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process is being gradually implemented, starting first with only those more “mature” schools mainly large schools with more than two years of ICT teacher training.
It will probably always be convenient for a developing country to negotiate at the highest distributor or manufacturer levels those pieces of software licenses that will be useful in all schools, such as productivity software licenses and
encyclopedias. Also, many educational software titles will be useful and convenient for all primary schools and others for all secondary schools i.e. encyclopedias, atlases, drawing software, etc.. Therefore, the acquisition of
common software for these schools might also be more cost-effective if performed centrally. The Chilean Ministry of Education has been active in dealing with software vendors, achieving substantial discounts and even large-scale
donations in return for public ity and market expansion.
2. Digital Content for Teachers
Enlaces decided that teachers should have at the schools least one copy of all the software provided for the students, together with their manuals if they were also purchased. The reason for doing this was the policy decision that all
teachers should have readily available in schools, as well as, at home at least the following pieces of software: word processor, spreadsheet, drawer or painter, a presentation manager and those titles related to their teaching
subject matter. If Internet is available, then a navigator and e-mail software is also provided. Due to Enlaces’ former centralized software acquisition policy, most schools in the Enlaces program have the same
software packages and teacher training standardized on a comprehensive set of productivity and communication tools. An alternative that has been tried in Enlaces is to offer primary schools an integrated, education-oriented
productivity software package, whereas secondary schools received a more professional labor-oriented product. However, many schools reported that teachers and students complained that they had to learn how to use the
software a second time when moving from primary to secondary education. Standardization facilitates the interchange of documents among teachers. It avoids complex format conversions, and makes the training more cost
effective by having the trainers all use the same training package examples and contents. Cost is further controlled by producing, updating and distributing software centrally on a large scale. Standardization has also made easier the
negotiation of software licenses for all teachers, allowing for future upgrades at lower prices.
In another realm, even though the Web’s great strength is its abundant availability of the most diverse content material and its ability to deliver content on demand at low cost, high-quality free content remains difficult to find.
Most teachers become easily confused when attempting to sort out the differences between open source software, freeware, shareware, public domain software, and open content licenses.
A report by Cushman [49] explores the possibilities for significant expansion of dig ital content for teaching -- particularly free content. It describes how this might occur, as well as current impediments to expansion.
Enlaces managers and technicians constantly analyze developments and news in open software initiatives and Linux-based platforms for school environments. It is an expanding market, which
may have a positive impact on license costs and hardware requirements, but might also require larger investments in training and technical support if an immature version of Linux is selected.
Previous versions of Linux were mostly oriented to technical staff at universities, and the software suffered from installation and configuration problems requiring highly trained
personnel. This situation has rapidly improved in the last few years, making Linux a reasonable alternative for schools.
See for example:
http:www.edulinux.cl Spanish for an introduction to open source and
Linux, as well as for further links. Linux is also increasingly used as an operating system capable of handling old machines as
terminals in a client-server configuration, thus expanding the life span of computers in schools and other institutions.
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3. Software and Internet Content
Software for learning and for school administration is a fast-growing industry with a large variety of different titles and approaches to the same subjects. Hence, it is difficult for school administration to select the appropriate set of
software titles to suit every educational strategy. However, there are some hints that can be helpful as a starting point.
It is easy to distinguish between software for administrative uses and software for learning purposes. However, software normally designed as “productivity software” also has a place in classrooms, especially in secondary and
vocational schools. Teachers in Enlaces receive many hours of training on the uses of software for administrative tasks, and, according to our observations, they use them daily for this purpose. Because of this, Enlaces is helping
teachers to find and design classroom applications of this software, in the hope that they might feel more confident in using them with their students.
ln an international case study of innovative pedagogical practices using ICT SITES M2, it was found that “in the large majority of cases, it was not innovative technologies that were used. The
dominant technologies used in these classes were commonly available ones, such as productivity tools, e-mail, and the web” [42].
Fortunately, this is the case, and there is ample evidence that productivity software has many classroom applications. For example, spreadsheets may be used for graphic presentations, solving equations and numerical analysis.
There are many sites dealing with word processors and spreadsheets as learning tools in different subjects. For examples and recommendations in many different subjects, you may search documents in:
§ Eduteka: http:www.eduteka.org
Spanish § EducarChile:
http:www.educarchile.cl Spanish
§ The Becta data base in http:www.eduteka.org
English § The Irish ICTE site:
http:www.ncte.ie English
§ ISTE: http:www.iste.orgresourcescurriculumk-12index.cfm
English § The NCTE site:
http:www.ncte.ie English
a. Software for Administration There are several software tools that offer an integrated solution for school management. These software packages
provide most of the functionality needed by the typical school, including data consistency checking, backup procedures, report generation and even network capabilities. However, they incorporate a particular conception of
how a school should be administered, and no matter how flexible they are, there will always be a number of cases in every school that will not be accommodated by the software. This integrated software needs fine-tuning by trained
support staff. Therefore it is advisable to evaluate only those packages for which there is a competent local support agent capable of tuning the software to the school’s needs. This individual also needs to be capable of solving the
main problems that will arise during the shakedown period, which, given the annual cycles of a school, will last for at least a year.
A second approach is that of using commercial packages such as spreadsheets, text processors and databases. These software products are general purpose and adaptable to any particular configuration of need. They are used in all
sectors of society industry, services, ministries and home and are therefore well-known, mature products. Their flexibility and generality has the downside that they will have to be adapted to a school, normally using predefined
or preprogrammed forms.
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b. Digital Content for Learning Teachers face many difficulties when selecting appropriate digital content for a particular educational goal at the
