Open Options | Using this site

This site should help you decide whether open source is right for you. That is, does open source software fit with the needs and vision of your state, district, or school?

Open source: What & why?
What's in this site?
Our purpose & goal
This is a free site

What's in this site?

This site has four major sections, like chapters in a book:

Background... What is open source software?
Pros & Cons... What are the implications for K-12?
K-12 Examples... Where and why it's used in K-12
Decisions... Is it right for you?

Every section has three level of information:

High importance, focused on the big picture (e.g. Background)
Middle importance, with common questions and basic answers (e.g. What does "open" mean?)
Low importance, including more details and technical answers (e.g. More about source code)

Of course, you can jump around or skip ahead if you like. If you don't understand something, try looking in a previous section. There is a hyperlinked glossary and a site map. There are many links to other sites.

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Our purpose & goal

This site provides pragmatic tools for K-12 decisionmakers. We try to minimize technical details because they are continuously changing and are better supported elsewhere. This is a fairly static site, and won't be updated on a daily or weekly basis.

This site will be most useful for decisionmakers in K-12 education: state- or district-level technology-in-education executives, and the executives or boards they report to. However, these resources should be useful to any stakeholder. Ideally, significant technology decisions include input from all stakeholders (e.g. administrators, teachers, support staff, students, the community, etc.).

The popularity of open source software seems to be growing quickly. Some corporations and governments praise open source, because of its advantages over "traditional" closed source. Some schools are using open source software. But open source is not "magic pixie dust." Ultimately, stakeholders are the beneficiaries or victims of technology choices. We aren't advocating for open source. We want to empower educators to make informed decisions for themselves.

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This is a free site

You may reproduce any or all content from this site, as long as you credit the source. On the Web, please link to our site directly rather than copying our pages. We count our hits, because it's useful to show our funder, the US Department of Education, that this resource is valued.

This site was created at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's Northwest Education Technology Consortium.

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Open Options is a product of the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. These materials are in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. The following acknowledgment is requested on materials which are reproduced: Developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, Oregon.

This Web site was developed and maintained by the Northwest Educational Technology Consortium. The federal funding for the regional technology consortia program ended on September 30, 2005, and no further updates are planned unless additional funding becomes available. However, much of the content is still useful and NWREL will continue to provide access to this site to support educators and to meet its own technical assistance needs.