Macedonian Deploys 5,000 GNOME in Public Schools

Skopje, Macedonia -- 22 September 2005 (Dateline should be the day you send the article to print not when you interviewed.)

The Republic of Macedonia belongs to the group of countries which seem to be stuck in a time warp – at least for the past 10 years. an endless “development” for the last 10 yeas. Good things rarely happen here and economic and scientific progress is hardly noticeable, unlike some other developing countries like China or Thailand. That's why I didn't get very excited when I first heard about a mass deployment of GNOME in public schools. I thought to myself, “Well hear you go. Another ambitious project that's never going to get off the grounds.”

It was in (early?) August that a friend of mine told me about a project led by USAID (what's this) and the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MoES) to deploy free and open source software in public schools throughout Macedonia.

that there was a project going on for free software deployment in schools and NGO's throughout Macedonia, a project led by USAID and MoES (Ministry of Education and Sciences).

After a little research I found out that the project involved deployment of Ubuntu Linux, which as you may already know comes with GNOME as a default desktop environment.

After a few weeks I finally arranged an interview with a representative of the organization responsible for the mass deployment of Ubuntu and GNOME and Ubuntu on over 5000 PC's in primary and secondary schools.

I got the chance to speak with one of the representatives of EDC (what's this), Darko Arsov, who was that were working on this project since it's inception. beginning. He is a Darko Arsov is working as a Technology Integration Manager at EDC. was the man for getting all the informations for this text.

As a part of a joined project called “E-School.MK”, Macedonia Connects (USAID and AED), EDC and the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science (Could you rewrite the beginning of this sentence to make it more clear who the subject is and who is implementing it) decided to install Ubuntu Linux in more than over 460 schools in 182 computer labs (should it be and 182 computer labs instead of “in 182)all over the country.

I started my interview by asking asked Darko what made them consider using Ubuntu and GNOME in the first place and what were actually the factors that influenced their choice.

Darko: After a few meetings and some research, Ubuntu just came up as first on the list. The main factor that influenced our choice was the interoperability of Ubuntu with other operating systems. GNOME is really all about simplicity and usability. The simple and easy-to-use GNOME UI had a great influence on the final decision and to be honest we're quite happy with our choice thus far.

Q. How do you like the Ubuntu and GNOME 6-months release cycle? (Does GNOME also have a 6-month cycle like Ubuntu?)

Darko: Well the 6 month release cycle has advantages, because it allows the software to be stable and well tested before it gets to the hands of the end users. Also, this gives some nice planing advantages because you know when you can expect a new version and you know that twice a year your software gets updated with new features.

Q. Are you aware of the existence of free software projects such as the education applications at @ gnomefiles.org and/or EDUbuntu, and do you plan to introduce them as a part of your project?

Darko: We heard about EDUbuntu – the educational version of Ubuntu and we are waiting for the official release to be released before we additionally consider if this project satisfies the needs of the Macedonian educational system. I think that there is a strong possibility of implementing something like this in the near future. We're also interested in localizing some of the educational applications for GNOME and implement them in the existing environment.

Q. Since the PC's are running GNOME 2.8 on Ubuntu Warty, do you plan to upgrade them to a newer version of GNOME? (Warty is old. Why didn't they go for Hoary?)

Darko: Of course, one of our main project goals is sustainability and that's why we ll even encourage teachers to keep up with releases and upgrade regularly. Since GNOME 2.12 is fully translated into Macedonian we would most certainly upgrade all the PC's as soon as possible.

Do you plan to support the use of free software such as GNOME in the near future, could you tell us something more about this?

Q. Everything we did regarding this project was in collaboration with the MoES (Ministry of Education and Science) and we hope that the MoES will continue supporting the use of free and open source software in the educational institutions throughout the country, anyhow we are and will be supporting these kind of projects cause we consider free software to be the best tool that makes it possible for students to learn how things work in a certain software making them understand the process of creating a program far more easily. I would also like to mention that we've set up 82 wireless hot spots in these labs both in rural and urban areas around the country. We hope that the fast Internet connection will allow both students and teachers to learn more about the software they're using, how to add software, play with the code and participate in programing projects. We definitely support and encourage both students and teachers to experiment in their newly deployed environments so they can get to know the desktop environment and the OS as a whole.

As a part of this project through seminars and some training we'll also be providing some 10000 teachers from both primary and secondary schools, the basic skills for working with GNU/Linux and GNOME. At the end, we'll be making some analysis to see the short and long-time effects of the project.

Q. Anything else?

Darko: :) We're also working on a web portal intended for students. The portal will definitely be an open source project where students could open accounts, upload their code, join up in teams to work together on software projects, share experiences and above all learn things from which they will all benefit in the future.

2005-10-07T22:25:31