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Linux Win In Schools
Xaleth Nuada wrote to us about a Wired article that talks a school in Colorado choosing Linux over the traditional choices. The reason? Prohibitive costs for licensing, of course. The school's network is maintained by parental volunteers, and thanks to Linux, can be easily maintained remotely. And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.
It's a great solution if by "internet" you mean ftp, news, mail, gopher, WAIS, etc. But if you mean "the web", you get...poor plug-in availability, instant lockout from loads of sites due to outdated flash plugin...
Linux has much better controls for prevention of data loss and hardware missconfigure. At my old high school the background was always a nude or near nude picture that reflected whatever intrests the last person had who sat there.
But i have a question, what would this do about taking homework home?
Adam Sane sanity is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
It's a wonder more schools don't choose linux - I mean, how many guides have you seen giving instructions on how to crack your school's LINUX network. :)
Hook 'em young, I guess. Never mind that, like it or not, Windows is a corporate standard that people need to know to get "standard" jobs. This is great for the kids that want to be sysadmins or network admins, even programmers, but for the girl that really just wants a job on the side as a part-time secretary and spend the remaining time with her family (not uncommon, even these days) this is not going to give her the education she needs at all. Hell, even for people that need to do design docs in Word, this won't help. Please, don't feel the urge to mention StarOffice or OpenOffice as we all know they just flat suck.
Good money decision, but really bad in the long run.
Hey that looks like those Magic Eyes things. Except yours says "jack off"
:/
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
Microsoft is stepping up efforts to stop license infringement in schools...
Which is pathetic. Microsoft knows the school system is strapped for cash, and now because of their greed, it has backfired. Now the young people of this country will run Linux instead. And Microsoft won't get their money anyway.
Not only is this a blow for Microsoft in terms of market share, but in PR as well.
are comment numbers global now instead of local to the post?
Is that Bill Gates gives most of the local public and private schools large grants of MSFT software, and PCs too.
But we do have some Macs and there are quite a few PTA members with Linux skills, especially in the UDist and Fremont neighborhoods.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Nice to see public schools moving towards a non-proprietary alternative to current software. Of course the reason for this now is budgetary concerns, but I can see a greater result--increased computer literacy.
Its been my experience (as a web development instructor with a private post-secondary school) that teens these days, despite the stereotypes, actually posess less computer literacy than geeks of my generation.
I learned DOS and UNIX on the command line. Windows and Mac will stunt your understanding of how a computer works, and make you think only of pushing around cute little icons. WIMP interfaces make people dumb. They can't understand how the computer works, so they end up relying on 'geeks' to fix their problems.
Teach programming to everyone (Thanks to GvR) and teach kids a command line in school. Make them understand the technology that they'll use every day of their lives. Let our kids develop some computer savy and brains.
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.
If that includes web browsing, I disagree. Sadly, most of the technical benefits of Linux are cancelled out of the horrible web browsing software available for it. The Linux kernel beats Windows in any test imaginable, but in browser tests IE 5 walks over everthing else by a wide margin. Sure, you *can* browse with Opera or Navigator, but only if you're willing to accept that you won't be able to view a good number of sites correctly. (You can take the idealistic "I don't want to see those sites anyway" road, but not everyone does.
Most colleges use a UNIX environment (especially for CS and engineering). Putting a UNIX environment in high/elementary schools is the next step. And you know how school boards love to save money.
Solution? Linux.
It isn't very surprising to me, other than the need to have a good *NIX network administrator in your local school (seems odd, doesn't it?).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
For every one story we read abotu a school adopting Linux, theres a few hundred schools that buy Windows.
This is a fascinating story, honest, it's just buried in an avalanche of MS boxen.
...but it's interesting that they're still going to use Win9x on a server, so they can use Win4Lin. I guess WINE isn't quite ready for production usage in an environment like a school... Maybe eventually they'll be able to phase out MS win altogether. (I hope)
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
This is a good opportunity for linux to be known better.
It should be relatively easy technically to make a distribution for schools, although you'd need a help from actual kids, parents, and schools to find out what kind of apps they want.
...To start teaching the free-software mentality. Since the parental volunteers and teachers are tacitly endorsing OSS and GNU principals by choosing Linux over the pay-for competition, they're letting their kids know that Free software is good and acceptible.
This is in stark contrast to the days when I grew up. I remember my Pascal teacher 'giving' me an copy of Turbo Pascal compiler because she knew I didn't have one at home to practice with. Then I felt bad because I knew it had been illegally copied. If only she or I had known that there *were* OSS compilers out there. These were something I didn't discover until college.
Let's see if the decision to include OSS in schools will mean things like a chapter in the computer literacy class about the GPL and the mentality behind it. I'd also like to see the schools encourage their kiddies to 'give back' to the OSS movement by releasing their programming projects and any software they custom-build under the GPL.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This is a huge step forward for linux... but ofcourse my high school still uses macs... and not just macs... iMacs! What kind of idiot came up withthat computer? GRRRR!!!
Sorry just venting... i hate those colourful pieces of crap!
Hopefully we will install some sort of *nix by the time I'm a senior!
I got a question though: What are they going to do about taking work home? Not every kid has a copy of StarOffice or AbiWord at home...
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I remember that my high-school decided to use an all Windows "solution" because it was easier to maintain. While this might have been theoretically true at the time, within a month about fifteen of us managed to get full administrative access without even breathing hard. The nightmares resulting from a bunch teenagers with access to an entire county's grading system, scheduling, student records, employee records, etc., easily negated any "ease of use" that Windows might have provided.
