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SEUL?

I remember they had a huge push to put Linux in schools back in 2000 or so. They also run/host Schoolforge.

I can't believe I read through so many posts and found so little actual information. So here's one.

Schoolforge/

"For me the Pro's and Con's are about even. I use Linux as my main OS, but I don't think that it is ready for 100% mainstream use yet"

In a school environment, what isn't Linux yet ready for.

"Unfortunately in education there are alot of specialty software programs that are needed by the teacher"

Apart from this 'specialty software', what other educational software could provide similar functionality that isn't yet available under Linux.

"I also don't like the idea of teaching kids how to use an OS that isn't used in the workplace"

You're kidding, once a kid learns how to use one desktop GUI, s/he's learned them all.

"Schools are for preparing kids for life and work"

As far as I could see, schools prepare kids for passing exams ...

One place is the Schoolforge mailing list.

Agree 100%. There used to be a group called Linux4Education that has since been rolled into SchoolForge. My hubby used to teach High School electronics and did computer renewal/repair with his students. They used donor machines and got them up and running with linux distros - enough to supply a couple of elementary school labs for the district. http://www.schoolforge.net/schoolforge-history

http://www.schoolforge.net/education-software
http://www.theopendisc.com/education/

BTW Lenovo and Linux...what's their policy on giving you back MS-tax once you return copy of Windows?

It doesn't matter in my case. I buy used. The EULA for windows seems to indicate it comes without Windows. At least the BSA thinks so.

http://www.schoolforge.net/education-case-studies/linux-based-desktops-servers-and-curriculum-private-christian-school

I can't move a copy of Windows from one machine to another to upgrade it. I can't use the Windows that came with the machine if it is missing the original reciept and certificate.

There was no copy to return for refund. I bought just the hardware.

Check it out...

"SchoolForge's mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for primary and secondary education. SchoolForge is intended to empower member organizations to make open educational resources more effective, efficient, and ubiquitous by enhancing communication, sharing resources, and increasing the transparency of development. SchoolForge members advocate the use of open source and free software, open texts and lessons, and open curricula for the advancement of education and the betterment of humankind."

Glad to see interest in education on /. Don't forget about http://schoolforge.net./ A careful and highly skilled group working on both software and texts. We are the coalition of groups interested in FLOSS and Education and our membership is international. Here are the apps I currently see as the stack:

Server-based:

* Open Admin for Schools by Les Richardson in Canada, http://richtech.ca/ (mentioned by someone else, too.)
* KOHA, http://koha.org/, the Library OPAC/ILS from New Zealand
* Manhattan, http://manhattan.sourceforge.net/, the WebCT alternative which is a lot easier than Moodle from New England (in the U.S.)
* Moodle if you like the blog look instead.
* http://atutor.ca/ -- Just great.

We also recommend IMP/Horde and Drupal. Can't go wrong.

I recommend schools use Debian on the server and Edubuntu on the desktop. The latter comes with a great start on what you need in the classroom, including TuxPaint, TuxMath, Open Office, The GIMP, Firefox, etc. The great thing about it is that you can choose whether to set it up as a thin client or a stand-alone box and updating is easy using apt-get.

Joining Schoolforge is something anyone really interested in FLOSS/education can do to help.

--
http://iteachnet.org/

I think that St Francis Xavier physics http://www.stfx.ca/ was looking at a WiFi system that was pretty inexpensive, and I remember UIUC physics doing some investigation of building their own.

The main problem is that it's not covered by the mainstream media. After all, what's more interesting to a publisher, an article covering something related to a major advertising account holder, or a topic that competes with or irritates said account holder? Cities and countries that go back to OSS tend to fall off the radar of the mainstream publishers. When was the last time you read about OSS usage in Korea (aside from Old People jokes) or Spain?

