Group: Manchester/2008-05-20
Contents
Meeting 20th of May 2008
Richard Rothwell from M6-IT Community Interest Company will be talking about sustainable education solutions.
Location: Manchester DDA Start at: 7pm Finish: 9pm
Tea and Coffee is provided by the venue. After the event, we'll probably relocate to some nearby bar.
If you're coming from outside of Manchester, the venue is close to Piccadilly. Nearest Metrolink is St Peter's Square.
Setting up from 6pm.
Who's coming?
Possibles
- ...
Who's not coming?
- ...
Meeting Agenda
An administrative meeting is planned to take place before this meeting - Meeting Agenda.
The meeting has taken place. See the Minutes.
Commentary
Richard layed out the work that he has been doing with voluntary organisations and in particular schools in a way that provided a powerful argument for the use of free software in education on monetary, social and societal levels.
It became clear that the logic for moving to free software is complete but the politics in most cases prevents change. There then followed a wide-ranging discussion on what each of us could do to help in our own fields.
The Becta figures show that the average IT cost to a school for each computer is £1000 pa. Compare that to Hounslow High School's free software installation and the figure comes down to £400 pa - not just that, but for that they get continuous free upgrades and IT that doesn't limit their brightest students! To find out more, contact Richard at M6-IT.
One of the most shocking concepts discussed on the night was that, by using MS Office file formats, schools in this country are complicit in an extraordinary amount of software theft by their pupils and their families. One attendee commented that when they complained that they couldn't afford MS Office, they were advised by a teacher to buy 'a "warm" copy on ebay'.
This is evidence on a huge scale of what Richard Stallman sees as the evil caused by proprietary software. It unecessarily opens an estimated 40% of UK households to criminal prosecution and arrest. These students need, "The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)", that comes with the popular OpenOffice.org and the odt file format.
