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Linux & Education - How To Get It For Your School
r-jae asks: "I've noticed there's been a bit of discussion on the topic of Linux in Education on /. recently. As a high school student, how I could improve the situation at my school? Today in Software Development, my class were discussing software licensing. I was asked to name any license that I could think of. I mentioned the GPL, and my teacher looked at me as if I were green and had antennae. When I described it to her, she passed me off as if I were off my rocker. So my question is, how can I possibly change this situation? How can I convince the faculty to include a unit of Linux, or free software, in the course? "
Its easy to get any teacher to teach a subject. All they need to do is follow a text book and stay a chapter ahead of the students. I really don't think you want teachers in high school teaching you Linux when they don't even know ls. What you should try to get is a couple of computers set aside for you and some students to mess around with at lunch or after school. Computers where you can format the hard disks, install linux, re-install linux and do everything you want to without worry. This is the real way to learn Linux not have some teacher spout off stuff he/she really doesn't know. Call it a computer club and try to get a teacher to "supervise" it. Most likely they won't let you go unsupervised. And this is a good way to introduce other teachers to Linux. After a while you can do projects like doing the school's website with apache or something. You can convince them by using all sorts of market research, hip catch phrases, and jargon. Also stress that it will cost them nothing. Usually schools have old computers that they retire like I am sure there are piles of of 486s laying around after the whole Y2K thing. These kinds of computers can be ideal for Linux.
True True
:(
In high school, there were only a handful of teacher that i respected, and those were the ones who treated me as a person. not as a child with no opinion. The rest could go to H E double hockey sticks. In college, the same thing, some professors made me sick to be in their class, others were a joy to be in. My C++ professor was one of my most respected educators ever. why? cause when i did the work, and he saw my potential, he gave me more work to do, and spent the extra time showing all the cool stuff that could be done with a programming language. Plus he wasn't afraid to learn, he was constantly taking courses to advance his knowledge of computer science. And he was the first person to introduce me to unix. I wonder if he is okay, i should try to keep in touch with him.
Damn, i can't even remember his name now....
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Perhaps if there were free course material from GNU (or maybe LDP?) this could change some minds. I think the best way to get positive attention from the teaching community is to give them something like this. Even a few freely distributed handouts could go a long way. Now if it were published as a book by O'Reilly, that would be cool and would give it some legitimacy (not just downloaded and laser-printed).
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
True story: I have a close friend who graduated with a degree in English and was one Biology course away from having a double major. Enters the public school system teaching, not Biology -- he didn't have ``seniority'' -- but ``Sports and Auto Literature''. I had never seen him more depressed than he was that year. He was fortunate that the school system lacked the funding to hire him back the following year. (He's in IT now.)
...And here in Illinois, these ``fast-track'' certification programs come under fire from, you guessed it, the teacher's unions. The main complaint is that these fast-track upstarts lack the background in teaching methodologies to be good teachers. On the other hand, the teacher's unions have no problem, whatsoever, with placing someone in a Math classroom with four years of education in a subject totally unrelated to the subject they're asked to teach. The fast-track programs are attracting bright, energetic people to teaching. I thinks that's the problem that the unions have with these certification programs. They're bringing in people who see the student's interests and education as job one and the union's interests way down on their list of priorities.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
To begin, let me state that I hate MS, precisely because of their business practices (not to mention their mostly crappy/buggy/uninspired software) That being said, I would hardly call providing schools with relatively cheap, or even free, software unethical. They are not forcing the schools to make this decision. Microsoft is doing nothing that the competition can't do by offering it at a given price. If anything, more companies should do this. Furthermore, many already do (e.g., Sun, Borland, etc.). While it is true that these companies are doing it out of self interest, these companies are providing an additional option for the schools (and the students). How is giving cheap software away intrinsically bad? It isn't.
It is one thing if, because of their monopoly position, Microsoft were only to offer software this cheaply, in the short run, to price gouge up-and-coming competition, with the intent to raise them as soon as the threat is beat into submission. But, to the best of my knowledge, this is not the case.
In regards to the other practices you alluded to, those are very much unethical (not to mention illegal). Because MS flexes their monopoly power here, and is using it to leverage its way into new, or to preserve, existing markets, it is unethical. They are vastly different.
Our local LUG (PLUG) has volunteers helping any school set up Linux that wants to do so. A PLUG for Education, they call it.
The home page for the K12 Linux in Schools Project is http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux
Check it out, drop em a line..
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
Most importantly, grab a few articles about Linux from non-technical publications: for example, Forbes ran a great cover story not terribly long ago on Linus Torvalds. Once you can demonstrate that "big-media" is covering Linux, your teachers will be less likely to dismiss it as some weird geeky fad.
There are some people in Ottawa, Canada, doing just that with the schools in the region with varying degrees of success. The project is organized by Milan Budimirovic at milan.budimirovic@sympatico.ca or Dave Neil cricket@storm.ca
More info can be obtained from OCLUG: Ottawa Carleton Linux Users Group
cheers,
El Malo
A truth that's told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake
OK, personal experience follows. Expect long windedness.
What the person who started this thread failed to realize is that there are a few distinct types of people who are in computer classes in HS. And some more types who will just be using the computers in the library.
First, background. At my HS, they had some bass ackwards deal worked out with Compaq. The school had one technicial who dealt with network issues on the Fancy New computers. That was 2 labs, the new Programming lab and the Library. There were 4 other labs in the school. Drafting, Business and the 2 Applications labs. These other labs were FILLED with old stuff. Note I avoid using the term 'junk.' Why? Easy. The drafting computers were 286's running CADKey. It did the job smashingly. A row of Compaqs was also in this lab. You could literally watch them crash sequentially down the row, every 20 minutes.
Of course, who was maintaining these old labs? Myself and some friends of mine. We overhauled donated computers, replaced whole labs, maintained them. This kind of group is the first group in my list. Good users. The kind of people who respect computers and have fun with them. We would eat our lunch as we wanderd the labs, checking out system problems, making printers work.. Basically the things a tech should do but never did. The teachers couldn't do it. They were business teachers, not computer teachers.
