Utilização de software livre numa Escola Secundária de Artes (em inglês)
A Escola Secundária Artística de Soares dos Reis (ESSR) é uma escola secundária de artes, localizada no Porto. Desde 2002, esta escola tem adoptado software livre desde o seu sistema de informação e servidores até aos seus laboratórios de ensino. Recentemente, começaram a
utilizar a distribuição Ubuntu nos seus desktop.
O Alexandre Martins e o Fernando Leal tiveram a amabilidade de relatar a experiência e de publicar o relato de acordo com a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2. Por isso, aqui fica uma cópia para vossa consulta.
- Introduction
- Our school
- Why free software
- ICT in ESSR
- Ubuntu
- Students feedback
- Conclusions
- Authors
- Copyright
Escola Secundária Artística de Soares dos Reis (ESSR) is a secondary school of arts, located in Porto, Portugal. Since 2002, our school has been adopting free software, starting with its information system and servers to its course labs. More recently we are using Ubuntu distribution in our desktops.
In this article we describe the use of Ubuntu and free software in ESSR, beginning with a short description of our school and its Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure. Then, we describe our usage of Ubuntu in our courses and labs and make a particular remark to a LTSP Edubuntu installation. In order to have students feedback we have built a questionnaire about their views in relation to the free software usage at our school. After having analysed them, we present the main results in this paper.
The authors wrote this article as a recognition to the Ubuntu team and community and to help other schools change into free software.
The story of ESSR begins in 1884 when it was officially created. One year later its activity started and since then it has been teaching art related courses. Nowadays, as an artistic education specialized school, Soares dos Reis is aimed at teaching visual arts and it offers four specialized artistic courses:
- audiovisual communication
- communication design
- product design
- artistic production
These four courses, strictly for secondary studying levels, last three years (10th, 11th and 12th grades) and can be attended daily or nightly. They are orientated either to the job market or to the pursuing of studies at college or technical school.
As we have started building the information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure several problems arose concerned with the use of proprietary software:
- the high cost in acquisition and upgrades;
- the use of proprietary formats forcing to be "stuck" to a software platform or a particular company products;
- software distribution to students wasn't viable;
- insecurity and instability
To overcome these problems, our school has been implementing solutions based on the Free and Open Source Software philosophy. The main advantages of this software in schools are well known and can be grouped in three areas:
- economical
- technical
- pedagogical
The freedom to use, copy and distribute software allows schools to give their students copies of the software used at school. Besides, it is a way to avoid illegal copies ("piracy") contributing to social and legal consciousness. Free software development is based on sharing knowledge and cooperation; using it, promotes these social attitudes. Finally, it allows students to study how software works giving them the opportunity to improve their computer science skills.
Economical advantages are more obvious: free software allows schools to save money in licensing; this advantage also applies to students and their parents.
Concerning technical advantages, the stability and the immunity to viruses, worms, etc, are the most important for schools ICT management. Another aspect is that free software is usually multi-platform which means it can be used in different operating systems (e.g. Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh).
Available services
In relation to the ICT infrastructure our school network has about 100 PC's and 2 servers. Our 2 servers run a Debian distribution. In relation to PCs the operating system's distribution is the following:
Using NIS (Network Information Services) and NFS (Network File Services) each user has a unique profile in the network allowing the use of any machine within the user's home directory.
Several services are also available for each user:
- electronic mail (POP and IMAP) and webmail
- remote access via SSH
- homepage hosting
- school information system web access
- course management system Moodle
School Information System
Due to the lack of reliable and versatile school management software in the Portuguese market, ESSR decided to start the development of this software and release it under a free software license.
It is a client-server platform based on a PostgresSQL database and a HTTP Apache server for web access. There is also a standalone application available to management staff.
In the school portal users can authenticate themselves and access their information:
- timetables (students, teachers, classes, etc)
- classes summaries
- grades
- absences
- event scheduler (tests, assessments, etc)
Nowadays, there is an agreement with the Computer Engineering Department of Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto which helps other schools to implement this system and a helpdesk service. Several schools around Porto are using this information system.
Last year the growth of our network brought the need of restructuring our servers platform. The need for stability, reliability and security were the reasons to choose a Debian distribution.
Although we were using other distributions, since Ubuntu project came out we started following its development and testing it. Ubuntu seemed a very good choice for our desktops:
- designed for the "non-tech" user which is our school's type of user;
- as a Debian based distribution, it was easy to integrate with our servers;
- the six months release period allows up-to-date software versions.
