to teacher staff at our shool. Changes are always hard, and all what involves technology, it’s even harder.
 MAKE A LOT OF PUBLICITY (A LOT) People doesn’t know anything about software libre and even they don’t matter. So you must make a lot of publicity at school, in local media and so on. You must spread what you are doing and how good it is everywhere.

The exact idea is "Tales told by the propaganda of the multinational companies". Those circumstances are what Microsoft sells, who has made an amazing subliminal advertising to make you see that what is good is Windows.

Windows gave me thousands of troubles for years in school computers for their lack of support for older ATI cards. With Linux you have much more compatibility with older hardware. Everything is much easier.

B U I L D I N G

Choosing the right option to the needs of your school reality is not easy, but implement it, is even harder.

B U I L D I N G
 ASSESS THE MACHINES YOU ARE GOING TO MIGRATE Taken in care the hardware. You also considered Xubuntu and Lubuntu. When Canonical published the first alpha of Ubuntu 14.04, I tried it on the oldest computer (CPU Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM) and Unity was completely fluid and so, I chose to install Ubuntu 14.04 on the rest, when it’s released.
 CHOOSE THE CORRECT UBUNTU FLAVOUR
As I said, you can also consider Xubuntu and Lubuntu.
 USE THE SAME GRAFIC USER INTERFACE IN EVERY COMPUTER
BUT, it’s very, very important you choose ONLY one flavour. All the computers must be homogeneous.
 USE THE SAME ICON PACK IN EVERY COMPUTER
For that reason, you must to choose a look right icon set, but take in mind you must maintain it among years
 ADAPT THE DISTRO TO THE SCHOOL NEEDS
Always keep in mind the shool needs, not what you want or you prefer in the Linux ecosystem. If you love the Unity environment but your machines don’t work fluid with it, forget it. The most important thing is the final user experience.
 ALWAYS TAKE IN MIND THE FINAL USERS
Students are what really matters in education and these changes must focus on them. Changing to free software must improve their education.

Remember, we don’t fight against Microsoft, we fight against poor education experience, and our mission is to disseminate human knowledge and to prepare students to be good members of their community.

RESULTS
 +120 COMPUTERS CHANGED BETWEEN 2014-2015
 OVER 1200 STUDENTS WITH ANY CONTACT WITH UBUNTU PER YEAR
 AROUND 35000€ TO INVEST IN EDUCATION, NOT IN MICROSOFT
 MUCH MORE RELIABLE COMPUTERS, MUCH MORE TIME TO EDUCATION

LOTS OF ARTICLES IN LOCAL NEWSPAPERS

Society is curious about our adventure and other schools in our environment are following our steps.

Open source is becoming a powerful alternative to proprietary software and proof of that is that many municipalities, governments, and companies are now adopting open source solutions, but now it’s time of schools and universities as well.

WHERE POTENTIAL USERS GROW WITH UBUNTU.

FERNANDO LANERO / ubuntuleon.com

PLEASE, DONT FORGET THE PATH IS TO SHARE WITH OTHERS, TO HELP EACH OTHER. THE UBUNTU SPIRIT WITHIN AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS FUNDAMENTAL.

Thank you very much for your attention. Hope you enjoy my experience and you’ll be able to replicate it wherever you go. Thanks