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March 20, 2010
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Open Source in Education

Jon Poeschek's Linux Logo

He's cute, friendly and very reliable. He's been with our district for many years delivering email and serving up our district and school web pages. He watches over Internet content at all our high schools. His name is Tux and he's going back to school. Learn more about this flightless bird and his impact on SD 73!

All of our Elementary School workstations run Linux for their operating system. Students and teachers now have a large selection of free open-source educational, productivity, and office software ... SD No. 73 has 33 Elementary schools all of which have a Linux Thin Client lab running Linux on the desktop.

Currently all of our Secondary Schools use Linux and FreeBSD for virus, and web content filtering. In 2006 Barriere Secondary was the first high school in our district to have all it's student, teacher, and admin workstations converted to Linux. September 2009 we finished converting our last 3 high schools to Linux Desktops.

Our school board office servers also run Linux and BSD. We use Open Source Software for for email, virus-filters, spam-filters, dns, and web servers. Most of our major information systems are web-based: student data warehouse, workorders, assets, transportation, budgets etc.

Some of the benefits to using Open Source Software:

  • No licensing fees.
  • Free upgrades.
  • Fast free support.
  • Diskless clients allows for instant updates to all workstations within a school.
  • No viruses.
  • No spyware.
  • Great security.
  • Reliable server uptime.
  • No pirating illegal software: p2p.

Here is a list of some of the free software technologies that we use: Debian, Free BSD, RedHat, MySQL, PHP, OpenOffice, Linux Terminal Server Project, Diskless Clients, Dansguardian, Squid, Cyrus, Squirrelmail, Scribus, Qcad, Cycus, and more...

Questions?

If you have any questions feel free to contact us.

John Cuzzola - Director of Information Technology

  • Data warehouse system
  • Accounting/HR system
  • Purchasing inventory system

Jonathan Bowers - Programmer/Analyst

  • BCESIS
  • Web-based report card system

Freddie Cash - Helpdesk/Network Support

  • Email systems - squirrelmail, firstclass, mail routing and filtering
  • Web proxy filtering system
  • FreeBSD firewalls
  • Webmin development
  • BCESIS support

Dean Montgomery - Network Support / Programmer

  • District web applications.
  • Open Source on the Desktop - design & maintenance
  • Moodle implementation.

Linux Desktop Count

Workstations with Linux on the Desktop
Linux Count
3200
October 2009

Links

School District #73 - Kamloops / Thompson Region
1383- 9th Ave, Kamloops, BC, V2C 3X7
Phone: (250) 374-0679
Fax: (250) 372-1183

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