By Dan Ilett, 21 June 2005 14:50
NEWS The South Korean government is rolling out a homegrown open source platform to 10,000 schools in the country.
The project, dubbed the National Education Information System (NEIS), is built on a Korean-developed version of Linux which already services 190 schools in the heart of capital city Seoul.
Jin Ko Hyun, president of the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA), which is behind the project, said it has taken schools two years to pilot Buyeo, the Korean version of Linux.
Hyun told silicon.com: "The information will be transferred from school to school when a student moves and when they enter university. The next phase is to make that nationwide. The pilot project was built on Linux."
Hyun added the move was not a deliberate attempt to snub Microsoft but to help the country develop more of its own software: "There's no hostility towards Microsoft. We did this first because of security issues and budgetary concerns.
"The third reason is local support - most applications will be our own developments. If we get the software vendors to do this, where will be the local support? This means local vendors will be given the chance to support their schools."
KIPA is pushing hard to make Linux more readily available to companies in Korea. By 2010 it wants 40 per cent of servers to be run on the open source operating system.
Hyun said Korea was working closely with the Chinese and the Japanese to create an Asian version of Linux that would read any program from the three countries: "The government has dispatched Linux as a preferred platform. The open source movement is very strong here - we have a separate dedicated group working on it."
KIPA was founded during the Korean foreign exchange crisis in 1998.
Plus: Read our leader on Microsoft's push into Asia
Comments
There are 11 comments. Join the discussion
1. Peter Scargill
You would think people would learn - the British government set us back years by committing a generation to that daft BBC micro instead of going down the IBM route - and for what - anyone with half a brain new that the IBM route was the way of the future. So now the Korean government wants to go their own way. Good luck to them - they'll need it.
2. Simon Bazley
Linux hardly compares with the BBC B in you example. Its more like going with an Amstrad clone of IBM vs an IBM original.
Open Source is the future, the sooner MS realise that and open up their own source, the better.
3. Lionel A Smith
Designer Wark: Did you evewr have anything serious to do with the BBC B at the time of its introduction?
Also get your history straight the early, quite crippled by comparison IBM PC, sad graphics, came after the BBC introduction.
The only other real education competitor at the time was the Apple ][. I have programmed, in BASIC and assembler, on both and I can assure you that the BBC was miles ahead. The Apple's memory architectire and various text/graphics modes was a nightmare by comparison.
BBC BASIC was very powerful and allowed, by virtue of the procedure construct to which variables could be parsed as well as the use of variables declared LOCAL. The function construct and the integration of BASIC and assembler made many things possible in tight memory constraints which were undreamed of on any other 8-bit architecture.
Apple peripherals such as floppy drives and printers were far more expensive at that.
THe IBM PC of the early 1980s may have been OK (just) for business but it was of little value in education of the open ended type at that time.
4. Alistair Thomas
A country probably could create a standard for operating system support, particularly if they are not starting from scratch and are willing to embrace the sharing approach of open source. In exchange for a big investment and an ongoing commitment to centrally test and validate all third party developments and continue to develop solutions for the evolving needs of their users, they get absolute control of one aspect of their IT spend.
If they put microsoft into 10,000 schools then it would cost millions and so with a picture this big the choice might just be between two very different but viable options. A unified approach in a later phase for the entire country might not just mean cost savings overall, but as the article suggests, student records can be transported from establishment to establishment. The possibilities for exchange of ideas between teachers and students is enormous. In such a solution, the IT ends up where it should always be designed to be - an enabling technology in the background - Not a foreground checklist of questions you need to ask before you even think about communicating.
Contrast this with the British approach highlighted by the recent misguided and irresponsible report from Becta. Take 15 schools, let them investigate their own solutions using open source, paid for with their own precious budget and resources and then extrapolate the result to 40,000 schools as if it were a single solution. There was no guarantee that the 15 featured schools could even share each others output. The idea that 40,000 schools could independently develop a unified approach is patently absurd.