One of the other groups that stood out in the labs was the Kiddies. People with a little knowhow. They would be the ones doing the viriing, pr0ning, etc. They were steaming headon through adolescence and just had to be destructive. I got so damn sick of these ****s. They would whine to the teachers because we were allowed to eat in the labs while we fixed stuff. They'd try to install shit on the old machines that we could only *BARELY* scrape enough harddrive space onto for Windows and Word. On the fast machines a few of them even played Warez Kiddies, chatting from telnet connections to their Shellz. People like these make teachers assholes. My little revenge came from BO'ing every computer I had authority over and smoking them from a distance. It was petty but it was all I had. After all, I wasn't getting paid.
Last was the Clueless. They would be the people who knew how to run IE, Word, etc. They weren't taking classes but rather they were the library users. And of course, with the filters there, everyone just *HAD* to try and see what would happen if they put in a naughty URL. Scary how many people actually FOUND porn, the filters were damn near useless.
Now, out of everyone, there were maybe 10-20 Good Users in the school. Of them, only 8 (me & friends) thought it worth their while to help the labs out. There were a lot more Kiddies. And they were active. And a lot of people who would just try to get porn and virii because the filters were supposed to stop them.
So you tell me, what groups stand out? Screw the good users. Sure, you can trust some of them, but everyone else? You have to be a Computer Lab Nazi.
I spoke a bit to my DBMS teacher (who is also the school's DBA) about Linux last year when Oracle became available:
I just told him, I've tested Linux, it's a really powerful system, you should try using it for Oracle databases. If you want, I can set up a Linux server for you and teach you a bit how to use it...
Now, one year later they moved ALL their Oracle databases to Linux...
At the sysadmin course, we were only doing some NT stuff (click here to add a user, click here to change his name) so I asked the teacher if we could do some UNIX (notice no Linux here...) he told me that he would like to, but that he had no UNIX server on hand...
I was more than happy to install linux on an old 486 for him....
So my advice is: Find a good use for it, and don't forget to always advocate it positively... The standard "It's windows, it's just normal if it crashes" just doesn't work...
Slashdot has a discussion about this kind of thing on their front page: Voices from the Hellmouth, More Stories from the Hellmouth and The Price of Being Different
d
(In my HS days I got asked to "Write any sort routine you want." I wrote recursive bubble sort. Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't understand my code. :))
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Algorithm was basically the same as bubble until you get to the comparison, which said "If you find two indices that are swappable, swap them and then recursively call this function again." Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't see a terminating condition. I guess he expected to see something like "if sorted then return;" at the top. I explained to him that it terminates when there are no more swaps, thus it falls through. So he marked it right.
This is what used to happen in high school when the only programming class that was available just barely covered the stuff you'd taught yourself 3 years previously, and you were bored by the first day. When we had to write Conway's Life, I made mine 3D. It was a real bitch to print out my results to hand them in, let me tell you. :)
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Ten years ago, you would have been right. But as a sophomore in high school now, I can attest that there is way too MUCH money in computer science education. Cisco donates hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, as does Microsoft, quite routinely. There's an obscene amount of money from goodwill organizations that want to see an inner-city school with top-quality technology. While teachers and core classes are basically being ignored, there is a river of money flowing in to computer labs.
Around the middle of the last school year, a coupla geeks started the Computer Club. I walked in, figuring I might be able to teach them something about Linux. I was completely surprised to discover that there were five or six other guys who had been messing with Linux at home too! In a fairly large high school (2000+ students) there were a respectable number of real l33t h4x0rs, despite any particularly official teacher involvement.
Pretty soon, we taught the Tech Coordinator Linux, and after skipping a few days of school to read through a massive Red hat manual, we had the school Web page running on Apache (instead of a Mac) and a brand new RAID server with 256 MBs RAM, all running on Linux. Soon we had a FreeBSD server as well.
So what do you need to get Linux accepted in your school? ORGANIZE! Get all your Linux friends together, andd convince all your other friends to start learning. Found a club. Meet during lunch hour and after school. And get your teachers to dig Unices!
Good luck!
P.S.: If there are any Garfielders out there who wanna learn Linux, come to 312 at lunch and ask for Dan any time.
I'm in the camp that says the first programming class (for programmers, not people who just need a quick exposure to the subject) should be done on the slowest, dumbest system you can find. E.g., the 386/40 I have in the closet.
The reason for this is it forces you to focus on the fundamentals. What are your data structures? How to you manipulate them? How do you recognize a fast algorithm vs a slow one?
On the 500 MHz GUI with a fancy development environment, you don't have a chance of learning this -- there's too else going on.
As a professional, you need to worry about *everything*. But a student needs to focus on the fundamentals... and it's far easier to make a lasting impression by demonstrating the power of the correct algorithm or data structure with the slower hardware. E.g., code both a quick sort and bubble sort, then run the data on a set of data 20 times larger than used for testing. The quick sort finishes during the class period. The bubble sort is still running when students return to class the next day. These students will *know* that you can't just throw faster hardware at the problem -- the students can take the software home and run it on their 500 MHz P-IIIs... and see that the problem *always* occurs as the problem gets larger.
On your other question, about teacher credentials... It would be nice, but the official policy of the "education establishment" is that a teacher is a teacher not because of personal knowledge of the field - he's a teacher because he has a firm command of pedagogical principals and a cheat sheet that keeps him just ahead of the class. It's not unreasonable for the middle and bottom of the bell curve, but it prevents students with a natural aptitude (or independent knowledge) from developing their skills.
I don't know of any solution to this. I jumped straight from my junior year in high school to college - my school didn't have AP credits and I would have had independent study courses for five of my six classes. That was over twenty years ago, so don't be too confident that *your* kid will have it any better.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I assume that you were tweaking the pitiful instructions from the teacher, and aren't really the sad consequences of a biology experiment demostrating the hazards of siblings having unprotected sex.
So, tell us, how *do* you write a recursive bubble sort? The only thing I can think of is replacing the iteration with tail recursion -- and that code should have been pretty clean even though the runtime performance would suck bigtime.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
DISCLAIMER: Post is not flame or troll. Please do not moderate as such - is simply my opinion.
The money angle is something I have tried on the college I attend. They (the staff) are all for it. However the computer people are against it.
