Showing posts with label ministry of education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ministry of education. Show all posts

11 December 2008

Brazil Seeks 150,000 GNU/Linux Notebooks for 300 Schools

Once again, Brazil showing itself at the forefront of open source use in schools:

Depois de uma licitação realizada, mas não consumada, no final de 2007, o Ministério da Educação e Cultura (MEC) marcou para o dia 17 de dezembro um novo pregão eletrônico para a compra de 150 mil notebooks voltados à educação, com os quais espera equipar 300 escolas públicas.

...

O edital não dá base de preço, só as especificações da máquina, que incluem sistema operacional Linux instalado e configurado, manual em português, memória RAM de no mínimo 512 MB e tela de cristal líquido de no mínimo 7 polegadas. A máquina ainda deve ter requisitos de segurança e ser resistente a choques e quedas, além de ser confortável para o transporte pelas crianças.


[Via Google Translate: After a bidding held, but not consummated at the end of 2007, the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) to mark the day on December 17 a new electronic bidding for the purchase of 150 thousand notebooks aimed at education, which expects equip 300 public schools.

...

The announcement does not give a basis of price, only the specifications of the machine, which includes Linux operating system installed and configured, manual in Portuguese, at a minimum of RAM and 512 MB screen liquid crystal at least 7 inches. The machine also must have security requirements and be resistant to shocks and falls, besides being comfortable to carry the children.]

It will be interesting to see who wins this contract, since it could well influence others looking to roll out large numbers of GNU/Linux notebooks.

14 August 2007

Portuguese Ministry of Education Goes Free

The Portuguese Ministry of Education is doing the sensible thing and giving away a CD full of free (Windows) software to 1.6 million students, saving itself (and the taxpayers) around 300 million Euros. Nothing amazing about that, perhaps, since it's a sensible thing to do (not that everyone does it).

What's more interesting, for me, at least, is the set of software included on the CD:

* OpenOffice.org
* Firefox
* Thunderbird
* NVU
* Inkscape
* GIMP

These are pretty much the cream of the free software world, and show the increasing depths of desktop apps. Also interesting are the specifically educational programs included:

* Freemind and CmapTools
* Celestia
* Geogebra
* JMOL
* Modellus

Some of these were new to me, notably Geogebra:
GeoGebra is a free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for schools that joins geometry, algebra and calculus.

and Modellus (which isn't actually free software, just free):

Modellus enables students and teachers (high school and college) to use mathematics to create or explore models interactively.

It's always surprised me that that more use isn't made of free software in education, since the benefits are obvious: by pooling efforts, duplication is eliminated, and the quality of tools improved. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)