The Goa (India) Schools Computer Project (GSCP) was started in 1996 as an informal community effort by overseas Goans living mainly in the US. The goal was to help facilitate access to PCs by students and the surrounding community where the respective schools were located. The project was aimed mainly at schools in rural areas.
Goa has 360 secondary schools and only 70 are government operated. With total enrollment is 110,000. Since 2002, the Goa government has supplied an average of 2 PCs per school. Students are taught basic computer use including an introduction to word-processing and spreadsheets.
In January 2002 GSCP provided a shipment of 380 recycled PCs to Goa under an agreement between GSCP and the Goa Department of Education. GSCP also provided training to teachers in the use of the Linux operating system.
The Technology
The GNOME desktop was selected initially for its ease of use and lower resource demand. RedHat India offered free boxed packages for all the schools. Systems with small hard-disks were configured with open source software installed because it’s easy to use. Spreadsheets were taught using Gnumeric and wordprocessing using Abiword . During 2003 OpenOffice was also introduced. The project team uses Linux Terminal Server (LTSP) in schools where 4 or more networked computers are installed. ICEwm has replaced Gnome as the window manager on all LTSP systems because of its lower resource requirements. Rationale for OSS Use GSCP wanted to avoid software piracy and the cost to install Microsoft software was greater than the $60 cost of the recycled computers. Access to a local Linux User group providing volunteer support to schools was also a factor in the open source decision.
As of July 2003, 125 schools received recycled PCs, ranging from 1 to 6 computers. The number of PCs issued was determined by number of students, willingness to work with Linux and funds available to provide the appropriate infrastructure.
The Results
According to Alwyn Noronha, GSCP project manager “The experience of the GSCP team is that low cost and sustainable school computer labs can be established in rural schools using recycled equipment and open-source software. GSCP has demonstrated that PCs running both Linux and Windows environments can effectively be used simultaneously in the same computer lab.”
The Initial training was required for computer teachers familiar only with Microsoft Windows and standalone environments. Teachers instructed how to use a Linux environment by Volunteers from Linux User Groups (LUGs) in Goa.
GSCP found no significant requirement by schools to exchange data between open source and proprietary systems since the systems are used primarily for teaching purposes. The increasing use of OpenOffice has resulted in less problems conforming to the government’s syllabus which assumes the use of Microsoft Word and Excel. Since OpenOffice can read and write MS Word and Excel formats there are minimal problems in exchanging data.
Finally, a 2002 survey shows that Schools using Linux in a rural area were more successful in maintaining their equipment, if they had non fluctuation power source.