There’s a powerful movement that’s right on the verge of that critical mass of momentum - and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

We want to share a story of the #GoOpen and #GoOpenSource initiatives that are making a huge impact in education - in both K through 12 and University.

The incredible costs of proprietary textbooks have been such a bane for students for so long the whole issue has become a running joke amongst student bodies all over the U.S. (albeit a dark and crushing one). These matters aren’t only a major concern for students, however. Administrators are well aware of the impact borne by their students in being forced to purchase “dead knowledge stamped on dead trees.” And the schools themselves bear the full brunt of running the incredibly expensive software necessary to operation.

Education is a global resource practiced locally - and we would be remiss to ignore the vast potential of allowing local districts to shape and, more importantly, contribute to that shared pool of knowledge and resources. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education launched its #GoOpen initiative (encouraging a move away from traditional proprietary textbooks and toward an open-license paradigm of digital education).

At the core of this open-resource momentum is, naturally, Linux. As an open source education resource, Linux is being increasingly embraced by schools around the world. Penn Manor School District, located in Pennsylvania, has completely replaced the common proprietary software offered by Microsoft and other companies, and reported savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving its district servers, all their classroom computers, and over 4000 student laptops over to Linux and open source software.

At Panther, we’re excited by every strong step forward toward a more open source and more freely educated world, so this is something we had to share with you. We applaud Penn Manor’s enlightened moves and their initiative now allows their students and educators to take a direct hand in shaping the curriculum - keeping it genuinely relevant and useful for current and future students.

We definitely recommend you check out the source article here written by Charlie Reisinger - Penn Manor’s IT director.