The problem is tech support. As a college/high school the computer techs say that ordinary students will not know how to use Linux and other open sourced software and could impede their grades as they (the students) do not have computers at home that run Linux. I then pointed out that quite a few students run Linux, I was told it would be unfair to those that don't because the computer programs that are used to created documents, powerpoint presentations and such are not "compatable" with current Linux programs 100%.
I think the fact that Linux can be as very cheap is nice, but without trained tech people and teachers, getting it installed at a high school is something of a near impossiblility. Needless to say the college did not adopt Linux because it would mean the retraining in of their staff and students they (the dean of tech) said.
I don't mean to be pessimistic but... I don't think you have much chance of getting Linux installed on your high schools computers unless you can convince the community (parents and others alike) that it is far better then windows... and that means educating a whole lot of people with no knowledge in computers at all (to the average non-geek high schooler - Linux is just a word if they have even heard of it)
On new schools or places that emphazize degrees that involve computers and such their is much more of a chance that Linux can get installed on some computers. New schools especially should be focused on because they are trying to save money when they build the school... so there is an extra chance.
Until Linux conquers the desktop world or becomes fully compatable with Win32 programs and files, putting it on computers in public places will be quite a task unless the population suddenly wakes up to the advantages of open source.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
Interestingly enough, right now Wired has an article about this topic running right now called "Open Source Opens Education", which mentions the Linux In Schools Project. The article gives several examples of high schools and middle schools that have made the move to Linux, and outlines several reasons for doing so (cost, stability, etc). There are also some good pointers to other sites.
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
One of the comp-sci teachers at school let me use an old machine, so I installed Linux on the machine. She supported me 100% at it, and thought it was great that I was learning something other than windows, and rolled off all the job possibilities. After wind of what I had done got to the higher ups in the administration, they gasped, the computer consulting firm that they hire to work on the machines called Linux an "evil hackers system" and that if I learn Linux I will hack all the school computers and change my grades.
The point is, many schools will fear it, because they do not know anything about it. The best thing to do to for this situation, in my opinion, is to spread the word about Linux.
The solution for this type of thing is to set the computers up in a dual-boot, so they can still use the Windows hardware but you can get the educational benifits of Linux.
Incidentally, stressing the educational benefits of Linux to your teacher, especially in computer science, is another great way to convince him/her about how great Linux is. I mean in Linux, and open source software in general, you get to see exactly how everything is coded. Show a teacher, say GIMP and how it works, then show him/her the source for GIMP and he/she is liable to be impressed that you can actually look at the internals of such a complex program to learn how it works.
Now the next step is choosing a distribution... you can either pick one based on fame and news articles about it (that you can show your teacher) or use this as a way to get everyone hooked on your favorite distribution.
Oh, and I suggest you show everyone how to use .xinitrc to set up various window managers, and then make a few example logins using Gnome, KDE, WM, AfterStep, etc. so people can see one of the great things about Linux, ease of customization.
Good luck at school.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Seriously. Think about schools these days. Most high schools these days are run on shoestring budgets and often computer science departments are an absolute joke when it comes to the state of their hardware. With Linux, you get two big pluses:
1) It runs just fine on old hardware.
2) You don't have to pay software licencing fees for any applications, development kits or compilers.
As an added bonus (I suppose I'm cynical as to school's priorities these days) they'd be giving their students a leg up on the competition, since students could take anything they use at their schools home to their own computers, and experiment to their heart's content. That was one thing that I was disappointed about in my comp-sci courses in high school. I couldn't take a copy of the software home so I could experiment on my own.
Does this teacher do no research or read any current IS news? It's almost impossible to avoid the topic of Linux in even today's mainstream business or computing publications. Heck, even CNN.com runs Linux stories constantly. As someone whose job it is to educate youngsters on computing practices of today and of the future, you'd think that this teacher would have at some point wondered just what this "Linux" thing was that she kept seeing in headlines, on magazine covers, etc. and wondered just how the whole idea of a free operating system worked. Maybe I'm giving teachers too much credit. After all, doesn't the saying go "those who can, do; those who can't, teach"?
Understand what the Free actually means though. You don't get any benefits from free if you buy packaged systems (even from VA - their hardware seems to cost just as much if not more than MicroTaxed boxen). Most likely, though, your school will maybe have an old box to try it out on. That's fine...Linux shines on old hardware.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
When the local group i belong to started talking about linux, people... well... laughed. They kept on laughing and nagging about the lack of money while we helped them with one job after another. They kept laughing at us when we helped them for free, even if they had problems with win9x. But they started asking us for help, even when they knew that we preferred linux, and we helped them out. Sure the top people still laughed at us when the little people came to us begging for help when the money was spent and there was no other support to get. And we helped them stay with the systems they knew, windows mostly, and helped them get more out of the old boxes that companies and people donated to us as samba servers. They laughed at us for not taking a penny for the job we did, but we kept on doing helping them, even when the topdogs came wondering if we could help them stretch the budget a bit the next year. And we were there answering their questions and explaining how we did what we did. They still bought the expensive stuff, and laughed at us for trying, but we helped them get the reports ready and the fancy words out. With linux tools and apache servers. And they laughed at the silly students that installed linux themselves on some of the boxes (dual boot in stealth mode they called it) and they laughed especially loud when the students started helping others the way we did and joined us. They still laugh, but we know how we'll make things happen, because we do what the money doesn't care about. We are their friends and we'll laugh with them through good and bad... It's not about the money at all. *
My cohorts and I are currently involved with Linux based computer labs in two schools, here in Tucson, AZ.
/the/ NFSroot. All eleven stations share the same NFS filesystem.
One is a public elementary school(~800 students). The project here, I'm told, started because a local company donated a lab full of used computers to the school. The district tech department bas just going to dump it, becase it didn't fit into their plans.
The systems are Compaq P75's and P90's(all at 90Mhz) with their RAM upgraded to 64M. SoundBlaster Vibra16's and cheap PCI 10/100 NIC's(~$6-12 now) were also added.
The systems boot Debian GNU/Linux into a gdm login prompt. Once they login through gdm they get an icewm desktop. We're using icewm because it's small, fast, and comfortable. We run as much native(Linux) software as we can find, but the pickings are still a little slim. So, we have to use wine to run the windows educational software(It is an elementary school, you gotta have the educational software). The native apps run off the local harddrives(540M-1G), while the wine CD-ROM apps run over NFS, like the home direcoties, to the main server(PPro 200, 128M ram).
