I attended Steve Hargadon’s presentation on open source assuming I would learn about new programs and how to find them. There was some of this and this topic may have been the take away for many participants. The new perspective I gained had more to do with hardware.
Hargadon claims that we could likely meet the goal of putting computers in the hands of every students if we would continue to use old computers with open source software. Simply put open source software offers the opportunity to extend the life of older equipment. Hargadon provided an example setup consisting of cast-off equipment – a server and old laptops with hard drives and batteries removed. This type of hardware/software configuration may be sufficient to allow students to participate in Web 2.0 applications. I use several open source programs and I must admit that I am not certain why the demands of these programs are less demanding, but I take his word for this reality.
In addition and I have not considered this issue before, the environmental cost of manufacturing and recycling computers is substantial. Getting more years out of existing hardware reduces this impact on the environment.
Some open source links:
Tags: opensource
