Abstract. We draw from a study aimed to establish the state of practice concerning schools' expectations and provision of IT and software applications in Swedish schools. Analysis focuses on Open Standards and Open Source Software (OSS), and considers educational lock-in. Results consider schools' expectations and provision of software and standards for digital artefacts, and show that schools expect students to use a variety of different software systems including a number of well-known OSS. The study reveals significant misconceptions concerning standards and software applications, characterises problems, and presents some recommendations for action.
IntroductionThe use of IT and pedagogical software in schools has received significant attention in many countries in a desire to gain positive pedagogical effects and prepare students for society and working life (e.g. Balanskat et al., 2006; IES, 2009;Livingstone, 2012). In acknowledging mixed experiences there is also some research addressing teaching and learning experiences from Open Source Software (OSS) usage at University (e.g. German, 2005;Kilamo, 2010;Lundell et al., 2007) and high school levels (e.g. Lin and Zini, 2008), but there is a lack of research on expectations and provision of open standards and OSS in schools for young students. As part of a study aimed to establish the state of practice concerning IT usage in Swedish public sector schools with students in ages 7-19, this paper presents novel results from an analysis covering all Swedish schools for young students (ages 7-16). Specifically, results presented concern: provision of OSS applications for use by students; requirements for students related to use of different document formats (standards); requirements for students related to use of software applications for writing essays; and provision of software applications for writing essays. Our analysis provides a state of practice and addresses different implications of educational lock-in and its long-term implications.A number of factors motivate consideration of Open Standards and OSS in an analysis of IT usage in public sector schools, and there are a number of initiatives and previous research efforts related to the study.First, skills development in the ICT sector has been identified as important, not only for public sector procurement and standardisation, but also for a range of