We just brought up another PPro 200 server yesterday. We hope to use it to handle the bulk(wine) data better through multi-daemon, read-only NFS.
Also today we figured out that the only reason we havn't had AppleTalk access to user data until now is the NIC in the server(s). We now have netatalk appearing to behave itself, on the new server. After a little more testing we'll let the teachers start using it, through the large quantity of Macs allready in the school.
It all works pretty good. The students walk in and sit down at a station, any station. They login and have access to all their personal data and preferences. Even better is that OpenSSH is running on each and every workstation. So we can administer each and every system without having to go to the school. With a little script, we can also send commands, like halt, to all of the systems with one commandline. It's really handy for bringing the lab down at night, and for maintanace. Not to mention that it's incredibly neat to watch the screens flicker down to the console to halt, in sequence, through the whole lab of 31.
To maintain homogeniaty, and sanity, in the lab we occationally reclone it. Meaning we update one system and do whatever work needs to be done on that systems, then copy it to the rest. Thanks to bootp there are no system specific config files
The other school is a charter middle school. It's conciderably smaller, and cleaner because of it. The lab itself is ten stations(Same PPro 200's), and a teachers station. With a big, scary, tree eating HP laser, and another PPro 200 server.
The server at the charter school handles the internal school homepage, the caching/filtering squid proxy, and print queuing. But that's just the boring stuff. It also serves the etherboot images for the lab, and
Sharing the NFSroot gains us a lot of things. Not the least of which is being able to replace harddrives in the machines with $3 EEPROMS. It also means there is one *1* system to administer. Run and apt-get dist-upgrade on one system, and the entire lab is brought up to date. And thanks to Network Block Devices each station has 128M of swap space, without any moving parts in the case.(Well, ok, the CPU and power supply fans still spin).
The entire network at the charter school is 10/100 switched ethernet(1 24port NetGear FS524). So, through the wonders of etherboot and NFSroot's the entire lab is ready and waiting at a tweaked gdm login in a little over a minute. Well, if you hit all the power strips on a once(we did to time it). The tweaked part of the gdm login is that it shows a picture of the classical composer that particular system was named after, using only the one shared config file.
The whole lab runs off of one IBM 9G LVD SCSI drive. We also took one of the existing 4.3G ide drives and put classical music mp3s on it to be played in class. The net connection is a DSL line, thus the squid caching is very important. It also gives us the oportunity to keep the students from wandering into places on the net that can get the school sued. Oh yeah, banner ads are just as easy to filter, or at least redirect to a 1x1 transparent gif.
Both labs work great. The second a little better because it's smaller and all new hardware.
I'm sure my cohorts can explain it a little better, and in more detail. They'll read this thread and answer any questions there might be. Anything I forgot, or just plain got wrong, etc.
- kimo_sabe
--
Programming is like sex; one mistake and you have to support for a life time.
"2. In your favor most colleges use some form of unix..."
The college I'm majoring in CS at (a fairly large state university) has precisely one UNIX/Linux box that I know of. It's an x86 running Red Hat 6.1, and only CS students can log into it. Furthermore, the machine is a fairly tightly-kept secret... a student or faculty member has to go ask a certain professor in person during his office hours in order to get a password. Why so secret? You tell me. I've never been able to get a satisfactory answer out of anyone.
Once upon a time, the campus network was (I believe) VMS, but about four years ago the switch was made to NT. With the exception of a few MacOS boxes in the open labs and a few Win9x boxes in faculty offices, everything on campus runs NT. Why sell all the terminals, switch to NT, and buy expensive PCs to replace every VMS term, when students have already been using VMS, and therefore could probably stomach Linux? Again, you tell me; I've never been agle to get a satisfactory answer out of anyone.
J
The main positive (from the school's POV) point about the fact that GPL'd software is 'free' is that, by using it they can sidestep the whole problem of allowing corps like MS and Apple to use the school as a marketting tool.
The corps know that if they can get their product into the schools they are garunteed a market in years to come.
You should be aware that Apple (and later Microsoft) targetted the education market for precisely that reason. 'Get'em while they're young', so to speak.
Oft times the software selection criteria schools use is written with the 'help' of software sales reps. You should ask for copies of the software selection criteria for your school, and examine it with a critical eye.
The instructor is (usually) just parrotting back what the mandated 'training' courses (madated meaning the teachers are usually *required* to take them -- often at their own not inconsiderable expense) told them to they must teach. Note that these 'courses' are supported by Microsoft -- e.g. taught by a 'Microsoft Certified Professional', using 'donated' Microsoft software. These sessions are no more 'training' than television infomercials, but that's what they're doing...
Most CS courses are NOT intended to produce savvy computer users or programmers; they are intended to keep the school from looking bad. They need to be able to say 'Yes, we teach computer skills.' and they will do the absolute minimum they can get away with to be able to say that. Convince them that teaching Linux or BSD is easier than teaching Windoze, and you're done; they'll do it.
All in all, the schools should be ashamed of themselves for selling out the future to billionaire facists whose only interest in "education" is to keep their victims dumbed down enough to keep purchasing product. It is this kind of brainless, sheep-like behavior that will keep computing in the dark ages for the next 30 years...
Your real enemy (being a student forced to use inferior software) is (usually) the local (and maybe the state) board of education -- NOT the instructor. Instructors are frequently open to learning a bit themselves, if you handle it correctly. In general, school boards prefer to authorities on any given subject, and are unwilling admit they don't know everything. If this is your situation, you will need to enlist the help of other students, teachers, faculty, and perhaps the local news media, in order to accomplish anything.
Familiarize yourself with the rules that govern acquistions made by the school district. If you dig around in the charter and by-laws of the school board, you may find clauses that explicitly prohibition the use of the school system to pander commercial products to the students. For instance, you may find that they are prohibited from requiring you to buy some specific product in order to pass a course. Also, they should not be allowed to market brand-specific products to their captive audience (the students). (This last came up when cable television companies offered to install cable t.v. in public school classroom -- complete with ads for Coca-Cola(tm) and McDonalds(tm))
(tread lightly around this, it is a real sore point most times) You probably know more about computing and software than the instructor. I have seen this repeatedly in my children's classes. Don't embarass the instructor. If you do, you will never be forgiven, and your cause will be lost. Talk to them one-on-one.
