Re: [school-discuss] what pieces of software would you demo toK-12 teachers ?

["Marilyn Hagle" <Marilyn.Hagle@gpisd.org>]

Hello,

I am a K-12 teacher person.

I have seen OpenOffice, The Gimp, Moziilla, and all of the Knoppix
flavor CDs mentioned.  I use the former in class and send the CDs home
with the kids.  They are wonderful.

I also want to mention LyX - which is such a great writing tool and very
easy to use.

Make sure you bring out a few simple features . . . all of the apps that
save as or export to a pdf - teachers like that.  Easy web pages created
in OO Impress and Mozilla Composer.

Also, KWord, KGhostview, and Konqueror all will "print as poster." 
Teachers will go crazy over that feature too.

KDE used to offer this and Gnome still does . . . the dictionary in the
taskbar.  That is a fabulous tool.  

For advanced graphics, Blender3D has turned out to be a really exciting
apps.  Once students master the basic tools, they can create anything.

Marilyn




>>> tim@whyintheworld.org 02/18/04 9:19 AM >>>
Hi,

If you had just a brief time in which to demo open source software to a
bunch of K-12 teachers...

...(who were new to the whole OS thing, and not necessarily convinced it
was
all that great)...

...the point being to wow them with what OS could do for them, so they
want
to explore further...

... what pieces of software would you demo?  (Again, just briefly, so
they
get the gist of what it does & how they'd really benefit.)

Note #1: Part of the the point is some of their schools might accept
donated
hardware in the near future, so if the K12 Linux Terminal Server or
Linux in
general is to be an viable option, there needs to be a lot of attraction
to
the software that can run on it.

Note #2: I've glanced through SEUL/Edu.  The case studies are appealing
to
sys admins more than to teachers, and the application list is not ranked
such that I can pick out, say, the 5 most popular.  I looked at the
reviews
area, but the only one that jumped out as a clear winner there was
moodle,
with several positive reviews.