Re: [seul-edu] Linux music software

[scott <scottbradford@home.com>]

Miguel Baltazar wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm Migs from the Philippines and I am very new here. I am working for a
> private educational computing consultancy firm who had recently thrown its
> hat on the ring behind the Linux implementation in schools. Our concern
> right now is to find model primary and secondary schools who have
> experienced networking their laboratories for not only for internet access
> or software applications use but for content as well, i.e. computer based
> instruction in science, math and language. We are also very interested to
> know if there are any success stories coming from schools who have
> implemented WINE in making use of CD based encylcopedias and other
> multimedia refernce which are otherwise formatted to run in Windows.
>
> Thank you very much for your help.
>
> Migs
> ________________________________________________________________________
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I have had great success using VMWare ( http://www.vmware.com ) on a PII 266
with 160 MB ram.  it allows you to even copy and paste back and forth from
Windows to Linux. you still need a copy of windows to use VMWARE.  and it's
99$ a copy. add that to the cost of windows $200 and 300$ per workstation
adds up.  YOu also need fast machines, the PII266 is listed as the minimum
requirements to run VMware. On a very powerful machine you can run several
instances of VMWare. if you have a multiple processor machine as a server you
may be able to run VMWare and display it remotely on the network  using the
Xserver but I have not tried this.  If it works it would allow you to use one
copy of VMware to run a few windows sessions at any given time anywhere on
your network.
    I've found that many cd's that have software and reference on them can
still be read in Linux. For example, those kodak Photo CD's have auto run
software that has all kinds of utilities for working with the pictures. Under
Linux, I use G-photo to scan the directory and format Web photo albums (with
very minimal effort 3-10 mouse clicks). for reference materials, things can
be looked up using regular file tools if the format of the media is a
standard one, .PDF,HTML.... If the reference materials are coded in a way
that they cannot be read without the windows software, I would express my
dissatisfaction to the vendor, and seek other sources.
with the spread of high speed connections, a CD's worth of information that's
likely copyright protected (prohibiting use of the media in presentations),
seems like a small drop in a very large ocean. Add to that the more current
information available via the web from many different sources (which allows
someone to 'cross-check' information for accuracy),  and I think those CD's
become worth less and less as the web evolves.  Another thing that's nice, is
the ability to reach out to those sources of information for more details or
collaboration on further research of a subject.  Call Britannia to ask about
an article and I doubt you'd connect with the person who wrote it.

    Whatever you do for content based instruction, do the whole world a favor
and make it web based, and base it on real standards and not propriety
plug-ins. not only would this allow students to use courses from home, but
also prevent you from being tied to ANY OS.  Also, beyond that, Say that
there is a teacher who is in Africa who also needs a web based math lesson
plan, and is also willing to invest some time, now 2 schools have a math
lesson each with half of the effort required for one school to create it's
own.

    All in all, I feel that open source software is the only solution for
schools because no other model can encourage someone to find out how it works
and allow that kind of freedom.