If M$ or Apple has a stranglehold on computer education in your area, your best chance of success (imo) is through the courts, so don't do anything stupid that could be used against you (e.g. don't riot, and don't take over the computer lab in the name of The People).
"The Internet is made of cats."
Consider getting assigned some independant study credits for comp sci at your high school. Come up with some educational and infrastructure building projects that will benefit the school (like an IRC server, or a new mail server, or an introduction to installing one of the "free" OS's.
This is a great way to get the teachers involved in learning something new, under the guise of it being your coursework.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
However, there are two levels to this:
- Having some knowledge and not knowing that there is more to know
- Having enough knowledge to know where the holes are in your knowledge-base.
I'd just have assumed that when teaching technology, the teacher would be almost expecting people to come up with new things they've not heard of before. Maybe she didn't see licensing as technology, per se, so was surprised.I guess, just give her some URLs to read up on the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/ being the starting point, I guess!). At least that'll show her that it's not just you who'se loopy, but there are loads of us out here!
Steve.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
If you really want to start a Linux in the classroom trend at your school, then just do it. I recently did the same thing at my high school. All student accessible computers are running NT, and most teachers have macs for grades, Internet, and e-mail. My friends and I started our own LUG. I donated a 486 system, and someone else gave an old mac. We installed RedHat on the 486, and its doing well. We plan to network the two computers together.
We also tried to get funding. Our PTA asked teachers to submit proposals for grants up to $350. We sent in a request, but we were denied. The PTA said we were classified as an extra-curricular activity, and they only give money to teachers for in class purposes. So, basically we are a stand still right now, as we await our next opportunity to apply for a grant.
Setting this up depends on your teacher. My CS teacher is laid back and wants to learn about Linux. He let us set up the computer in his lab and always gives us support.
Hope this helps.
Unfortunately, it's true. In most high school cases, it is impractical or impossible to add Linux unless some fundamental changes are made - and those changes usually do not resonate well with long standing administrative staff or current technical support requirements.
.dll's or programs on machines) - to jamming printers because people cannot read directions and so on. They simply do not have the time to just look and see it.
I was a research Ceramic Engineer for the longest time before I decided to quit to take a break from the real world and hide in the unreal world by teaching - and try to make a real difference.
Not to mention also go broke in the process (went from a 6 digit salary to a low 5 digit one. rather sad actually - but that's another point i'll tack on later)
In most schools, you have in general 3 major types - those who are in the know (5% if that), those who have an idea (25-45% depending on area), and those who have NO idea (50-70% depending on area). This is including faculty, staff and students. The ones who definately know whats going on, are either swamped out of their minds, or have better things to do than simply just try to upgrade or help things - because of workload and/or school 'culture' (I.e. Politics).
If any of you actually have not been in a school environment, I would suggest that you ask someone who's there at the moment - with whom you know has more than the marginal share of basic computer knowledge. They'll tell you that the bulk of their fellow classmates/teachers are computer illiterate, and ask insane amounts of 'no common sense' questions left and right about them because they cannot simply solve problems ON THEIR OWN! Common sense AND logic is severely lacking in many cases. Think back to your own high school career - how many teachers can you recall had that sense to really solve problems and questions on their own? How many have you forgotten that have not even done so?
now, having identified one major problem - people's inability to solve problems - lets move onto the 2nd major issue. Administrative perspective. Most of the administrative staff are overwhelmed as it is with their normal load of material. They also do not have a technical background - I mean, how many school admins do you remember and/or know that have a physical education background for crying out loud!! - to even remotely understand what linux can do for them. It is actually rather sad.
From a within perspective, you really have to hit the ones who actually know whats going on. And even then, you have to make sure you are not making them look bad or clueless - as most of them feel like masters of their domain - as they are treated as such by the non-techies. Make sure you have stuff you can show, material at hand they can look at. While a lot of schools these days have Internet access, most of the technical staff are swamped doing stupid stuff, ranging from trying to make sure systems are running (I.e. clueless people somehow managing to wipe out
From an without perspective - 'hit' the school boards and so on. Bring in ideas, show them how they can save money (mentioned earlier) by recycling older machines, downloading what they need, and making it all work by simply getting 2 or 3 people REALLY in the know - and not people barely qualified - in what they are doing.
In my case, I am ready to give up. I have sought to make a difference, but am hampered continuously by clueless and non-supportive administrative staff. With all the change of focus on students, I'm sure most of you will run into roadblocks somewhere, somehow - whether by politics (mostly), loopholes, self-interest, lack of funding, or whatever. It is rather a sad state of affairs.
I'll go back to doing nothing and getting paid big bucks for it, than trying to make a difference for people - because there is very little attitude towards REAL and positive change. They may talk the talk, but very rarely do they 1) ponder the consequences of the talk, and 2) actually give enough support/backbone to walking the walk.
-victor
The computer teachers I have run into in the local (Berryessa, San Jose CA.), school system seem to have little knowledge of Linux, *BSD, or Beos... As an experiment, I recently set up the computer that my 10 and 12 year old daughters (who have average computer skills) use to dual boot both Win 98 and Linux, to see if they could adapt to 2 operating systems and to see which they would prefer...after about a week they were spending about 90% of their time using Linux, mostly for Star Office and games, but also because they enjoyed the level of control afforded by the KDE desktop. Anyway, apparently my 12 year old told her computer teacher that she was now using Linux, and he replied that he thought it was "only for adults". My 10 year olds home room teacher apparently cautioned her that "Linux was very hard..." (and he advertises himself as a former private school computer technology teacher...). I think the problem is that these people just don't have much experience with anything outside of what the school system provides them. The teachers realize that the kids need to receive at least some computer education, but they lack the knowledge to work outside of the curriculem supplied by the school. I think the root of the problem may be that the typical Grade/Middle/High school teacher is usually not that computer savvy, perhaps the answer may be to bring in outsiders, (such as the people that teach the extension courses in the UC system) to teach computer classes instead of relying on the teachers to do it.
