Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Chiara Friso, Valentina Lenarduzzi, Davide Taibi and Davide Tosi
WiiLD with a subset of teachers with skilled abilities in adopting technology; compare the expensive LIM
(Lavagna Interattiva Multimediale) with the open source based WiiLD; identify a set of OSS tools to provide a
suite that completely support teachers and school managers in their daily work; engineer and develop new
OSS solutions; create a community around WiiLD.
Schools Involved : 40 schools are experimenting the WiiLD
1) Experience Name: Istituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore “P. Paschini” (Udine)
(URL: www.paschinimarchi.it/dokuwiki/doku.php/aula_di_informatica)
Description: the experience started in 2002 and it is based on the adoption of Linux OS for all the PCs of the
school, not only for economical reasons but also for ethical and technological motivations (e.g., manage in a
simpler way remote students’ accesses and permissions)
Solutions: the adoption of the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) to centralize data, accesses and software
tools. A set of diskless clients are remotely connected to the server to virtually boot the Operating System.
Methodology: the experience is based on the individual work of a teacher of the school. He identified the
LTSP, studied the Linux OS, collaborated with an external company for the installation and configuration of the
client-server network
Evaluation: the promoter of the experience reports a lot of advantages and none disadvantages in the
adoption of Linux.
2) Experience Name: Istituto Tecnico Commerciale Statale “Odorico Mattiussi” (Pordenone)
(URL: www.itcmattiussi.it, www.mattiussilab.net/content)
Description: the experience started in 2001 and it is based on the adoption of several OSS solutions to
support high-level students in their business course of studies, not only for economical reasons but also for the
large set of OSS tools available for business people.
Solutions: the adoption of a Linux distribution, the use of OpenOffice, GIMP, FireFox, gcc, netfilter, samba,
squid and the apache web server; the experimentation of the Moodle e-learning platform; the development of
OSS solutions to support school-managers and administrative tasks.
Methodology: the experience started in an unstructured manner with the collaboration of two teachers,
technical staff and some motivated students.
Evaluation: the promoters of the experience reported the difficulties encountered to motivate some students in
the adoption of OSS solutions.
3) Experience Name: Istituto Comprensivo “G. Toniolo” (Pisa)
(URL: http://ictoniolopisa.it)
Description: the experience started in 2009 and it is based on the migration from the Microsoft OS to the
Linux OS, not only for economical reasons but also for ethical and didactical motivations (e.g., provide a large
set of tools and solutions to improve the students’ critical ability).
Solutions: migration from proprietary software to OSS solutions with the adoption of a Linux distribution and a
set of tools to innovate the didactic (Innovascuola).
Methodology: the experience is based on a first partial migration where each PC was able to boot in dual
mode (both Microsoft and Linux), followed by a total migration to Ubuntu. An external company has supported
the installation and configuration of 6 new laboratories and also the training of teachers and school managers.
Evaluation: the promoter of this experience reports a lot of advantages in adopting Linux and few
disadvantages such as the opposition of some teachers and the huge number of hours spent after working
time for conducting the experience.
3.1 Planning the survey
Also in this case, we followed a systematic literature review (Biolchini et al., 2007) to survey the
available OSS tools for digital class rolls. The survey was planned with the aim of identifying the OSS
tools developed by communities or private developers related to digital class rolls. This objective led
us to define a set of questions that we hope answer throughout the survey:
Q1: are OSS tools for digital rolls available?
Q2: are the available OSS tools for digital rolls experimented in real domains?
Q3: what kind of support can actually provide the adoption of these OSS tools?
The survey has been conducted using the following search strings and criteria:
Open source tools for schools
Digital class rolls
Digital class registers
OSS and floss solutions for didactic
OSS and floss solutions for schools
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