IT Trends | Feature

How To Get Started with Open Source in K-12

Open source has proved attractive for K-12 school districts for any number of reasons, from upfront cost savings to freedom from cumbersome restrictions to the quality of the software itself. But how does a school or district get started with it? Three K-12 IT directors shared their experiences with THE Journal--the good and the bad, as well as the lessons they've learned in the process.

• By Natasha Wanchek
• 07/15/10

For K-12 IT directors, the major appeal of open source software (OSS) generally focuses on savings in licensing fees and access to software that would not otherwise be affordable. Many also are finding that OSS simply is the best solution for their school districts--even compared to commercial versions.

IT directors with OSS experience largely have been opportunistic about how they got started. In a series of interviews conducted for THE Journal, three IT directors shared their experiences--the hows and the whys--launching OSS in their districts.

They have very different stories, but have all learned that the transition to an open source "shop" takes time.

Tim Goree, director of technology services for Norris School District, Bakersfield, CA, estimated that it takes at least three years for a school district to become a "self-supporting open source IT department," even with help from an outside firm.

"The thing holding people back from doing open source: They have staff whose expertise is with other software, and that's what they've been with for 10 years," Goree said. "Going with open source, most of the people in my realm don't know that much about it, other than what they've heard."

Miguel Guhlin, director of Instructional Technology & Learning Services (ITLS) in San Antonio Independent School District in Texas, said that the system has not changed--even as views toward proprietary software are shifting.

"We're still, as a movement, facing the habits of yesterday, which involved vendors wooing school officials," Guhlin said. "You have to get the latest and greatest, when the fact is the latest and greatest is very expensive."

Kevin McGuire, director of technology for Michigan City Area Schools in Indiana, said the district has far more support and solutions available to them now with OSS. "There is a learning curve, and we do have some users that are still negative, but all in all we are finding our users are capable of doing more," he said.

How IT Directors Start with OSS: 3 Examples

1. Tim Goree, Norris School District, Bakersfield, CA

When Goree started his job three and a half years ago, he entered a district that was all Macintosh, from servers to desktop computers--an environment that was entirely new for him.

"Coming here was an adjustment, but it allowed me to start thinking in some different terms," Goree said. "Some of the things I was used to in Microsoft shops that I had come to think you had to have, we didn't have. I started to see that there were things you didn't have to have, and we still managed to do our jobs without them."

OSS Implementation
His first OSS project was the e-mail system, Zimbra, which the district has been using successfully for two years.

Goree said that the Macintosh server side was not as full-featured as he was used to in Microsoft environments. There were things that were missing that he thought was needed, but he did not want to create a Microsoft back office type of infrastructure for an all-Macintosh district.

Finding and implementing a solution was the district's first project with Quebec-based Revolution Linux, a company that focuses on large-scale OSS projects for education.

In 2009, Revolution Linux helped to design, plan, and implement the district's OSS backoffice infrastructure (in the Apple environment). The district uses VMware to virtualize and run Linux, and it only runs Windows for products that require Windows.