Prepare for Impact

This article ‘Prepare for Impact’ is related to anyone connected to K-12 education and mainly focuses on the growing use of open source software by schools. Especially in these hard economic times when our schools are hit hard by the budget cuts and irregular fundings they can still integrate technology with the use of open source programs which are available at no cost. One of the major things that drive up school district costs is running proprietary software on proprietary operating systems. Schools can save lots of money with this free software. Even in the richest countries, schools are short of money. Free software gives schools, like other users, the freedom to copy and redistribute the software, so the school system can make copies for all the computers they have. Apache is the most used web server and Moodle is the leading course management system for districts that cannot afford blackboard. OpenOffice is another most talked about open source alternatives of Microsoft Office.

This article ‘Prepare for Impact’ is very useful and informative. But the Author of this article also makes a point that although open source applications are free, the cost of staff development, implementation cost, and training may make the no cost option more expensive in the long run.

Waters, John k. (2010). Prepare for impact. THE Journal, 37(5), 20-25. Retrieved from

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