School administration goes open source!!! SchoolLink is a school management information system software programme developed by Edupac software support services (Pty) Ltd. Edupac is a proudly South African company is the first in Africa to make their school management software available as open source to schools across the African continent.

Generically, open source refers to a program in which the source code is available to use and /or modification from its original design free of charge. This open source business strategy will allow for transparency and easy customizations for schools and Departments of Education.

Edupac’s new SchoolLink product is a web based school management information programme. Because it is web based it runs on any operating system.

Because of the vast distances that schools are spread in some provinces and countries it make it easy to support schools being web based. SchoolLink allows for a central point of support by using the IP address of the school to connect to. Updating software or making statutory changes becomes easy via IP support. Extracting information from the database of the schools could be done at any time when they connect to the Internet.

As we have many rural schools in Africa schools can use SchoolLink on a stand alone, networked in a school or connected to the Internet or wide area network.

Edupac has teamed up with HP to supply schools in the Mogalekwena HP I-community (short for Inclusive Community) project with their SchoolLink software free of charge. This partnership between Edupac and HP I-community came about because of the NEPAD e-schools demo project and the usage of Linux operating platforms used by some schools.

Uganda’s President Museveni launched the first NEPAD e-school on the African continent, the Bugulumbya Secondary School in Busobya Village in the Kamuli District of Uganda – on 18 July 2005. Edupac provides their SchoolLink school management information system to these school.

Rolling out the SchoolLink software to seven countries in Africa opens new opportunities in Africa for a local software provider and will level the playing field for schools, as many disadvantaged schools could never afford school management software before.

A central helpdesk allows for the smooth running of the support structure, which is the main problem in implementing school management software into any school. The main focus of Edupac and will be the training and capacity building of school administrators across the African continent.

The 10-year NEPAD flagship e-schools initiative involves the establishment of an Africa-wide satellite network that will connect the schools to the internet as well as to points within each country from which educational content will be fed to the schools on a continuous basis. It also involves ICT training of teachers and students, content and curriculum development.

Edupac will roll out software and training to the I-community six schools of excellence and ten tuxlabs (A Shuttleworth infinitive) in Mogalekwena area during August and September 2005. This will be followed by rolling out to schools in Uganda, Algeria, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Mozambique and South Africa in the NEPAD e- School infinitive.

Edupac has signed a MoU with South Africa’s leading PC supplier Mecer to make SchoolLink available to all Schools or Departments of Education who whish to install the software on their computers. Mecer and Edupac will start some interesting project in the near future.

Netday a non-profit organisation that empowers schools through access to Information and Communication Technologies has also signed a MoU with Edupac to the promotion of open source software in all fields of education. NetDay refurbishes donated computer equipment for redeployment to deserving historically disadvantaged schools. Equipment from donors such as the Departments of Education, Communications and Trade and Industry has benefited thousands of learners. The SchoolLink software will solve the need of schools that receive these computers even more once teachers start using the school administration software on these Linux solutions.

SAN FRANCISCO--It's easy to make money giving away software--just don't give away too much of it. http://news.com