We’ve been writing quite a lot about open source alternatives to popular but costly software in this column. Recently, a marvellous opportunity arose for us to put some of our recommendations into practice.
Late last year, EI headquarters in Brussels underwent a significant IT overhaul, which made the purchase of new desktop computers necessary. We knew from colleagues who went to Fez, Morocco last year to make the video No to child labour, yes to education! that none of the five schools participating in the SNE-FDT child labour prevention project had a single computer. From there, it seemed to be only a small step to ship the computers withdrawn from service in Brussels to Morocco. But in fact, it turned out that a number of big steps lay ahead. Customs procedures in particular required a lot of determined negotiations by our Arabic-speaking colleague Dalila El Barhmi, who was born in Morocco. We decided to install the PCs with Edubuntu, a free, open source Linux operating system. Why Edubuntu? As the Cocos Islands’ Ministry of Education notes: “No licensing costs for the software so you can use the savings to purchase more computers or do other things.” But there is more: Edubuntu is specifically designed for the classroom,, even though it’s equally suitable for kids to use at home. It is built by a community of people, most of whom are highly-skilled volunteers. Edubuntu offers cutting-edge word processing, web browsing, and image manipulation software along with education-focused applications grouped into bundles suitable for students from preschool to higher education. For example, there is the KDE Education Project, which comprises free educational software such as KBruch, a math tool for learning fractions; KHangman, a vocabulary training game; or KStars, an interactive star map that can be set to view the sky from any point on the planet. Another software suite installed by default is GCompris, comprising numerous activities for children aged from two to ten. Educational goals are hidden behind all the fun and games, for example, typing training, logical puzzles, memory games and more. Importantly, the hardware requirements of Edubuntu are expressly kept low – so low, in fact, that the operating system will run comfortably on a computer from 2001. Considering the speed at which computer hardware grows more powerful, that’s aeons ago! Because the computers taken out of service at EI head office were 2005 vintage, that gave a comfortable margin. Indeed, the system, once installed, ran smoothly and promised an easy-going and enjoyable learning experience for the Moroccan students. To complete the project, we went to Fez ourselves to introduce both teachers and pupils to the possibilities and options of Edubuntu. There are a lot of cyber-cafés in Morocco, and all of the teachers and children had clear ideas of what a computer is, and what it can be used for. However, the children had not had much practice with computers before and were therefore very excited to experience them first-hand. For us, most encouraging was to see how quickly and intuitively some of the children understood how to handle this new tool. We played a sliding-block puzzle out of the GCompris suite with them. In this game, players have to move different blocks on the screen with the mouse and drag them into a designated target. The difficulty is that not all blocks move in all directions, so players must plan ahead logically to succeed at the game. Some kids were truly puzzled, but others just took one look and dragged all the blocks to all the right positions instantly! We were delighted to see so much potential there, that could finally be uncovered. Of course, the number of computers we could ship amounted to little more than a drop in the ocean, and the schools have other pressing problems, too. For example, it’s difficult to see how eight latrines for more than a thousand children can be sufficient. But, as school principal Hijazi Abdellah told us when we left: “It’s the small steps that move us forward. Little by little, we will get kids out of work and into school, and the possibility of offering them an educational alternative to commercial games in cyber-cafés here in school is greatly appreciated.” By Harold Tor and Timo Linsenmaier.