French Students get USB Pen Drive with Open Source Software February 7, 2007
Posted by Leonard Low in USB Key.trackback
According to Yahoo and Engadget, the French are leaping ahead, issuing 175,000 USB drives to Parisian high-schoolers next term. Each one will be loaded with open-source software aimed at “further reducing the digital divide”.
With the Portable Apps movement maturing and providing some seriously cool tools, these USB sticks loaded with software will certainly help these lucky pupils in their studies.
“The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser,
Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as
OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant
messaging. [However,] the exact mix of software will be defined by the company that wins
the contract to supply the sticks, but will be open source, [a spokesman] said.”
While only a portion of students across Paris are receiving the USB sticks, if the program is successful, there is a possibility of expanding the implementation next year. Hmmm - if it is indeed successful, maybe we should look at “expanding” this idea to Australia…
technorati tags:usb, storage, france, french, portable apps, m-learning, mlearning, mobile-learning, mobilelearning, mobile learning
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[...] Mobile Learning » French Students get USB Pen Drive with Open Source Software With the Portable Apps movement maturing and providing some seriously cool tools, these USB sticks loaded with software will certainly help these lucky pupils in their studies. “The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant messaging. [However,] the exact mix of software will be defined by the company that wins the contract to supply the sticks, but will be open source, [a spokesman] said. [...]