Since June 2006 we have been installing and using Ubuntu desktops throughout the school. Installation is very simple and with some simple scripts it is very easy to configure it for our needs.
In classes
An art school has specific software needs: multimedia, web design, video; but there is also a vast set of free software applications that suit our courses needs.
ICT subject
By initiative of the Ministry of Education, the subject of Information and Communications Technologies started in 2005/2006 to make sure that every student can have a minimum set of computing skills. Therefore, it can be defined as a generalist introductory subject integrated in the 9Th and 10Th grades curricula. In our school we only have the 10Th grade.
With some adjustments for the specific needs of our school, the main contents are:
- Spreadsheets
- Image edition
- Vector graphics
- Website development
We started using free software in this subject during the school year of 2005/2006 and in 2006/2007 we started using Ubuntu.
The available free software tools allow us to follow the Ministry's official syllabus and to achieve the main objectives of the subject:
- Spreadsheet: OpenOffice.org Calc
- Image edition: GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program
- vector graphics: Inkscape
- website development: NVU/Kompozer
A classroom of 15 Dell desktops using Ubuntu provides teachers with the necessary stability and easiness of administration to work with their students. Using free software enables the distribution of the software tools used in classes for the Windows and Mac students home systems.
Art courses
As our curricula are orientated for the job market, there are 3 labs that must have professional applications such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, AutoDesk AutoCAD, etc.
For the other courses that do not require professional proprietary software, free image editing tools, vector graphics drawing, presentation or other tools, are used. Therefore we also have 3 labs running exclusively Ubuntu desktops.
As a way to promote free software, we have installed Ubuntu in dual boot mode in machines that need Microsoft Windows operating system and the most used free software tools in Windows versions (e.g.: GIMP, Inkscape).
Edubuntu and LTSP
This school year we have contacted and visited a school which has some experience in Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) implementations and we decided to give it a try using Edubuntu and thus taking advantage of a set of old machines we have received from a nearby closing school.
The classroom has one server (a AMD Athlon 64 bits, 2 GB RAM, 2 network cards) and 13 LTSP clients (from Intel Pentium II-400 MHz to Pentium III).
What amazed us most was the ease of installation! As for the server, it was an usual installation: we connected it to the school's server through NIS and NFS so that any user can access his home directory. As for clients we used the same floppy disk to boot all the machines (without worries about the network card they had). Simple and straightforward! There is still some tweaking to do, in particular, copying the boot disk to the clients hard drives boot sector and probably an upgrade in the server's RAM.
Main problems
As it was said above our school has special needs in some areas like multimedia and CAD tools. As video is concerned we have been trying several free software tools (e.g. Lives, Jashaka, Diva) for using in the 10th grade introductory classes where a simple video editing software (e.g. Apple iMovie) would be enough. But we still could not find a simple interface, out-of-the-box solution. The new Ubuntu Studio looks promising but we haven't tested it yet.
Another complicated area is web development. Free software does not have yet a WYSIWYG application such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. An interesting project is NVU but it has been discontinued which leaves us no alternative (besides Kompozer). A Flash editing tool is also a major need.
In order to survey the student's about their opinion on the use of free software at our school, we decided to build an online questionnaire using Moodle's questionnaire module.
We got 170 answers from the 220 students attending the 10th grade ICT subject. The final results are available on-line. These are some of their main findings:
- 60% of the students had never heard about free software
- 74% have installed the software used in classes
- 57% intend to continue using free software (39% probably)
- 64% find the free software used equivalent to other software (24% better)
- 79% see freedom of installation as the main advantage in free software
- the main difficulty in its usage is the language/translation
- 45% totally agree and 50% agree in the use of free software at schools
One may conclude that students understand the concept of free software and agree with its usage in schools. They install free software tools in their home computers and are aware that they are free to do it.
From our experience we think free software is a very good choice for the Education sector. Its main principles are tightly related to Education. Students understand them and the advantages in the use of free software at schools.
Although in some areas (e.g. multimedia, CAD) there is some delay in free software development when facing proprietary software, the pace of evolution might suppress this situation in a short term. In more generic areas, free software has already reached a level that allows its usage in a great set of courses.
Ubuntu project has proved to be a very good distribution that suits our school needs: easy to use by the school community, stable, with recent software versions and a simple administration. The Edubuntu, in particular its LTSP package, is very simple to install and manage, easily allowing the recovering of older machines.
Alexandre Martins: amartins@essr.net
Fernando Leal: fjleal@essr.net
Copyright (c) 2007 Alexandre Martins and Fernando Leal.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
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