Most public schools are desperately short of computer/networking help. The only reason Macs and PC's are so prevalent is a)thats all they know and b) Apple and Microsoft donate heavily to the schools so of course thats what they use. I would be willing to bet that most schools have a pile of old 486's that have been donated to them that are lying around gathering dust because they have no help getting these machines going and on the network. So volunteer! And get Linux into your public schools.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
On top of schools not realizing the potential economic benefit of GPL'd software, my first thought when I saw the Free Documentation Liscense was to use it for textbooks. Any college student knows about the outrageous prices of textbooks. I think the FDL would be perfect for all sorts of Math/Physics and other science texts. They could easily be updated, students could contribute, and I can't imagine the high schools would turn away from the opportunity of getting free texts.
Talk to other members of the staff and try to find someone who is sympathetic or at least aware of GPL/open source/Linux and have them champion your cause. Then, go with them and approach the department chairperson with your ideas. Use all the research as suggested in the other threads. At the same time, begin asking your friends to do the same. The more people that show interest, the more likely the curriculum will change. Also, if there isn't one already, start a Linux club after school. Again, you'll need a faculty member to sponser you. It will take time to make the changes but the result will be worthwhile.
Most high schools have the football coach teach history, or some such. Your computer "coach" is probably a math or science teacher. The average high school teacher makes under $30K in most states, and the average CS graduate starts at significantly higher than most high school teachers with advanced degrees will ever make. If they understood computers they would work in computers--if they wanted to teach computers, they would have an advanced degree in CS and work at some college. The computer class instructor got drafted into his job, just like the coach teaching history. S/he may be sufficiently motivated to do a good job, but the nearly universal experience will be that they are limited in their understanding, and don't want to get involved with anything which is not canned: they will stick with Apple and Microsoft products, because they at least have confidence that they are predictable and there will be a good manual somewhere. They attitude of everyone in the school hierarchy will be the same, and anybody in the school district who understands computers will probably not be in the loop when __educational__ decisions are made. It takes a lot of time to learn any field, and most of these people are interested in other things, and afraid of getting involved in something which might be held against their careers--why the hell should __anybody__ in your schools hierarchy risk their job over something they don't understand and aren't even interested in. And let's face it--if they pushed a decision to go to Linux and some student pushing the envelope logged a lot of time on porn sites or got into trouble bombmaking (learned at school), he'd be selling tires at Sears next semester after taking a serious pay cut.
I work in a K12 school district, another issue will be. "But NT is what the kids are going to use in the Real World."
Yes...you will be hard pressed to have a Macintosh or Linux server or workstation because "NT is what the kids are going to use in the Real World."
You will be defending yourself against idiots for monthes...no years...why?
Because MS has flooded teachers and administrators with advertising. "Where do you want to go today?" If you want something other than Windows...be ready to fight.
As someone who worked closely with a high school, its administration, and its tech staff I don't have a lot of promising advice. First and foremost, there's nothing you're going to be able to do on your own, directly.
That aside, get a teacher with you. Obviously, it's best to get one from the tech department of your school, and preferably someone who is actually teaching. The best would be a department head or someone with political clout in your school. Look for union people. Talk to them and get them interested.
If you want a course devoted to it, good luck but suggest they propose it. Most schools work in such a way that once a year (usually around this time) they take proposals from teachers for new courses and one gets selected for the year. If you want curriculum to include the GPL and free software, talk to the teachers who teach those classes, or the head of that department. COnvince them of your point of view first, then suggest the curriculum change.
All that being said, I'll reiterate that you don't have a good chance at getting anything done. Most schools technology programs are so pathetic in the first place. Many are merely token gestures to satisfy grant requirements and are taught by teachers who took a summer or night course and were told they were qualified to teach the course. Most of them aren't.
If you want, you could always try selling it to the schools IT department (if you have one). The arguments you use will change depending on the situation, but there are three key things to keep in mind.
First, support. Take some time and find out details (cost, response time, etc) for your school to get a support contract for Linux or whatever free OS you want to advocate. This is a HUGE issue for most school IT departments because typically they're run by people who used to be teachers but took some courses and got elected sys admin. For the most part they bank on support services.
Secondly, of course, cost. Schools love cheap. They're often so tightly funded that they spend large percentages of their budget on software and support. Then they get criticized because "look at all this money we give you, and where are the new computers?" Just a tidbit though, don't overly stress cost to administration if they look like they'll go for it. If administration think they can cut money from IT by doing something, they will and IT will be no better off.
And finally, of course, is stability, performance, etc. Be sure to mention it's ability to run on older hardware. A lot of schools, because of stupid regulations on state, federal and grant money, tend to have computers sitting collecting dust, or thrown in dumpsters. If they're NT/Netware shops stress stability and reliability. Particularly the "once you get it working, it doesn't break for no reason." (The netware admin at my school would love to hear this given the trouble he's been having with Netware 5.1 recently.) Also, compatability is a good touch to add in. Netware and NT both rely on proprietary technology and software for some of the things they do, particularly Netware.
Well, thats enough from me. Good luck. Feel free to email me with questions or whatever.
Regards,
Marcus
jghrfa@home.com
> It sucks for the admins, too, y'know. Most of >them don't want to be assholes, but it's sheer
> self defence.
You just need teeth. e.g., if you do any of those things, our netadmins *know* you did. And you're expelled from the school, fined (and/or your parents are fined), and you get a failing grade for the semester.
It can't just say that in the policy handbook for the school. It has to actually happen, even (especially) if you're the son of the principal or the captain of the football team.
Then you won't have two incidents of people stealing mouse balls or installing virii. You'd have one, the newspaper article about how they were expelled failed and fined prominently framed by the door to the lab, with the empty frame right next to it for the next moron who tries it.
If, as you say, a sysadmin must be a n@z! for self-defense, go all the way with it, or not at all. Otherwise you just create even more motivation for people to mess with you. (They know they'll get away with it.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For a short while I was on a committee responsible for spending vast sums of money on undersupported machines for a rather large school district. I'm assuming the situation was no different than others. The committee had two computer knowledgable members and about a dozen teachers.
Pick your battles. Many of the decisions made about computer equipment in a school district will be largely political. There will be a strong push to use ALOT of Microsoft technology simply because it appears to be a good business decision. Don't argue for particular items so much as general goals. Getting them to agree that a WinNT only network has less future than an open network would allow Linux machines to run along side MS boxes. This is much more worthwhile than convincing them that they need linux terminals with RedHat installed.
