How Open Source Software Products: Can Support Teaching in Italian Schools

In Italy, the adoption of modern software technologies is strongly limited by the current critical economic situation. The adoption of Open Source Software (OSS) solutions can mitigate this problem because of the nature of OSS products that helps to cut down on costs by providing modern and flexible products. However, very often school managers and teachers are unaware about the availability of powerful OSS tools that can support teachers and school managers in their daily work. In this paper we provide a literature survey about the available experiences and projects on the adoption of OSS solutions started in Italian schools and we list a set of available OSS digital class rolls already experimented in Italian schools. The two surveys aim at suggesting how to start new projects avoiding common risks and how to exploit the potentialities of OSS solutions for didactical purposes. In this paper, we also qualitatively assess the listed OSS class rolls with our OP2A methodology in order to suggest which tool is the best choice for the adoption.