This slideshow was delivered at a distance to participants at TESL Ontario in late 2008. It looks at software purchase options for TESL centers and suggests that Open Source software may be a vaild alternative.
2. RETHINKING SOFTWARE PURCHASES Educational technology is one of many requirements for ESL institutions in Ontario. Educational Technology costs can be categorized by networking, hardware, support, training and software. Software costs can be greatly reduced by carefully assessing the options offered by the trend known as Open Source. Open source offers cost effective solutions that perform as well as commercial software and allow for dramatic saving to institutions. This paper deals with the issues of cost, support, training, upgrades and access.