Make compromises. Everyone wants to see their input have affect, they don't want to see someone overpowering the group.
Back up opinions with other sources. Your crazy opinions aren't so crazy if they've been published elsewhere.
Good luck!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
At my old high school we had one large computer lab filled with antiquated Macs running OS 7.5. The programming class offered was Turbo Pascal. I waiting until college to take a programming course (C++). While in high school I tried to explain Linux to the teachers admining the place and all I got for my effort was dumbfounded looks. These teachers were by no means stupid, they just seemed apalled by an open source code licensing scheme. They had been raised in the 100% proprietary days of programming before anyone listened to RMS. In relation to this kid's problem, a good deal of computer science teachers in high school have been teachers for a number of years and are used to doing things the same way year after year. Some of them keep up with trends and new stuff but for the most part many high school instructors are "behind the times". College instructors usually have been outside the confines of schools and actually applied the stuff they are teaching. The most effective way to get new dogma into schools is wait for it to trickle down. I hate reading on here "force them to do this", "I'll send them a Linux CD", ect.. None of that helps, when the next generation of teachers comes in they almost always bring a new set of ideas with them.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
>Furthurmore, someone has everyone believing that
>all students are computer virus carrying know-
>nothings whose sole intent with respect to
>computers is to infect them with virii after
>using them to send death threats to government
>officials, find little kids to stalk, and look
>at hardcore porn.
Ever sysadminned in a educational environment? You're pretty much described the exact problems that anyone looking after computers in a school/university has to deal with.
You forgot setting up hardcore porn http/ftp servers, IRC hijacking, and stealing the fscking mouse balls.
If you're not a Nazi about your computer labs, then Very Bad Things tend to happen. As you say, it's a few people ruining it for everyone.
It sucks for the admins, too, y'know. Most of them don't want to be assholes, but it's sheer self defence.
How can I possibly change this situation?
:-)
Post her email address and let us all send her a brief message, complete with a copy of the GPL (or better yet, all common open licenses) and representative code.
When the school's mail server (or her personal account) collapses under thousands of messages containing tens of megabytes, the situation <b>will</b> change. But probably not to your advantage.
Unfortunately, the real question is the credentials of your teacher. Most teacher unions are extremely strong, and extremely exclusionary. (E.g., you have a master's degree and 20 years experience and you want to help out? Sorry, but the school system (and teacher's union) assert you are unqualified to teach the subject matter - but the 21-year-old who just got her education BS *is* qualified to teach the material. A few states are experimenting with "fast track" certification of domain experts, but they're the exception.)
Could the teacher have had strong CS exposure in college? It's possible, but the colleges of Education and Engineering tend to have very little overlap. Any C. Ed class using computers will focus on using them as teaching aids, not software development models. At most, the teacher might have had a year of "CS 101" -- and be considered an expert by her teaching peers.
Could the teacher have gotten her education credentials, worked in industry, then returned to the classroom? It's possible, but unlikely due to fiscal reality. An experienced coder will probably earn twice what most teacher makes. An experienced coder with technical leadership or management experience (who will actually be dealing with software licenses professionally) will make far more than most teachers. A few people will earn a nest egg then return to their first love, but software salaries aren't *that* high. (Stock options change that slightly, but it's still the exception.)
In other words, the teacher would probably be dismissed as a flake by any working software developer. This is why many of us have qualms about collegiate CS programs - and outright hostility towards secondary CS programs. If you're lucky, you'll learn the skills appropriate to a 70's era IBM 370 programmer - and you'll know it's a 30-year-old development model which is *not* followed today. More likely, you'll get a hodge-podge which makes no sense but makes it *far* harder for you to learn how software development is actually done.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
There are probably many "established" professionals in your area who would be more than happy to come in and give a presentation on Open Source in general, or Linux in particular. Check for a local Linux users group, or even a local branch of a related user group (like Perl Mongers, for exaqple). Even if the presentation is just for the teachers, it would probably be well received. If you are in the Boston area, contact the FSF. See the Linux User Group HOWTO for more info.
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
I would show the benefits of GPL software. Or in other words, the disadvantages of closed-source software.
Namely, I would start with:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/philoso phy.html
And then print out this article for your teacher as proof of the GPL, since {s/}he didn't believe you.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.ht ml
http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Come on people, lets build up a collection of papers we can use to show the un-educated _WHY_ GPL software is better.
Cheers
Well, given the fact that 99% of the teaching and administrative staff in the schools know either Macintosh or Windows, it isn't surprising you got that response.
You need to educate them the same way they educate you. Get together statistics about the usage of Linux and Apache. Put together a packet of information describing what Linux and free software is. Get a copy of the GPL and the LGPL, and find a good, non-technical description of what they are and why they are good. If you have a Linux system, arrange to demonstrate what Linux is and what it can to. You might even have an extra credit project here. Try contacting RedHat, VA Linux, Suse, and others and see if they have any literature they can send you.
Good Luck!
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
I'm not sure that there is anything you can do. First, in my experience, schools have very old computers- circa 1988. I learned to program on TRS-80s. I was told that Pascal was an ideal scientific language, and COBOL the language of business. They'd heard of C and C++, but considered it 'too difficult' (after COBOL, no less!) This is current as of the early 90's.
The old saying that 'those who can't do, teach' isn't usually true, I find. CS in public schools is one area where it is. If you want to be rewarded for doing a good job, not be bullied around by your union, get paid decently, not be micromanaged ridiculously by the state, and feel like you are actually accomplishing something, try the private sector.
Are there solutions? Yes, but they're out of the scope of your question. Your immediate problem is giving your teachers some clue about what has been going on in CS in the last 10-20 years. Which is virtually everything.
One possibility is to try to get the high school equivalent of a special topics class. Or a co-op program-- which some High Schools support. If these options aren't available, start a club. Especially in the Open Source field, you'll find programmers LOVE to talk.
If you want to push programming on the linux platform as the solution for your school, you'll have a tough sell ahead of you. Obvious selling points:
Free, works with hardware already procured and destined for trash.
Includes sample code (the source) and developement tools for dozens of languages (don't try to explain the differences between bash, Perl, HTML and C-- they won't get it.
