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I am a parent of a 10 year old boy and 7 year old girl. My son and I coded our first BASIC stamp robot (Parallax Boe-Bot) last year. He has since taken an interest in his 300-in-1 electronics kit, and modifying the games he plays on his Knoppix for Kids distribution (he often runs that over the Fedora and Ubuntu distros also available in the house). A few days ago he asked me how a web site works, so I am going to teach him a little html this weekend.

My daughter plays the piano and has access to a MIDI keyboard. She and I have had a couple conversations about MIDI and was fascinated by the paper pipe organ we built. I just started designing a small, networked, pipe organ with the hope of demonstrating some programming and networking concepts to her.

We have also built rockets, a trebuchet, and even kept bees together. I plan on dusting off my homebrew equipment soon.

Children are never bored by the possibilities of technology. They need only to be exposed to something more than closed and highly polished consumer products. Even THAT is a wonderful lesson in repurposing if there is a hack around who cares to show them.

quit being a prynical cick. Knoppix4kids at http://www.osef.org/ live disk has loads of programs for the education of the young.My daughter,8 has been running it since 6.She learned to type with tuxtype.Sharpens her math skills with tuxmath and the list goes on. If the skills are necessary they will occur from circumstance and resource.If not they won't.provide the resource for the upcoming circumstances and give yourself the good parent award.Be present to answer questions and create curiosity. Don't present yourself as cynical lest your child become a prick too.

Why are these cheap entry-level systems always targeted at the "Third World", rather than poor people here in the US?

Well first off, this article is about people in the UK. These thin clients are also designed for a centralized computer center, school, or business; not home use.

Second of all, in urban areas of the US, there ARE projects like this. Unfortunately, they don't get alot of news coverage-- not sexy enough I guess. They are small, poorly funded, poorly organized, stuck in politics, stuck in government bureaucracy, and there aren't that many of them. But they do exist.

There are also projects which can help in this sort of realm:

http://www.ltsp.org/
http://www.osef.org/ (They've been quiet for a while).

Looks like you are NYC, and I don't know what's available over there.

There are projects. And yes our own poor people are worth helping, but that doesn't mean you can't help the poor people in developing nations.

Open Source Educational Foundation and Tux4Kids have put together Knoppix bootable CD for kids. I showed it to my daughter a while ago, and even though playing on the computer isn't really her favourite thing to do (she'd rather ride her bike and look at books - what's with the kids today?), she did enjoy some of the games. TuxPaint in particular was a big hit.

If you really want to prevent your kids from accidentally causing problems on your system, this could be a nice alternative. Heck, burn a few copies of the CDs and put them in the kiddies' lunchboxes as they head off to school; I'm sure the schools would love to have kids booting a different OS on the computers in the school computer lab!

Even better, try out OSEF.org which offers an education based Knoppix disk. Fun stuff!

That's one of the reasons you may think we're being very quiet--we're not talking directly to you! But if you're interested in what's actually going on with open resources in education, go to any of the websites above, or to Schoolforge and look around and follow the links.

Another reason is that whenever we've submitted links about such things to /. (I asked Paul about this a minute ago, and his experience has been the same as mine) they have been rejected. If you're not interested in telling people about what's being done, don't expect them to know about it! We've stopped submitting our stories here, since they're never used. We try to use our energy more constructively now, but submitting our stories to educational journals, etc.

the open source education foundation is probably the most successful foundation at putting open source software in schools. Our co-founder, Harry McGregor, is a keynote at this year's LinuxWorld. I highly recomend looking at our site, and/or contacting us if you are interested.
osef.org

OSEF has a great article from a feature story the Arizona Daily Star ran on them. URL below, but here's some quickie quotes from the story....

"As such, they're entirely unimpressed that Corbett is among a mere handful of primary schools around the world with a computer network that runs Linux, the flagship of the fashionable free software movement. They probably can't appreciate the amount of money the school is saving, or the thousands of hours that Linux devotee Harry McGregor has donated to transform a collection of PCs past their prime into a Net-connected laboratory that's ahead of its time."

