Windows at school, a student's perspective

[Igor Denisov]

Windows is entrenched in schools for a few reasons:

1. It is familiar to most users and thus any upgrade or change can
happen without any or any major re-training. The IT Dept. knows how to
support it, because it has been about the only thing they have ever
supported (and a few Macs now and then).

2. size and support.
School boards can get proprietary software for free from the ministry
of education or they can buy it for extremely cheap.
If anything goes wrong, the computer is simply reimaged using the
standard IT image. At this point, support isn't a strong reason to
switch.

3.The OS is only viewed as a delivery system for applications. When so
much of the curriculum is designed around Windows-based products, such
as the ubiquitous Geometer's Sketchpad (everywhere in math courses),
going with anything but Windows seems unwise. Although many programs
will work under Wine, the requirement is for all of them to work,
effectively shutting Linux out. Macs seem to have their place in some
arts courses and the rare computer lab.

In the end, if everything seems to work, IT won't change a thing.
When students get to university/college, most will continue to use Windows.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml