Charlie Reisinger’s ‘The Open Schoolhouse’

The Screening Room

Charlie Reisinger is the IT Director of the Penn Manor School District, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He recently finished writing a spellbinding book describing how his school district decided to adopt open source software and methods. When reading this book, I sent an email to Charlie saying: “This book reads as if it’s your doctoral thesis — it’s a multiyear capstone project.” Charlie responded, “It felt in some way like that while writing the book.” Charlie went on to tell me that the reason he wrote the book was to help other school districts make the plunge into open source. “Come on in – the water is warm!” is the reassuring tone throughout the book.

Here is my video review of this book. Note — at 27-minutes long, it’s much longer than my other video book reviews. I had no choice but to give the book its due. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling that offers hope to students and teachers everywhere.

You can buy Charlie’s book for an affordable price at The Open Schoolhouse website — or you can download a free PDF copy (or do both). Do you know a school teacher, principal, superintendent, or school board member who needs to know about this book? Please tell them. Send them the link to my review or buy them a copy of the book (or do both). Step by step, we can get to where we need to be. Charlie has done his part. I’ve done my part. Thanks in advance for doing your part. Ask your local public library to buy a copy of this book, too. You talk regularly with your local public librarians, don’t you?

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.