"A lab similar to Corbett's could cost the district $100,000 or more if it were set up with new computers and commercial software. Instead, the school spent just $12,000 to convert its donated PCs into a Linux network that offers similar access to the Net and educational programs. Moreover, Corbett's pupils will gain experience with an operating system that's becoming more popular every day."

http://www.osef.orgarticles_and_letters/azstar/whi zkids.html

It already exists, it's called SquidGuard, and it runs as a redirector on Squid. We use it mostly for logging, and locking down of systems during "non internet use" lab time. We have had issues with 3rd graders going to hard porn sites (one school we installed a linux based lab for), and with 5th graders at another school going to inaproprate sites. The school with the 5th graders was already going through the district's websense proxy. We now have squidguard in front of websense, for logging purposes. Yes, I know I am posting as an AC... If you want to contact me, my name is Harry McGregor, and our website is The Open Source Education Foundation My email address is on the site.

At a project I've been working on during the summer we've added computers based on the open-source movement to elementary schools. Its never to early to learn and become involved. In fact we have second graders writting pure HTML and running the GIMP with great results. You can check out the results and the culmination of project at Osef.orgI know that as a student of computer science I have learned alot about where linux can be headed in the education world. OH and BTW, the osef.org is of course a not for profit organization. As a teacher I think students should be asked as to what they feel they want to get out of the class. Let the students deside. Perhaps have each of them contribute to a Linux project and report what they accomplished. LinuxLinks.com is a good place to see whats out there and what can be done to help.

You are very right on some of your most obvious points. Such as your last point. But while many of these systems run Windows. Now I'm not hear to bash Windows, but why hasn't the recent development of Linux and the entire community provide alternitives to Windows and "utterly fascist basis." Computer will be programable until AI comes to town. But students have the AI already, instead of sitting them down to write a paper. Have them write a paper about the futures of computers. The time of the internet is now. The Internet, provides a medium to exchange information. Just look, how in history what has happened with the exchange of ideas. Marco Pollo, for instace. The Internet should be a tool to show students what is possible. How can a student leave school without experience in computers? How are they supposed to be the Future leaders of tomorrow? Look what has happened in the past few years. Look at we have, mapping the human Genome, medicine, etc. As a student, I can tell you that school do get enoguh computers simply because they can't afford it. That is were linux comes in. Its Free and Fast, and it provides more uses. I know that in Tucson, AZ we have a full elementary school running off of Linux, second grades writting HTML, running GIMP, My firends daughter wants a Laptop, shes 6. Check out osef.org for more info on this project. Simply put to conclude, computers are now a part of life. Computers provide a means to exchange ideas, and that promotes change, which then promotes learning. So for a change....study the past. Linux is here, here is change.

This was one of the things we noticed when we were pulling a non profit organization (The Open Source Education Foundation). after some contemplation (and other ugly incidents) we came up with the idea of the K12 Student Pad a device that we are starting to develop. The way we see it, it should be about the size of a clip board and about 2-2.5 inchs thick, full color and run a very customized version of linux. It would interface with a new type of desk for in class use and be able to charge and network thru that desk. The other objectives we have are: Shock resistent to 10+ G's, capable of being run over by a Kenworth tractor trailor rig, water resistance to 3 meters, and be able to play 320x240 mpeg movies.

This was one of the things we noticed when we were pulling a non profit organization (The Open Source Education Foundation). after some contemplation (and other ugly incidents) we came up with the idea of the K12 Student Pad a device that we are starting to develop. The way we see it, it should be about the size of a clip board and about 2-2.5 inchs thick, full color and run a very customized version of linux. It would interface with a new type of desk for in class use and be able to charge and network thru that desk. The other objectives we have are: Shock resistent to 10+ G's, capable of being run over by a Kenworth tractor trailor rig, water resistance to 3 meters, and be able to play 320x240 mpeg movies.