Re: [school-discuss] math/science Linux desktop - The Achilles Heel

[Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Les Richardson wrote:
> What skills do we want them to have? What basic concepts are required 
> for our students to have? Pixel? Byte? Pits and Lands? MIME? Character 
> Encoding? Unicode? Filesystem. Read-only, etc.
>
> What skills? 'Can point and click'? 'Can create a powerpoint 
> presentation'? 'Can search using Google'?  or 'Can create and manage 
> files in a filesystem'?  'Understands file attributes'? 'Knows what a 
> process is', etc.

Hmm, I was with you Les right up to this point.  Fast forward several 
decades and the kids may not even be typing or pointing/clicking, and 
certainly won't care about bits and bytes, but rather may be talking to 
the computer like Star Trek engineers.  Here's an example of a software 
application where a physics prof demonstrates an MIT application for 
doing basic physics lab exercises on the computer using a smart whiteboard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNTgglPbUA

The students would only have to learn how to draw entities, circle them 
to move them, etc., in order to do physics experiments with mass, 
friction, springs, gravity, and so on.  The "skills" required to use 
such an application are fairly minimal, rather the students get to see 
physics in action and change conditions of experiments as easily as they 
write on a whiteboard.

I guess if I were to specify a single "skill" that students should have 
for using a computer with specific software applications to accomplish 
something, I'd say it would be how to teach themselves how to use a new 
software application.  So modifying your list above, here are the skills 
I think we should teach students and teachers:

* How to find a tutorial on a particular software application, either 
from the Help tab or from the Web and go through it.
* How to use Wikipedia, Google (or any search engine) to find example 
uses and example applications of a particular software package (remember 
how we learned how to use an encyclopedia to find information; I haven't 
used one of those in decades.)
* How to locate user groups/online communities for a particular 
subject/application, and how to use online etiquette for joining group 
discussions.
* How to find a new Open Source software application, install it, and 
apply the above techniques for learning it.
* How to work in a team to do the above with each team member learning 
how to do a specific task in a software application in support of a 
project goal.

Then, all we have to do it put working PCs with Internet connectivity in 
front of them and they're off :-)

Daniel

--
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation