I think that the move to have teacher training schemes as part of the package is exactly the solution to the mix-and match resulting from donated hardware. In Goa, India, in many schools we have 3-4 donated recycled PC's running Linux side by side with new government issued PC's running Windows. Teachers were trained in using Linux and in the similarities between OpenOffice and MS Office and as a result most of the time all the computers are used simultaneously in a school lab.
Things get a bit trickier when it comes to educational software compatibility, but even here there are applications such as the freeduc set of applications which operate independent of OS. Daryl Martyris Goa Schools Computers project (GSCP) www.gscp.org Frederick Noronha wrote: > IT MIGHT HELP if we had to look at what made computers obsolete so > speedily, rather than just concentrating on shifting the older computers > from the First to the Third World. I think bloatware-producing > proprietorial software companies are part of the problem, not part of > the solution. Free Software distros also need to ensure that their > software doesn't turn into 'bloatware', requiring higher-power computers > and forgetting that many of us still use old generation PCs. FN ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
