In 2001, Indiana officials at the Department of Education were taking stock. The schools had an excellent network infrastructure and had installed significant numbers of computers for 1 million public school enrollees. Yet students were spending less than an hour a week on the computer. Why?
Shuttling students to and from computer labs and managing their time there restricted computer use so much that, analysis showed, certain students had access cut to less than 35 minutes a week. It was then that state officials knew each student needed a computer, and Indiana's one-to-one initiative was launched. But how were they to pay for such a huge project that would have cost $100 million a year in software licensing alone?
Open source.
The often-misunderstood technology (thought of as "just free Web 2.0 stuff" by the uniformed) has been the answer in Indiana—and a growing number of school systems across the country—to shrinking school technology budgets and soaring software costs.
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