Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Open source: a chance for technology in education? (04 Jul 2005) Richard Rothwell again: "Imagine you have ten schools trying to put together a learning resource for French lessons. They could spend ten grand each on a commercial product that might do what they want. Or, they could club together and spend two grand collectively, for some bespoke software that does exactly what they need. If that is then released under an open source licence for the rest of the community, it helps even more schools, which can amend and change it for their needs and re-release it." So, we have software that is cheaper to buy, cheaper and easier to support, and gives old hardware a new lease of life. Why isn't everyone using it already? There are lots of reasons, according to Seb Bacon of Jamkit, a company that develops websites for charities. One is inertia. "Although they could be saving money they usually can't be bothered. A bit like why people don't switch banks or mortgages," he says. But there are all sorts of other reasons. Lack of understanding, fear of the unknown, concern that there will be too much to learn. Article URL: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/viewpoint/vision/vision_01_05.htm Read 134 more articles from NESTA Futurelab sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Revolution time: why it's all change for the 14-19s     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy