[Fsf-friends] Schools open ?gates? for Microsoft

[Nagarjuna G.]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 11:19:03AM +0530, Arun M wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   Well,  title of the article is misleading. 
> 
> Kerala still has lots of schools running  GNU/Linux. 
> On 10th of this month some of us were in Kozhikkodu for a parallel
> teacher training.
> 
> IT at School project under the government was completely against free
> software. They tried all dirty tricks to get free software out of
> school.
> 
> Until last academic year many schools in north kerala were running
> only on free software. But some tricks were used to reduce the number.
> 
> When IT became a subject for SSLC exam, IT at School project introduced a
> software to conduct exam ( may be world's first  state to conduct
> school exam with software ;) ). This software didnt work well on
> GNU/Linux. Particularly terminal server based system. Headmasters and
> other staff members were threatened to move out of free software just
> to conduct exam. Only two schools resisted the pressure.
> 
> After KSTA threatening to boycott the exams, project is providing (or
> at least showing ) some support to free software in schools. Many
> schools across the state now moved to free software.
> Official teacher training was conducted by IT at School and some parallel
> efforts were conducted by the community.
> 
> Efforts are still on to train more teachers. We learn that hundreds of
> people registered with IT at School project to provide free software
> support. IT at School has this database. Unfortunately the database is
> still not gone public. We need to ask why this database is kept in
> dark.
> 
> 
> Any way Kerala is moving to free software very fast.
> www.space-kerala.org project is now conducting training program for
> small scale computer vendors on GNU/Linux. First program was conducted
> on 11-12th in Malappuram. News will be posted to project website soon.
>   
> regards,
> arun.
> 

An update article on this deserves a space on FSF India website.

Nagarjuna