We are happy to give this type of news, and it is that open source has exploded in education classrooms in 2018, and it is expected to continue growing in 2019. This can be seen in the curves of the graphs on the adoption of this type of projects in analyzes carried out in universities, schools, etc. Therefore, these open source projects have a promising future linked to education, since as you know, being so transparent in terms of their code and creation, it allows students to learn from them, either with code snippets, software something more complex and even free hardware projects.
That virtue is something you don't have in proprietary or closed source projects, where students don't have much to do with them other than use it. But they cannot feed themselves and learn from it, since the companies that design this type of proprietary projects do not give up the code and / or certain documentation on their projects. In addition, this type of software or proprietary projects have licenses that must be paid, preventing them from reaching the least economically favored centers ...
We all know such interesting projects to learn such as Scratch, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Edublocks, etc., and their good reception in classes so that the little ones and the not so young can learn fundamentals as diverse as programming, electronics, robotics, etc. As for sites like GitHub or GitLab, they can be found from simple projects to some more complex ones that you can review from A to Z in terms of their source code, with how wonderful that is to learn.
Besides that, the philosophy of open education or education open is also succeeding more and more. A new philosophy that changes the old paradigm of the role assumed by the student and the teacher, and taking as a basis something as wonderful as sharing knowledge. As you can see, it is something very inspired by the entire free software and open source movement that has reached the rooms of education.
Hi. I would like to know what data the claims in the article support.
Greetings, F.-
I do not know if the statement supports it in any official statistics or not, I will answer you from what I know at the local level according to technicians who maintain the maintenance of schools and institutes, some teachers and the comments of some students. Lately due to budget problems and to avoid problems due to audits on pirated software, many educational centers have installed free solutions, say Linux, LibreOffice, etc., etc., on their terminals. Most of the comments cannot be better, there is software for everything, it meets our needs, everything is free, without security problems, easy to maintain, easy to use, we have the code to be able to see and work on it, on top of it it is LEGAL,…. .!. Of course there are those who want their MSOffice yes or yes, (even if it is only for four letters that it does and that even the standard Notepad would be worth it, but it is their right), the initial reluctance to change is great, a lot of distrust for something that costs nothing, new formats, etc, etc. Now, when they have been working with it for a while, unfortunately, they get used to the little maintenance it needs, to not having problems with viruses (what an eye the OS have), to the practical fact that they are not so monstrous programs with hundreds of options that you do not usually use, as it turns out that then they do not want to return to Windows. Anyway, my answer is only based on comments from acquaintances and friends, they are not official data and therefore poor credibility. First hand if I can tell you that in my company half of the computers have Ubuntu / Mint installed, the other half we maintain a dual boot for compatibility to access some public administration services, which although officially it is multiplatform, usually has in It is very rough if you do not access with Internet Explores.
A greeting.
A bit in agreement with what Gregorio says, it seems to me that more than data, it is enough to read the news twice a week to have an overview. Lawsuits after lawsuits for illegal use of software, data protection, copyright and other issues, leads to the difference between these last years and just a few years ago, is very large, in terms of how educational institutions are taken, the importance of having everything in order in technological matters. In the same way, I think that if someone needs, to share this note in some area, attach official statistics that support it, they can surely be found easily.