I applaud the Koreans for some very clear, joined-up thinking. Take a major issue for the country. Spec and build a prototype solution and test it with 190 schools. Refine the solution and then roll it out to 10,000 schools with a view to total rollout in a subsequent stage.
I don't know whether they sat Bill Gates down and offered him the opportunity to provide his software for free in exchange for being the centrally supported option in all Korean schools before they stated. That would be an avenue I would want to explore before a commitment to developing my own standard, but they certainly are looking at a big enough picture for self determination to work and to be cost effective.
Tony Blair if you're listening, we could learn a lot from the Korean appraoch, and they don't even have the english-speaking world from whom to possibly recoup some of their investment once the solution is proven.
5. Mike
UK introduced a new curriculum without software resources to back it. Independant contractors then developed and sold software at vast profit to schools.
If Govt had paid a lump sum for software development, resources would have been available before the curriculum was launched (Well not really if HMG were running it!), It would have cost far less overall and teachers moving between different schools would not have to cope with different software.
6. Andy
"Spec and build a prototype solution and test it with 190 schools. Refine the solution and then roll it out to 10,000 schools with a view to total rollout in a subsequent stage"
Developing something specifically for schools? It doesn't make any sense. Schools have no unique requirements, and students need to learn to use what people use in the real world.
This kind of state planning always ends up being very expensive, and locks people into poorly designed sytems that don't evolve with their needs, and can't handle new applications.
7. Lionel A Smith
Consultant Cambridge:
Schools do have unique requirments, viz educating and not training so that those in industry can absolve themselves from responsibility of that latter.
Certainly at Primary level pupils can benefit from a range of activities based around 'open ended' software.
As for using what is used in the real world of work that is a falacious argument and here is why.
In the early 1990s the buzz in Business studies was to use WordPerfect as a WP. This in spite of the fact that many in offices, including my wife, were using Wordstar or something else. Then children of that era joined the workplace and what do they find: MS Office. Wonderfull!
There is more to business and industrial use of IT that MS Office you know.
There are many core language and mathematical skills which can be developed by specialist software which will have nothing like in the workplace. Thus the pattern of use of computerts in schools is quite different to that in commerce and industry.
As a consultant perhaps you should start to find out more about the issues before offering such 'blanket' and plain wrong opinion.
8. Robert Jones
"Schools have no unique requirements"
Aye Karumba! The creative use of IT in schools has been held back years by this kind of attitude - corporate IT bods in councils who think that the desktop functionality suitable for the average drudge office worker is all that a pupil needs. Kids need to learn about IT, and through IT.
9. Phil Thane
As an ex-teacher now working in educational IT the best thing about the BBC and the later Risc OS Acorns was that the OS resided in ROM. It booted about as quick as BIOS on a modern PC and could be shut down by just switching off. It was almost impossible to corrupt the OS, and if you did you popped in a new chip. My idea of bliss would be a simple Linux or Windows or MacOS that ran from ROM. Given the relative cost of memory now and in the 1980s, it can't be that hard surely? (yes I have tried Windows CE - it was horrible)
10. anonymous
Andy, A typical comment from a 'CONSULTANT' I might add! You would rather that the government pay the likes of people who squander the money just for producing copious reports and nothing materialises - not 10, not 20 not 30 but definitely not even 190 schools get to pilot it 'cause it is worthless stuff that you guys produce!'
I say, well done Korea!
Anonymous
11. Ian Savell
Several good points here. Schools are about EDUCATION not TRAINING. Employers or FE colleges do training, using the foundations laid in school.
This is a necessary split because training is necessarily aimed at short term needs, whereas education is "for life". No-one who learned to use software ten years ago is using anyof those skills today, whereas people who learned how to investigate and understand their environment - how to learn - profit from their education every day.
Writing programs and controlling experiments on a BBC B probably educated far more of todays computer scientists and indeed scientists and engineers of all kinds than typing business letters with Word on a PC would have done.