Microsoft High
from the are-they? dept
Many people have submitted this story in the past couple of hours. Microsoft is apparently designing a $46 million public school in Philadelphia that will embed technology "everywhere from classrooms and administrative offices to the desk of the football coach." They say that it will be a "paperless school" with online textbooks and laptops for quizzes. Oh yes, the "paperless school". Remember all those stories about the "paperless office" and how well those turned out? The announcement is pretty clear on a few things: Microsoft isn't donating any of the money and they (supposedly) don't have the inside track on supplying any software. It will all be put out through open bid. Microsoft's sole role is to provide technology "expertise" (and, of course, to receive lots and lots of publicity). Of course, this also means that they can easily design the school in ways that will make it nearly impossible to use any non-Microsoft technology. They could simply design into the spec very specific features that Microsoft technology definitely has, which others might not. Also, while I'm all for using technology to help in the education process, I get worried when the focus is on the technology, rather than the education. A project like this will have everyone focused on the wrong thing: how do we build technology into the education process, instead of can the education process be enhanced by technology?
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Open Source Version?
If it could generate just a little bit of mainstream publicity, think about what it could do if there was "OpenSource High" that specifically set out to design a paperless school that wasn't stocked full of closed and proprietary software.
I think I'll start stirring this idea in the pot for a while, and see what I can come up with. Anyone with me?
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Paperless School
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Microsoft Failure 2.0
Hold on class, we would have had an announcement right now, but our announcement server got rooted and the attacker installed msblaster 5.1 on the machine. We are putting in its replacement, but the machine keeps rebooting unexpectidly after BSOD.
Please turn on your computers and get ready for today's lesson, "Why OpenSource is evil." First, I'll have to help half of you since your computers are infected with a virus, which will soon infect the other half. Oh, Timmy, don't open that attachment, you know better than that.
(Of course, the only thing I use Windoze for, other than a victim on my attacker network, is freecell, but the opensource folks have three clones that work just as well and don't blow up unexpectidly.)
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I knew you could...
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