Kamloops Thompson School District #73, British Columbia, Canada, with 55 elementary and secondary schools, chose a majority of open source software on Debian GNU / Linux as it is easier to maintain and in their experience offers better support.

One of the biggest arguments used against Linux in grade school level education is that we aren't teaching kids to use the applications they'll use in the "real world". As the Technology Director for a K-12 school district, I've heard that argument many times. After all these years, I still don't buy it.

"The sections below develop reasons for adoption of free software exclusively for school education. Towards the end, a list of policy guidelines and recommendations are provided for discussion. The document does not cover the pros and cons of using ICT for education. I will try to intervene during the deliberations on these issues. Why Free Software for education? ..."

I thought you might like to see the court's order regarding Microsoft, extending the US District Court for the District of Columbia's oversight. There are actually two documents, one released for the public, a kind of executive summary [PDF], and then a much longer (78 pages compared to 6) Memorandum and Order, which is available from the US District Court for the District of Columbia's website's daily list of orders. I have them both as text.

About 70,000 students and their 7,000 teachers in the Geneva school district will gradually be moving to Open Source. The decision to move to Open Source was taken by the Geneva Public School District in March 2006. Eventually all teachers will be supplied with laptops running Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

Education institutions looking for a low-cost, eco-friendly alternative to stand-alone Windows desktops can now deploy their first 30-station computer lab or classroom free of charge.

T@SCHOOL project offers exclusively free software based support for primary education in kerala.This time,Director of Public instruction has decided to conduct SSLC(secondary school leaving certificate-the basic requirement for higher studies in INDIA) IT practical examination for this year from 27th February to 7th March 2008. It is first time , conducting IT practical examination for complete students in the free software – IT@School GNU/Linux. IT@School project and Pareekshabhavan has entrusted to conduct the examination for more than 4.7 lakh students throughout the schools of Kerala, Lakshadeep and Gulf countries. IT@school admins are preparing to apply for guiness as they have the largest number of student attending an exam based on exclusive free software based softwares:)

Appalled by the Lower Merion School District's remote monitoring of students? Help the Free Software Foundation build a wiki database of school districts that provide students with laptops, so that we can campaign against mandatory, proprietary laptops.

California district slashes expenses, improves productivity with open source software