[school-discuss] Complete draft of NECC presentation--comments?

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Good morning.  Most if not all of you have heard of Linux, but I suspect 
most of you have also turned away from it as not quite ready for 
scholastic use.  I'm here to show you just how Linux and open source 
resources in general can be useful to you.

You may not realize it, but the email garden at this conference runs 
entirely on Linux.  Did you have any problems using it?  You see, Linux 
isn't as difficult to use as many proprietary software organizations 
want you to think.  Linux's reputation for difficulty comes primarily 
from perceived difficulty in installing Linux on a new computer. 
However, that installation complexity (which has been quite successfully 
addressed) is only in comparison to a system pre-installed with 
Microsoft Windows or Macintosh OS X.  If a user had to install those 
operating systems from scratch, they would find the challenge just as 
daunting as installing Linux.

But there are now even easier ways to try Linux.  Members of our 
"umbrella" organization, Schoolforge, brought copies of two different 
bootable CDs of Linux that are specifically tailored to educational use. 
 We've been passing them out all during the conference.  Why more than 
one, you may ask?  That's one of the strengths of Linux and open 
resources.  One CD, Freeduc, was tailored especially for a student 
desktop system, with appropriate applications and menu selections.  The 
other, Knoppix for Kids, is aimed more at the school offices, with 
administrative applications.  There's substantial overlap between them, 
but the ease of sculpting a Linux distribution to your particular needs 
made creating both of them no big effort.

In addition, one of Schoolforge's member groups, K12LTSP, has created an 
easy to administer school lab system that costs much less to implement 
than any other system we've seen.  They set one up here and many of you 
have been playing with it all week.  In fact, some of the applications 
we'll be demonstrating reside on the K12LTSP server.

Before we get into specifics though, I'd like to talk about philosophy. 
 Yeah, I know, the vision thing.  But bear with me for a moment.

The primary organizing principle of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) 
movement is that all software and other resources that comes out of the 
movement must be adaptable by the user for whatever purpose is desired. 
 This means that the source code used to create the software must be 
available to anyone, and that no one may take that open source code and 
later close it to other viewers.  Further, any derivative works created 
from that open source code must be similarly licensed.

This principle fosters extremely rapid upgrades and "bugfixes," as 
anyone who finds a problem or who would like an enhancement can in 
principle fix the perceived problem directly.  It also means that it's 
very difficult to get any sort of substandard or damaging code into an 
application, as everyone can review what's being done.

This is exactly analogous to the academic concept of peer review, where 
research is held up to the scrutiny of others knowledgeable in the field 
for their critique before being accepted as solid.  This is 
unsurprising, as academia is where the FOSS movement originated.

Now back to particulars.  One of the groups that comprise Schoolforge, 
SEUL/edu, has taken it upon itself to compile a listing of software that 
runs on Linux that is useful in education.  At this time the listing 
runs to over 500 applications.  You can find it at 
<http://richtech.ca/seul/>.  It's divided into numerous categories, 
which are undergoing review and modification in the near future to make 
them better fit educator's expectations.  All of the applications we'll 
be showing here today are listed on that website.

I'm first going to talk about the variety of applications available for 
Linux that can be used directly by students.  There are quite a number 
of these, almost all available free for downloading and installing. 
Many of them will come automatically with one or another Linux 
distribution.

For most students in the higher grades, a good office suite and a good 
selection of internet access programs cover most of their requirements. 
 We actually have a greater variety of these programs for Linux than 
are available for either Windows or Mac OS X.  The most popular office 
suite for Linux is Star Office, or it's FOSS equivalent, OpenOffice.org. 
 As you'll see, OpenOffice.org works similarly enough to MS Office that 
students should have no trouble using it.  {demo of OpenOffice.org--no 
more than 10 minutes}  OO.o is also available for Windows, so a school 
looking to add Linux to its computing repertoire could keep a common 
office package across it's systems without having to make a wholesale 
change of all computers at the same time.

We also have a comprehensive group of internet access programs, 
including web browsers, chat and instant messaging programs, and email 
programs.  Here are just a few of the many that are available.  {demo of 
internet programs--Phoenix, Evolution, Galeon, Thunderbird, whatever's 
available on the system; no more than 10 minutes}

For the lower grades, we have programs like TuxType and TuxPaint, and 
GCompris, an application which won the education trophy at Les Trophees 
du Libre in Soissons, France on the 23rd of May.  {demo of TuxType and 
TuxPaint--5 minutes each}  In keeping with the nature of FOSS, GCompris 
is more than just a canned application for students to use.  It is also 
a "construction set" which allows teachers to develop their own "boards" 
to address specific educational needs. {demo of GCompris--10 minutes}

In addition to these applications that are local to the individual 
computer, there are many web-enabled Linux programs that students can 
use with just a web browser on any system.  A premiere application of 
this type is WIMS, the WWW Interactive Mathematics Server.  {demo of 
WIMS--10 minutes}

There are also many administrative programs available for Linux.  The 
network server programs for Linux are widely available and compare 
extremely favorably to their equivalents for Windows or Mac OS X in 
price and capability.  But today we'll talk about some programs that are 
specifically for educational administration.

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed 
to help educators create quality online courses.  Such e-learning 
systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or 
Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of 
Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social 
constructionist pedagogy.  Other systems of this type you may be 
familiar with are Blackboard and WebCT.  {demo of Moodle--10 minutes}

We also have the Manhattan Virtual Classroom, another CMS.  With the 
selection of programs for Linux to choose from, you're sure to find one 
that works just as you'd like.  {demo of Manhattan--10 minutes}

We also have back office applications for managing a school or an entire 
district, like District DNA, MicroBUDGET-GUI, and Open Admin for 
Schools.  These packages provide the tools to manage schools quite well, 
especially since they were written by working teachers and school 
administrators.  Demonstrating them properly is beyond the scope of this 
presentation, unfortunately, but we can show you how to look at them 
yourself at your convenience.

One of the greatest things about the applications we've talked about 
today is that the people and teams that created and maintain them are 
very accessible.  If you have a problem with one or another of these 
programs, or you'd like to suggest an improvement or extension, you can 
usually get in direct contact with the people who do the work!  If they 
don't know the answer to your question, they are happy to help you try 
to find the answer.  After all, their primary remuneration for their 
work is seeing it widely used by happy people!  Of course, since they're 
doing this out of a sense of contributing to the educational community 
it's a good idea to be polite and not demanding when posing your 
question.  Honey versus vinegar, as they say.

That's about the end of our presentation.  If you have any questions 
we'll be happy to take them now.

--
If this helped you please take the time to rate the value
of this post; just click on the Affero link below.

http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=drloss

Doug Loss                 Courage is resistance to
Data Network Coordinator  fear, mastery of fear --
Bloomsburg University     not absence of fear.
dloss@bloomu.edu           Mark Twain