Here’s how it ought to be:
Each district in the United States hires1 or 2 programmers (predictable yearly IT budget). They all use a bugzilla website to communicate on software projects. The software projects are voted on by employees of the districts. The software is free for anyone to use (not just schools).
Here are programs that I already know that schools need:
- Linux OS
- Open Office
- Smart Board Software
- Blogging tools for teachers (or CMS with teacher-controlled pages)
- intranet bulletin board for students (phpbb would probably do, as long as the accounts could be tied to district network accounts for students)
- computer lab monitoring software (watch and record about 30 screens at once, from one teacher workstation)
- Scheduling checkout of shared resources or labs
- enterprise account management for IT, with email, drive space, etc. for teachers, admins, students, etc. with granular control over permissions for each kind of user
- grade book
- attendance
- media players
- multiple monitor support (for monitor + projector use)
- web browser (firefox, with adblock plus … because really, teachers and students have no business clicking on ads anyway)
- email client (IMAP)
- webmail client (roundcube looks nice)
- chat client (pidgin)
- jabber accounts (tied to other accounts)
- single username and password for network users — password complexity checks, retrieval system for passwords
- intranet CMS, internet CMS
- any other ideas = please comment
