OStatic

Last week, Moodlerooms announced that it had teamed with Google to integrate the Google Apps for Education service into Moodle.

This allows students and faculty using the open source Moodle learning platform to access all of Google's educational tools and applications, as well as the Moodle system, with a single sign on. Even more significantly, it simplifies managing and maintaining network collaboration tools, and allows students to access the system and get working on any computer that has a browser.

Christopher Dawson has been thinking aloud about Linux in the classroom at his ZDNet Education blog. Dawson, the technology director of a school district in northern Massachusetts, had sixty new Classmate Convertible PCs fall into his hands, and wonders if the Linux-powered machines are a better option for the district.

The Linux Classmate PCs run Edubuntu with a customized version of Ubuntu's Netbook Remix user interface. Dawson is suitably impressed with the educational software included by default in Edubuntu and how well the school district's necessary Windows-based software runs in WINE. Intel says that the software stack offered on its Windows XP Classmates is similar to the Linux machines.

Unless there are serious issues raised in testing, Dawson plans to purchase the Edubuntu-powered Classmates. He admits the teachers are a little hesitant about the decision.

Speaking from experience, the adults are always hesitant. He needn't worry about the students.

It's no secret at this point a few of us at OStatic are passionate about the use and adoption of open source software in educational environments. Education is an area where the use of open source software feels so natural, but hardware lifecycles, the timing of support and license expirations, and budget crunches slow down the adoption process for many educational institutions.

The Brazilian government officially embraced open source software in its schools, announcing it had selected Userful,Positivo, and ThinNetworks to supply 324,000 virtualized desktops in each of the country's municipalities. This is not only the largest deployment of virtualized desktops in the world -- it's also the largest single deployment of Linux desktops.