Strategy Reports and Papers

Schools need technology that reduces administrative overhead and aids in teaching. States often wonder how to fund such technology, specifically how to ensure funds are available year over year to refresh the technology as necessary. A major worry is software upgrades. Continual upgrades — especially those that support only the latest hardware and therefore require not only funds for all new software licenses but refreshed hardware throughout the school — are hard to justify to the public. Some schools have found that using open source software can protect the public’s interest.

This issue brief, underwritten by Red Hat, examines how open source software is poised to make a profound impact on K-12 education. School and district technology leaders need to become aware of how other educational systems are leveraging the use of open technologies to improve student learning, engage parent and community interest in education, provide home access to technologies used in school and use their financial resources in the most effective way possible.