If you want a high profile case, then you can look at what's been going on in Oregon, and especially at Riverdale Highschool. Or you can check out these sites:

• K12 Linux
• LTSP
• Schoolforge
• Skolelinux

With an educational discount, Windows 2003 server costs my department $142 (sure, it's more in a commercial environment), I can install it, set it up, run updates on it once in a while, run the baseline security analyzer on it, and forget about it. Give me a linux that does all this in an easy to use manner, and I'll switch. Sure, I could use apt and the others, but it just takes too much time, and you have to worry about various dependencies and what not.

At $142, that's $142 more you have to spend compared to FOSS solutions. What you've described, proved either that your educational institution is filthy rich and caters only for the rich and snobs, or you're just plain lazy.

Most educational institutions, whether state-run or even privately operated (esp. private with visions of education rather than for profit), are almost always tight budget! This is especially true in third world countries! That is why various bodies such as SchoolForge (and their Case Studies), K12OS, Moodle, OpenSourceSchools, KDE Edutainment Project and a lot more others are being founded and.. surprise! Thrives!

Personally, I love the K12LTSP Project. A branch out of the K12OS Project, which when deployed properly throughout the campus, can provide access to all students to high-grade apps in a very stable environment. Access from any terminal in any labs, authenticating via NIS, LDAP or whatever you prefer and access your mail accounts, website or whatever. With backend support tools available such as MySQL or PgSQL and PHP/Perl (okay, maybe that's a bit far out, but I've met 12 year olds who can code!)

Software cost? $0

• Linux Terminal Server Project,
  
• Open Source Schools magazine, and
  
• Open Source Classroom
  
• Simple End User Linux
  
• SchoolForge
  

There's also this Wiki to contribute to. It seems to assume that you've already got a specific institution to talk to, so it could probably use a section entitled "finding your audience" or something like that.

Google has another list of likely targets.

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.

I've found slackware tends to be nice to slower hardware. Slack 3.0, for example, is running quite briskly on my 386 now that I upgraded from 3 to 7 Megs of RAM. Plus, I could fit lots of development tools and a minimalist X in 80 megs of HD and 17 megs of swap.

Of course, thanks to glibc, such things are now very tough. But, don't forget, slack used to use BSD libc (which is small and fast!), and guess what still uses it? that's right, *BSD. So if you'll consider more than just linux, don't be afraid to look at NetBSD (which is a little smaller and lighter than FreeBSD.... not sure how OpenBSD compares).

You might also want to test-run Knoppix, since it doesn't even need to be installed (so it can't hurt!).

For window managers, OpenLook VWM, FVWM, Blackbox (probably the best), or mwm. Please don't force them to use twm... they'll never want to look at a computer again!

• SchoolForge.net - "A complete Listing of Open Source groups working with schools."
  
• Open Source Schools -
  for the on-line Journal of Open Source Software in schools
  
• SEUL/edu - "the discussion group for those interested in using Linux for education. This covers all aspects of educational uses of Linux, by teachers, parents, and students."
  
• K12OS.org - "Discussion forums for help, news and information related to Linux in schools"
  
• Multnomah ESD - "has successfully moved most of its core network services to Linux." The folks who built the original K12 Linx, AFAIK.
  

Also, you can find information on "safe" donations of computers (and why it is dangerous to donate computers running old copies of Windows) on the SchoolForge site.

Saying "thousands of computers" is an overstatement for this particular incident, but if you count the number of "illegally" donated computers (i.e., ones donated to schools where they have not paid the $100 to $200 each for new licenses), then the number probably pretty close. Microsoft has shown repeatedly that they are ready, willing and able to drag school systems through the courts to prevent them from using these systems.

Go to Schoolforge and browse through the websites of their member organizations. There are a number of such distros, often localized for the scholastic requirements of particular countries.

Your first stop should be Here

Your second stop should be here

Your third stop should be here

Your forth stop should be here

Your fifth stop should be here

Open Office would be my choice for an office suite (that or Star Office)

KDevelop is a decent enough development suite for use in a school, but with
this age group I would use this
project

For a good teaching language This
is a good place to start.

Hope this helps!

