Re: Spreading the word (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [seul-edu] Want to presentat LINUXWORLD NY/2002?])

[Michael Hall <admin@mulga.com.au>]

Doug:

Thanks for those links, I'll definitely explore them in detail. My local LUG
(Alice Springs) is making more frequent noises about interacting with local
schools and maybe even assembling a school distro of our own.

Believe me, I would love to see Linux used more widely in schools, and I think
that most of the software needed is probably out there somewhere. However, I
have been working building a PHP/MySQL intranet at my school over the past
months, a process which has brought into sharp focus the breadth of the gap
between your average Linux enthusiast and your average teacher with respect to
understanding computers and managing them. The 'experts' in our schools here
in Alice Springs are mainly Mac people, who have no concept of a command line, a
config file or customising an application.

Then of course there's the whole terminal server thing, and the possibility of
doing almost everything via http. Hmm ... one life just isn't enough to explore
the rich possibilities of Linux and open source!

BTW, I'll release the intranet thingo as a GPL application when it achieves a
suitable level of maturity. Other PHP/MySQL thingos in the pipeline are a
website builder (uses a database to store web pages while building a project,
then writes everything to plain HTML when the project is finished), a student
newspaper application, and a report app for teachers that allows them to do
reports from home or wherever they like. Only the last app is true vapourware,
as all the others are currently being trialled at my school.

On Fri, 03 Aug 2001, you wrote:
> Michael Hall wrote:
> 
> > > This is a perceptual problem, I think.  We should try to turn this argument on
> > > its head by asking just what type of applications they want in the classroom,
> > > and then pointing out that such apps (if it's true) are freely downloadable and
> > > installable from the internet.
> >
> > This is simply not practical for anyone but a Linux enthusiast. People who
> > don't already know and use Linux can't and won't download and install apps from
> > the internet, let alone change them themselves. Asking maintainers to change
> > apps is not a very sure way of getting what you need when you need it.
> >
> 
> I agree that it's not an argument that will persuade people to use Linux for the
> first time.  But I still think it's an argument that needs to be made.  The
> comparison of open source development to academic review in journals is something we
> need to make clear to educators.
> 
> >
> > I believe that a school distribution needs to be developed ... put the CD in,
> > load the distro, use it ... no mucking around. It has to be that easy if anyone
> > but the converted is going to use Linux in a big way. Being Windows and
> > Mac users, most school people (including many IT coordinators) know very
> > little about computers. At least, that's my perspective as a primary school
> > teacher in Central Australia.
> >
> 
> This is undoubtedly true.  We even talked about doing our own distro a while back.
> We decided not to for various reasons.  However, there are now a number of "school"
> distros being developed.  There's <http://www.k12ltsp.org/>,
> <http://www.abuledu.org/> (I'm unsure if this is a complete distro), and
> <http://www.pingoo.org/>.  There are probably more that I'm not thinking of offhand.
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
> Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
> Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
> dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain
-- 
Michael Hall
mulga.com.au
admin@mulga.com.au
ph/fax (+61 8) 8953 1442
ABN 94 885 174 814