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Transforming High School Classrooms with Free/Open Source Software: It's Time for an Open Source Software Revolution

Transforming High School Classrooms with Free/Open Source Software: It's Time for an Open Source... Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) applications meet many of the software needs of high school science classrooms. In spite of the availability and quality of FOSS tools, they remain unknown to many teachers and utilized by fewer still. In a world where most software has restrictions on copying and use, FOSS is an anomaly, free to use and to redistribute without restrictions. Using FOSS instead of the ubiquitous proprietary applications most commonly used can seem as heretical and as impossible as did Copernicus's suggestion that the Earth was not the center of the universe. This paper suggests one of the factors that keeps schools from adopting—or even considering—FOSS is that its very existence can be written off as an anomaly. Additionally, it shows similarities between the development of FOSS and the development of scientific knowledge. Moreover, it provides examples of FOSS for high school science classrooms. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The High School Journal University of North Carolina Press

Transforming High School Classrooms with Free/Open Source Software: It's Time for an Open Source Software Revolution

The High School Journal , Volume 91 (3) – Mar 10, 2008

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
ISSN
1534-5157
Publisher site
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Abstract

Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) applications meet many of the software needs of high school science classrooms. In spite of the availability and quality of FOSS tools, they remain unknown to many teachers and utilized by fewer still. In a world where most software has restrictions on copying and use, FOSS is an anomaly, free to use and to redistribute without restrictions. Using FOSS instead of the ubiquitous proprietary applications most commonly used can seem as heretical and as impossible as did Copernicus's suggestion that the Earth was not the center of the universe. This paper suggests one of the factors that keeps schools from adopting—or even considering—FOSS is that its very existence can be written off as an anomaly. Additionally, it shows similarities between the development of FOSS and the development of scientific knowledge. Moreover, it provides examples of FOSS for high school science classrooms.

Journal

The High School JournalUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Mar 10, 2008

There are no references for this article.