Actually, there are a number of education-oriented distros. Most of them are targetted at the schools in non-US countries and you folks probably haven't heard of them. However, SEUL doesn't have an education-oriented distro. SEUL/edu is working on a distro-neutral ISO of educational software that will be downloadable for individual use and modifiable for inclusion by distro suppliers in their own packages. We plan to collaborate with DebianEdu on this so that all the applications in our ISO are available as DEBs and RPMs. There's a lot more work being done on Open Source/Free software in education (particularly education below university level) than most of you realize. Take a look at Schoolforge for a glimpse of what's happening.

• Linux Terminal Server Project
  
• SEUL for Education
  
• The Open Source Schools Portal
  
• Schoolforge
  
• The K12Linux in Schools Project
  
• The KDE Edutainment Project

The biggest one I can think of is the "linux Terminal Server Project",

ltsp

Which has been adapted to public schools in the form of:

k12ltsp

The linux in education folks have tons of info on doing stuff like this and are very wise about digital divide issues.

Here are some links:

open source schools

School Forge

k12os

SEUL/Edu

Some case studies:

seul dat

There is also Simple End User Linux (SEUL)

SEUL

RedHats "Open Source Now" initiative has listings of people in the area who can help out. They also have a bunch of "why's" and "hows" on their site.

Open Source Now

I should be listed there in the Army of Friends, but have not gotten around to putting myself up. Feel free to contact me at cschwan4@attbi.com, as I am in the Seattle area.

Doing this kind of thing is a great interest of mine, and I work in education to help make these transistions.

Hope this helps.

• Places to start:
• The K12 Linux in Schools Project has some links and a client/server package of their own.
  
  
• Some of theKDE Edutainment software looks promising.
  
  
• Open Source Schools carries some in depth discussions of educational software. (Scroll Down and you'll currently see a review of Zope used as a gradebook.)
  
  
• The Simple End User Linux people have a large collection of nifty educational applications, and they are currently putting together an iso.
  
  
• Schoolforge keeps a small list of educational software. Follow the links there to find things like:
  
  
• Blue Linux, a distro that specializes in educational software.
  
  

SEUL/edu and SchoolForge help support Open Source in education. Their mailing list is filled with educators and sys admins for educational institutions who have installed Open Source systems. They can help you shift many systems away from proprietary software.

Yes, there is. Schoolforge is contacting them and trying to bring them into the Schoolforge coalition. If you're interested in using open resources in education, you need to look at Schoolforge and it's member organizations.

The Windows box is still a necessity. I have a 4 year old who likes educational games and without Windows, they simply don't run.

• Debian Jr. Project
• GNU and Education
• Schoolforge
• Linux For Kids
• KDE Edutainment Project
• Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching
• SEUL/edu

When I was a kid I used my father's computers, but he didn't know much about OSes, he was just buying what they told him in the computer store.

As a resuld, when I was still a kid, I used to know the most important functions of MS-DOS interrupts 10h and 21h by heart. When I was about 12, we were writing programs for computers class, some simple calculations. It was boring, so I wrote a TSR, which after taking over the clock interrupt, and after few minutes from ending, was starting some virus-like visual effects on the screen. My teacher phoned my home that night, asking how to turn it of.

My point is that I really mastered the MS-DOS, and everything I had was a DOS box and lots of free time. I often wonder, what if I had Linux when I was 10 years old, instead of DOS? Would I know Bash and Perl, like I knew Command.com and QBasic? Would I know low level Unix system calls, like I new the DOS interrupts? Would I master Emacs and GCC, like I mastered Borland IDE? Unfortunately, I will never know that. But I would have much easier start as a Unix sysadmin, that's for sure.

Check out the mailing lists at SchoolForge and SEUL/Edu to get in touch with a group of educators (and other interested parties) who are very familiar with open source educational technologies. They will be able to discuss any options you have in depth (At least more than a slashdot forum discussion :)

try http://www.schoolforge.net/

It's kind of funny how SourceForge and NewsForge were linked to... But the site that I've never even HEARD of before was completely omitted.

SCHOOLFORGE