On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 23:00 -0400, Daniel Howard wrote: > Busy as usual Jim, but got lots of good ideas from schoolforgers in the > process. Yep. Read 'em all. > Marilyn is atypical, but unless we find a way for the teachers > and students to experiment, she'll remain atypical. And I don't think > she should be, I'd rather she be typical moving forward. The only "safe" way for the experiments is a "lab" setting. I don't mean setup a computer lab, but use the lab science principles, isolate, observer, test, measure, repeat. In computers, the key lab step 1 process is isolate. Again, because the cash out of pocket is $0 to test bed FOSS toys, er, I mean, _tools_ :) all that is really needed is a single test machine. Bear in mind, most large setups (schools, corporations) have a single super-user password for nearly all if not absolutely all) machines. This is why they can't give out the admin password to teachers. EVER! > > Lots of 'ifs' and 'shoulds' in your responses in the last note Jim, and > as you know I'm on the ground with the troops, and I deal with the way > things are, regardless of how it should be, but mindful of how we'd like > it to be. Yes our system is challenging at times and has lots of issues > that may or may not be common (and I try not to air too much dirty > laundry), but as I reminded Jim in a previous email, if some parents and > teachers and a principal hadn't taken control of a non-functional system > in our school from the admins and jumped out of the box, he wouldn't > have had the architect's job. A little rebellion from your users can be > a good thing, and could lead to a new paradigm, as it did in Atlanta. Absolutely correct. If the parents had not done a bit of mutiny Atlanta would not currently be the second largest installations of Linux systems for student use in North America. Only the state of Indiana has more Linux systems in front of students. But the Brandon PTA did not "take control" of a non-functional system exactly. They generated a parallel system outside of the control of the school support infrastructure right down to a separate wiring system. This was the only way that they were able to demonstrate that the FOSS stuff worked AND keep the current admin staff from unplugging it (they did anyway, but Daniel tells that story better than me :) In order to get more non-sysadmin people (the Williams and Daniels and Marilyns) to be safely able to testbed and experiment, a semi-parallel system is needed. If the core of the test box is sysadmin installed (but using a disposable root password and still networked for live student use) then control handed to the teacher technophiles and a modicum of sysadmin support made available, then everyone wins: the teachers get to test out new tools, the sysadmins don't get a nightmare dropped in their lap by the teachers, and this serves to foster a better interactive partnership between the tech support and teaching staff. We are on the same team after all. The students, of course have the same personal space application privileges as the teachers. Those that are capable of make use of it should be tagged for extra projects! I was one of those kids that ran the media equipment because I could figure out what to do when it failed. The geek in me was encouraged by a more flexible school system process (30 years ago). So to sum up: If I had to give a blanket Yes or No to "should teachers have admin passwords on the computers in their classroom" I would have to say No because the infrastructure is not in place to support the needs of that situation. If the question is qualified to include the knowledge of the existence of the required safety net for the teachers who want to test bed new application, I would give a hearty YES! > > James P. Kinney III wrote: > > Again, the classroom is generally not a test server environment. That is > > where the plan is for the teacher to look the most competent and having > > students wade through buggy software is just a respect-loosing process. > > Keeping in mind the classroom server we're talking about serves only the > teacher's room, I eagerly await Marilyn's response to this one... > > > In the situation where only a single class uses a single machine, > > rebooting to access a known stable image is OK. But for larger scale > > situations it is completely unacceptable for teacher A to reboot the > > server that teachers B-F are using! > > Agreed to the latter (was never supporting that idea) and halleluia to > the former Jim! > > Daniel > > > -- > Daniel Howard > President and CEO > Georgia Open Source Education Foundation > -- James P. Kinney III CEO & Director of Engineering Local Net Solutions,LLC 770-493-8244 http://www.localnetsolutions.com GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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