Deploying open source software (OSS) in UAE schools

Abstract

© 2013 European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems. All rights reserved. Computer science educators aim to discover new technologies and methods to reach the students and improve the educational system in schools. Implementing the open source software in many schools has affected the overall cost of education to governments; for example, the cost of the servers implementing the open source operating system software at Grant High School in South Australia in 2004 was nil for the licence and for obtaining other essential application software. To the best of our knowledge, no research study has yet been carried out on this topic in the UAE schools. Here, we look at a similar experience in the Canadian International School in the UAE, in which the open source software OpenOffice has been deployed. OpenOffice was installed in the computer lab at the school, and three workshops were run for each of three grades: 6, 8, and 11. Feedback was collected from the students after they had performed the lab exercises. A cost estimation study was conducted and is discussed in this paper.