Gregg Ferrie

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Gregg Ferrie is the Director of Information Technology for School District No. 63 (Saanich) in southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Gregg has a Master of Science degree in Information Systems and has been involved with open source software since the late 1990s. The school district has implemented Linux diskless clients utilizing many open source programs and has recently incubated the openStudent Student Information System as an alternative to commercial SIS's currently being deployed. Gregg is passionate about the support and use of open source software in K-12 education.

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gferrie
Where to start: Upgrading your school system to open source

Thank you for the kind words Joshua. There are definitely pockets of this technology in both the US, Canada and other countries but there is certainly more potential for schools and districts. I am very impressed by what is happening at Penn Manor School District in PA and the Opensys shared service in Finland. Great examples of innovation and strong leadership. Certainly we publish and make available our technology plans and are always happy to share what we have done.

https://opensource.com/education/13/8/open-source-penn-school-district
http://www.opinsys.fi/en/

gferrie
Where to start: Upgrading your school system to open source

I am familiar with the work that is going on at Opinsys Mats. It is an excellent prototype for the type of system which could certainly be replicated elsewhere. As the emphasis on desktop computing is replaced by mobility and distributing computing models more school districts may take advantage of what Linux and open source has to offer. Lots of excellent comments and quotes - kind regards.