May 15, 2004

ABRAHAM is a four-years-old Indian child and is waiting to enter school. For him, the computer is a mysterious toy. He sees others around him operating the PC. “I too want to do that,” he says, pointing to the keys. So, how does he get started and immersed in concepts as oblique as navigating with a mouse, saving “files” in folders, and accessing CDRoms for information? He needn’t. Making the computer into a “fun thing” is a good way to get youngsters immersed into it.

Abraham starts learning without even being conscious of it. So can his friends. One young girl just dances to the music that a program called “Bump and Jump” plays. Using the “arrow” keys allows four young players to get their own “rabbits” to jump over each other, scoring points each time this happens. A seemingly meaningless game which encourages them to explore the computer further. This particular piece of software was written by a team of Swedish students. They would like to get a thank-you email from anyone willing to take the trouble.

The best part is nobody paid for the CD they’re using. It’s not pirated either. You can run it off any computer, by just booting up from your CD-Rom drive! It comes in a GNU/Linux “distro” (distribution) called FreEDUC .

Free software is opening up a whole new world. Education is one of its major beneficiaries, globally. Are we sitting up to take note, though? Just one generation ago, computer users would write programs for any computation they wanted done. These would be shared freely with others in need. Networks like the Free Software Forum in India (FSF-India) also promote such initiatives.

Argue champions of Free Software: “Writing software was a community activity. As the application of computers increased, various groups started realising potential of software and benefit they have in controlling the software. These groups started copyrighting these software and keeping the ‘source code’ secret.”

In turn, this lead to a reaction among many programmers who felt that this went against their basic community ethics and against the interests of society. People like Richard M. Stallman got together and started a new movement. The objective of the movement was to create software that could be copied, modified and redistributed by users, all the time ensuring that the rights were passed on to subsequent users.

In addition to GNU/Linux, the GNU software and the GNU documentation, there are some GNU packages specially designed for education:

— Dr Genius is an interactive and graphical tool that allows the user to explore and discover Euclidean geometry.

— Ggradebook is a graphical application for teachers that allows them to track students’ grades.

— GNU Typist is a typing tutor. It is an interpreter of typing tutorials, which includes tutorials for several languages and keyboard layouts.

— Solfege is program that can assist you with ear-training in music.

— Gcompris is a suite of educational software for young children.

There are several other projects which provides tools for education.

— OFSET, promotes the use of free software in education.

— Gleducar, a GNU at education Argentinian project.

For some more information, visit or . For a listing of case-studies of GNU/Linux’s use in education, check .Schoolforge works to promote free and open resources for education. Join Schoolforge-discuss at . One condition is that members must participate in discussions. They also encourage the setting up of Schoolforge units and meeting places wherever possible.

Recently, a project has been started to produce a free school administration software package. It is at the planning stage and has need of volunteers to help define the requirements of the system and assist with the construction of it. See .

Incidentally, the term “free” refers to “freedom” and not price (as in, zero-cost). But prices are likely to be reasonable, since you have the freedom to share this kind of software. Free Software, and its more-recent offshoot called Open Source, gives the users a number of “freedoms.”

Unlike in the world of proprietorial (pay-per-computer) software, the user has the right to run a Free Software program for any purpose, study how it works, redistribute copies, and also improve the program and release improvements to the public.

In real terms, this means that it is next to impossible to charge huge amounts for that software you so badly need to make your PC productive. This is very relevant for a resource-poor, talent-rich country like India or Pakistan.

Secondly, because knowledge is so freely shared, Free Software allows for very low entry barriers. Anyone can see the source-code of a program (without which, you wouldn’t have a clue how it works) or contact coders who have played a key role in writing this program itself.

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) has other benefits too.

Niranjan Rajani, a South Asian researcher originally from Pakistan but currently based in Finland, recently put together a study titled “Free as in Education: Significance of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software for Developing Countries” argues about the benefits of FLOSS , as it’s also called.

Says he: “In terms of computer education, FLOSS has no match. Nothing else provides that much value to learners as FLOSS does. You’re free to tinker with the code. Not only that, you can get in touch with the people who wrote the code and ask why this or that was done in a particular piece of code.”

Rajani adds: “FLOSS has a complementary and reciprocal relationship to education. One needs an educated section of the population to fulfil the full potential of FLOSS, and at the same time FLOSS helps, enhances, and complements education by providing tools to promote education.”

Free Software, say its proponents, encourage students to learn the values of sharing and cooperation in school. Likewise, it helps foster self-dependence, and saves on superfluous financial investments on costly software. Free Software has also grown into a technically superior product, and its adoption is picking up across the globe.

In India, the IT@Schools project volunteers are working to build curricula which don’t specify select properietory software in the syllabus, provide Free Software tools for IT education programs, encouraging teacher-training on Free Software, supporting local-language initiatives in Free Software (thus enabling even students without a knowledge of English to use computers), and encouraging governments to avoid dependency on proprietary platforms.

Says FSF-India, which is affiliated to the US-based Free Software Foundation: “Our goal is to ensure the long term adoption of free software, and aim for the day when all software will be free. This includes educating people about software freedom and convincing them that it is the freedom that matters. We regard non-free software as a problem to be solved, not as a solution to any problem.”

India’s southern state of Kerala (population 32 million, area 38.863 sq km) started a program called IT@School for taking advantage of IT to improve the quality of teaching process. FSF says the introduction of Free Software in text book and curriculum raised interest in school to explore the option Free Software as a way of reducing the cost and may of them accepts that Free Software movement is something which needs to be supported.

Government Girls High Schools Challai is small institution in the Trivandrum city the capital of Kerala state. Most students in the school come from low income families of the locality. This school had five, old Pentium 1 machines for about 350 students. The school was unable to collect fees from students as it puts financial burden on the families of students in the school. Hence the school is left with the old machines.

The school was running the machines with the Microsoft Windows Operating Systems which came with the hardware given to them. They were not aware if it was licensed or not. If not licensed, the school was liable to face charges on copyright infringements. They also didn’t have the money to upgrade the software introducing new technologies to students. Also they would be forced to upgrade the machines if they upgrade to newer proprietary operating systems. All these forced them to look into alternatives.

The teacher in charge of the computer lab had heard of the Free Operating System GNU/Linux. With help of the volunteers in Free Software Movement, the school setup a GNU/Linux-based terminal server solution. (The terminal server deploys a powerful central machine and very low end machines connected to it. This reduces the overall cost of setting up a networked lab or even an office. It is found to be very good for schools, as it can make use of old hardware efficiently.) Now all the old machines in the school can run latest GNU/Linux applications. They don’t have to worry about the “software police”.

By switching over to GNU/Linux the school is getting the added advantage of running application with local language support. This is due to a project by Free Software Foundation of India to localise Free Software to Malayalam.

Local language support is particularly important as the teaching medium for most of the schools in Kerala use the Malayalam medium.

Needless to say, schools shifting over to GNU/Linux need to have some skills that can support the software involved.