Out of the box internet ready.
Procure it for a linux club first. If you have a teacher who knows linux already, you are in a very small minority. Just a machine or two for the geeks in your school. Do not use the word 'hacking' ever. EVER! Sure, it isn't cracking or illegal, but it raises a red flag. Present it as something to make and serve web pages with. Teachers like that and can get it quickly. Good computer teachers will appreciate the chance to dust off their C skills while watching normally uninterested students ooohing and ahhhing over the web page stuff.
If possible, make it part of something that is already budgetted (like programming classes or a club). Don't let them 'study' the problem-- that means they are waiting for you to graduate. Don't let them try to hire someone just for this-- they'll be cut out of the budget over the summer. Instead, keep it cheap, minimize teachers' time committments and keep a low profile.
If you are blessed and have a CS teacher that does neither, you have a chance. Otherwise, you are pretty much out of luck. Dealing with arrogant teachers is nearly impossible.
Lets write this another way:
CS students are generally either conservative or foolish. The conservatives rever what they used at home, often something along the lines of [insert favorite distro/util]. They are inflexible, and refuse to hear anything that goes against their ideas.
The foolish are followers of some particular trend. Some follow Linux like zombies, others check up on every BSD trend they see. Anything that does not follow this trend is bad and wrong, because what they do is obviously the right way. If you are blessed and have a CS student that does neither, you have a chance. Otherwise, you are pretty much out of luck. Dealing with arrogant students is nearly impossible.
I'm a CS student in university, and I see this all the time. Nothing irritates me more than the people in the classes who believe they know more than the professors, and insist on pointing out every last error they make, just to show how smart they are. Either that, or they take every opportunity possible to plug program Foo or BarOS. Not only does it irritate the rest of the class, but the profs as well.
Make sure this isn't you, and you'll go a lot further with this. Linux in the class is good, but my way or the highway is bad.
First of all, I think it's great that your high school offers a Software Development course. I graduated from HS in 1995, and went on to study CS. All I could squeeze out of my school was a little pascal tutoring from the Computer Lab Nazi (tm).
As for raising awareness of the GPL, you can do it with words and with actions. Simply mentioning it in class is great. It's unfortunate that your teacher dismissed it as crack-pottery. A better educator would have been interested, and asked follow up questions, IMHO.
If you've got a big project to do for the class, and I'd hope you would, you could do one of several things. You could make something useful, and GPL it. This is nice if you don't have real options for choosing your project. Another option would be to find an OS project that interests you, and spec a specific module. Present the specification to your teacher as a project proposal. Include some good ol' fashioned OS propeganda in there for good measure.
If your teacher looked at you like you're crazy, it begs the question: does she know anything about Linux? Linux gets so much press these days I have a hard time believeing that somebody who's teaching a SD class hasn't even *heard* of it. Working from this, I'd assume she's heard some Linux hype, but doesn't know what makes it free software, exactly.
Aside from integrating your classwork and open-source development, you could go the talking route. Give her some URLs, and explain to her why you believe in Free Software. Discuss the educational oppurtunities - you can see the source! You want to know how to organize a large project? Look at the Mozilla CVS tree, or GIMP, or any other large project.
Maybe buy/burn her a Linux/*BSD disc or something.
Has she heard of Perl? Python?
After some of these comments, I hate to admit that I am a HS CS teacher and systems director.
I would recommend you find some schools using Linux and see if they'll talk to your school. I'd be happy to. Show them our site or Beacon School and then have them email us.
I would suspect that the reason you don't learn about Linux in the classroom is because your teacher doesn't know about it. Offer to do a presentation on it for extra credit or no credit at all. If the teacher turns you down, then you've found your problem.
We've been running Linux for about 3 years now and I couldn't be happier. Our students and faculty benefit from the increased services and especially the uptime! Linux has lowered cost and headaches.
Also, the first three weeks of my programming class are devoted to Linux. All assignments are done on the Linux server.
You could also start a LUG and get interest that way.
Good Luck!
Remember, these schools have been using windows since before the big antitrust suits. I know that my school (a big one in the Dade County Public School System, Florida) has a contract with Microsoft. They use Windows 95 on every computer in all the labs, library, and other rooms/offices. They are Nazis when it comes to free anything (as in speech). Lemme put it this way, you're not allowed to bring 3.5" disks into the library. Surfwatch is used along with Microsoft Proxy server to filter what is accessible through the (OVERKILL) T1 Line that the school has. Furthurmore, someone has everyone believing that all students are computer virus carrying know-nothings whose sole intent with respect to computers is to infect them with virii after using them to send death threats to government officials, find little kids to stalk, and look at hardcore porn.
This is (IMHO) either the result of few ruining it for many, or several chain-linked knee-jerk reactions to exaggerated local news broadcasts. Of course, it's probably both.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
You will have several things to consider when informing your high school powers that be about linux and the GPL.
1. Microsoft and Apple have a considerable budget that they set aside for the wooing of public education. Because of this many teachers may have been taught certain things about linux that are no longer true.
2. In your favor most colleges use some form of unix. Most teachers have attended one of these colleges. Therefore somewhere in the back of their experiences they might remember unix. You could try to explain that linux is just a form of unix.
3. Obtain a copy of a standard GPL. Include it with any other information you choose to provide. Getting a factory printed GPL from a boxed distribution would probably be more impressive than just printing one out on a laser printer.
4. Teachers do not like to appear foolish in front of students. Most distributions include a technical support line for a certain number of days or months. Make sure that the teachers know they have somewhere to turn when the installation goes south.
5. Beware of talking about how you can "get it free on the internet". Teachers and schools are very cautious about anything to do with downloads from the internet. If the teacher is knowledgable then this should not be an issue but if that were the case you would not have written your letter.
6. Make them aware that an office suite is availabe for linux. Star Office comes with many distributions and it makes the transition from other office suites much easier. It also makes it posible to teach wordprocessing and spreadsheet operation using a linux system.
7. Telling the teacher that it is better because it is free might not have any effect because Microsoft and Apple may already be providing the school with free software. Choose other points in Linux's favor.
That is all I have time for now.
Good luck!
Dave Zimmerman dzimmerm@columbus.rr.com
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.