ICT Report

Introduction to Free Software

Free Software is software which provides users to study, modify, copy and re-distribute
the software based on their needs. This software released under the GPL (General Public
License).
Why free software in schools?
The computer source is completely open to all, students able to the learn the code
and helps to improve the code, redistribute the code with neighbours.
Free software can save schools money. Savings are possible because free software
gives schools, like other users, the freedom to copy and redistribute the software;
the school system can give a copy to every school, and each school can install the
program in all its computers, with no obligation to pay for doing so.
Schools have a social mission: to teach students to be citizens of a strong,
capable, independent, cooperating and free society.
Free software permits students to learn how software works. Some students,
natural-born programmers, on reaching their teens yearn to learn everything there
is to know about their computer and its software.
Implementation
Free Software group took special interest in promoting the main aspects of the
philosophy of the everyone having equal opportunity without any interpretation such as
the freedom to share knowledge and the freedom to cooperate with our community by
contributing improvements to computer programs. This awareness about
Free
software was largely the result of what we learned at the meeting organized by the Free
Software Hardware Movement , in the nearby city of Pondicherry. Attending those
meetings also helped us to work in close connection with the Free Software community.
How We Did It
Academicians from Free software group conduct pre-test for students and take
analysis report based on that they prepared syllabus .
They selected nearly 150 students from Class VI to IX. They had taken ICT training
session for students from computer basics to programming for 3 months.
They had provided resource materials for ICT Classes for further improvement of
students.
Training was not limited to software, it also included teaching the basics of hardware
maintenance to teachers and students. In our school, 14 years old students know how to
assemble a PC.The use of Free programs in the classroom was facilitated by the
implementation of training modules aimed at instructing teachers on the use of specific
programs for teaching various subjects. For example, there was a training module for
teachers of Mathematics on how to use Dr Geo for teaching geometry, another one for
teachers of Chemistry on how to draw organic molecules using Chemtool, and many
others.

Other training activities were conducted jointly by the school and FSHM Pondicherry to
teach us the use of different Free Software applications such as Blender, Inkscape, and
the command line interface.

Commitment to Free Software

At the beginning the new system was used on a dual-boot basis, because we teachers
were not familiar with Free Software, but we soon got acquainted with it to a great
extent. Free Software is being used in the classroom and in the administration offices.
We use a wide range of free programs in the classroom, such as GIMP, Tux
Paint, Audacity, GPeriodic and LibreOffice, but there are many others.
Students are also introduced to Wikipedia(Online Encylopedia)

Result

Education in the State of Puducherry has become "IT-enabled", meaning that students
are getting first hand technology knowledge while learning regular curriculum subjects
outside the IT Lab. This is possible due to the large number of high quality educational
applications available in GNU/Linux.