The Kerala State of India has done excellent work by including open-source education in its curriculum. Since 2006, the state is propagating the idea of open source technologies, by replacing many of the proprietary software used in public service sectors. This includes ORUMA Software used by state electricity board, free software migration in Khadi Board, and also the use of free software for IT operations of Kerala Legislative Assembly.

IT @ School 18.04 Preview

Open Source in Education

Kerala government’s education curriculum includes computer education from the primary school itself. From the beginning itself, students are taught the idea of free software and the need for it. Also, the curriculum teaches the use of open-source software for performing day-to-day activities such as painting, listening to music, watching movies, browsing the internet, preparing office documents, etc. Also, python is part of the curriculum in the 10th standard. Students will be making their utility applications on python in the 10th standard. The inclusion of python will help them to identify their taste in programming from the early stages itself.

The evolution of IT@Schoo GNU/Linux

The idea of developing a custom GNU/Linux distribution was evolved in mid of the 2000s. This concept became a reality in 2006 when the first version of IT@School GNU/Linux was released. The first version of IT@School GNU/Linux was based on Debian and included a set of applications for education. It was developed in collaboration with a private agency. Later, the IT@School wing of the Kerala Education Department took control over this.

In 2008, the first batch completed their 10th standard IT practical public exam in GNU/Linux. Later, there were multiple releases of IT@School with the Ubuntu LTS base. The latest one in this series is IT@School 18.04.

Download IT@School GNU/Linux 18.04 ISO

The following section showcases some screenshots captured in IT@School 18.04

01 IT@School 18.04 Desktop01 IT@School 18.04 Desktop02 Application Menu02 Application Menu03 Places Menu03 Places Menu04 Nautilus File Manager04 Nautilus File Manager05 Terminal Emulator05 Terminal Emulator06 Firefox Browser06 Firefox Browser07 GPeriodic07 GPeriodic08 Xournal Note taking app08 Xournal Note taking app09 PySIO Game09 PySIO Game10 JFraction Lab10 JFraction Lab11 Theeram Dictionary11 Theeram Dictionary12 Geography Learning assistant12 Geography Learning assistant13 KStars13 KStars14 TurtleBlocks - Interactive programming14 TurtleBlocks - Interactive programming15 Scratch Interactive programming15 Scratch Interactive programming16 Timetable Generator16 Timetable Generator17 Avogadro - Modelling17 Avogadro - Modelling18 Marble Virtual Globe18 Marble Virtual Globe19 IT at School Guide19 IT at School Guide20 The Underlying System20 The Underlying System21 Control Center21 Control Center22 Backgrounds22 Backgrounds23 System Menu23 System Menu24 Shutdown confirmation24 Shutdown confirmation