IMPARTING ART EDUCATION THROUGH FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FOSS): AN EXPERIMENT WITH SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Art Education is important for the development of holistic personality of learners and many policies in India have been suggested systematic implementation of Art Education in Indian schools. But this area is still neglected and needs proper implementation at different levels of schools. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is stipulated by a liberal licensing policy that makes it possible to be obtained free of change alongwith the source code. FOSS has many advantages and one of the important advantage is that it is increasing growth of knowledge based society. Keeping in mind the benefits of FOSS, an experiment was done by imparting Art Education to secondary school students through FOSS. The experiment revealed positive result of the FOSS in Art Education. This paper highlights need of Art Education at school level, FOSS in Art Education, experiment of FOSS with secondary school students and its outcomes.