[K12OSN] Making K12LTSP "school friendly"

[Rita Gibson]

Steven Santos wrote:

>>If the software companies run their business like I run mine my guess is
>>it is all hinging on numbers we don't have yet.
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>>So right now they can calculate how much income would could possibly be
>>gained at x amount for software multiplied by %y of available users z.
>>If we could give them an idea of how large a number z is maybe they could
>>see a real potential which will drive them down this road.
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>>I am all for free and open source, but in order for them to want to
>>produce software for this market maybe we need to somehow convey a
>>willingness to pay for task specific software,
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>You know, I only see 3 or 4 titles mentioned for this over and over again.
>Given that the biggest immediate need is only for these 3 or 4 products,
>their are 2 alternatives that we could explore.
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>The first is going in as a group, and saying to the vendor that if X,Y
>and/or Z are ported for Linux, that their are this many schools willing to
>buy this many licenses today.  More flies with Honey and all.
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>The second option is for someone to approach the folks at Code Weavers.
>They may be willing to build (and update, and market) a version of CO Server
>for schools. It looks like Accelerated Reader, Carmen SanDeigo and Reader
>Rabbit are on the list of apps people have gotten to run on COS, and it
>looks like they would support it if they got people willing to buy.
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>Food for thought.
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I posted last week about some software that comes with the math 
curriculum developed by TERC called Investigations.

http://investigations.scottforesman.com/software/index.html

We purchased this curriculum and now can't use pieces of it. Kind of 
disappointing. We thought about trying to find a substitute, or maybe 
seeing if it would run with Wine. Just thought I'd throw this out as an 
example -- it is a Logo program that works with specific "units" in the 
book having to do with geometry. (Anyone out there remember using Logo 
years ago?)

Rita Gibson
RMSELTech