Re: [school-discuss] Feedback needed from teachers for the

["Michael Williams" <mwilliams@haywood.k12.nc.us>]

>> The biggest and popular educational software in demand today (in
>> Australian schools at least, things like Kahootz, Kidspiration,
>> mind-mapping software, etc) are not flashcard programs. Open
>> source, in my opinion, needs software to compete with products
>> like these, and they should be web based. If anyone is interested in
>> building a web application along these lines using Perl,
>> Python or PHP, count me in. My own humble contribution in this
>> area is a web-based student newspaper application that allows
>> kids to publish text and graphics to a school web-magazine. It is not
>> rocket-science, it is pretty basic, but quite young kids can use it
>> and it works (see
>> http://ninti.com/schools/larapinta/nintinews/ ). What it needs
>> is: conferencing with teacher/peers, spell checking, etc.

I think we need both kinds of software, but without the buyin from teachers
and researchers I don't think we will see much of the higher end stuff for
free. I think it (higher end software) needs to be self sustaining with
dedicated full time development. Whether as a non-profit or whatever but
with full time attention.

>
> This is OK for schools with an internet connection.  In the KDE-Edu
> project, we ruled out web-based programs because the vast majority of
> schools we aim to reach does not have an internet connection.
> KDE is a world-wide project, translated in more than 50 languages.

Not all US schools have adequate bandwidth, but I have wondered in the past
about serving webbased apps locally. All linux distributions have web
servers, so why couldn't you develop cross platform apps that were just
served off the local web server over the LAN. I don't think everything
should be web based.

>
> I think that schools in the USA or Australia obviouly don't need the
> kind of software we aim to produce and even don't find it
> interesting.

I think it is imperative that teachers have a vast store of resources to
draw from, tools that they can pick and choose from to match their teaching
styles and their students learning styles. One size does not fit all in
education.

>
> I would like to know if this list is only for people from developed
> countries.  In this case, I have nothing to do with it. When I see a
> lengthy thread about gradebooks stuff, I am sorry to say that it
> does not concern the majority of people in the world who don't use
> gradebooks in schools.

Maybe we need to take a snap shot of education systems throughout the world
to get a better understanding of what we need to target. I'm sure that even
in the developed countries that there are regional differences and
approaches to education. I must admit that I tend to stay focused on my
system and an infusion of different ideas is always refreshing and
enlightning.

>
> Anne-Marie

Michael
-- 
Michael Williams                   Instructional Technology
Haywood County Schools          216 Charles St. Clyde, NC 28721
http://www.k12linux.org                 (828) 627-8314