Maybe we should play that point up a bit.
i seen a lot of stories about schools actually wanting to use linux insted of whatever, but how many of them actually pan out and move forward with it?
i dont know... maybe im missing something.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Honestly, they're volunteering so they're taking time to do things right the first time around. My old high school (which i keep tabs on, as I was the sole computer expert there for years) is horrendous with computers. Using the easily circumventedd security program known as Fortress, they wondered how everyone still played games. And the crappy cyber patrol software would block search engines and leave www.lotsofsexforyou.com open for anyone. For a county with more than 25 schools, all of them running through a single shared T1 (roughly), its pretty bad. Linux could fix a lot of it. The current problem is version differences, they've switched about half the staff over to Windows 2000 servers, leaving the other half on Novell. Thus, no one can access anything as the servers dont have access to the databases any more because the techs are ID10Ts. Rather than pouring money that should be going to teacher payraises and better books, they just upgrade windows again and break more stuff.
Sorry, ranting a little there...but the computer mishaps that my poor HS goes through really bothers me, as it has a negative impact on perceptions of computers and the internet...
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
When I was helping to maintain a local elementary network, I would have killed for the ability to switch over the Linux, mainly for the ability for remote administration for all of the computers within the school.
However, web browsing is not the only thing that they're used for. Teachers have all sorts of little programs that only run on Windows. They have reading tests, special library searches with propritary search enginies, and some have special drawing programs that have been tailored to small kids. Unfortunatly, these programs are only under Windows. I didn't try Wine.
The licences are expensive, but they expect all of their programs.
Though hopefully it will perhaps allow that 'girl that just wants to be a secretary' to break out of debilitating stereotypes and get the sys admin job.
Microsofts OS+office really doesn't cost much for schoolls. It's like $30 per seat.
Schools also often have some rabatte on hardware but thats alot more expensive anyway.
So, if they can afford hardware for $500-600 per seat, why can't they afford software for $30?
I guess they don't put much stock on training students to use the most prevalent (Note: I didn't say the best)office automation tools in the marketplace (MS Office)?
What about all the people in physic's , chemistry and engineering to name a few who work in a *nix enviroment. Advanced skills skill's scale down easily. Low end skills don't scale up at all.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
Linux is making an impression upon school kids now. Great! Now all we need to do is fix the biggest problem with Linux distros these days. They are all designed to be servers!
/usr/local/bin myself!
In order for Linux to really make a good desktop OS, a distro must be designed with that goal in mind. Namely, get userspace programs out of the RPMs!! Nothing ticks me off more than having to search through a list of installed system RPMs just so that I can uninstall an old copy of mozilla. We really need to get a separate installer for applications, and get it distro immune. This way, people can start making professional looking install packages for their apps so non-geeks will take them seriously. (Sorry, but I don't know any grandmas out there who believe that source code is the best way to distribute applications. We need to start statically linking apps, and using a generic installer/uninstaller sort of like the Add/Remove programs in Windows.)
Secondly, I haven't seen a gui application yet that I religiously envoke from the command prompt. Get gui applications out of the $PATH! If I wanted to run xcdroast from the command line every time, I would put a symbolic link in
There are other issues that I'm SURE will get me modded down (like X11 no longer being an efficient display method), but the two biggest problems that I see are the two I listed. There are other obvious issues (like the need for autoruns), but most of these have been taken care of. We really just need a desktop inclined distro, and a way to keep system packages separate from user installed packages.
Okay moderators, down we go.....
You can set up MS Terminal Server to share out sessions via X. Leave everything else Linux, and whenever necessary for MS Office training give out licenses. My recollection is that the licenses are set up so that you aren't limited to a particular group of X terminals/X workstations, so this can be a cost effective way to provide access to a stable, centrally maintained NT machine, while having reliable, Linux desktops.
Of course, a better solution would be to teach people how to use computers (independent of OS or application) so that they can use whatever they have to. However, I'm not sure if that is possible for everyone.
You know, if my kid's school ever tried to force him to use Linux, I'd pull him out immediately and send him to private school. Or, failing that, at least a school that can afford a decent operating system. But that's just my opinion.
Hi, I'm a pretentious cock who will make some gay comment about ignoring AC posts here.
that those MS programs will be as dominant as they are now 10 years from now.
That's what we should change. It can be a good decision in the long run, both for the kids and the society.
If a school has computers specifically for using the internet and typing papers, then Linux would come in handy. Linux has Star Office and Koffice for word processing, and mozilla and konqueror for surfing the web. The good thing about all these programs is that a school doesn't have to pay anybody anything to use them.
The Flash 5 plugin has been available for Linux for quite a while....
a sh /english/linux/5.0r47/flash_linux.tar.gz
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/fl
One of the main reasons Linux isn't so popular amongst the average users is that that they are used to windoze since they use it in school.
If more schools start providing Linux environments to their students we might end up with a larger Linux users population than Gates would like.
Yeah, it's a damn shame that the standard has been macs in school, and not windows anyway. So you can pay for macs and not get a windows education, or not pay and not get a windows education. And that's putting aside any debate on whether you really need a windows education.
If you don't teach them word, doesn't mean they aren't learning how to use software. By learning the ideas behind it, kids can easily learn another word processor. It tends people who learn computers late in life that can handle a changing interface. Anyways, MS changes the interface on Word with every version, so does it really matter?
By the time these kids get out into Real Life the corporate standard (of what corporation BTW ;-) may/will be changed.
Besides there are very good professional office apps out there. Myself, I actually prefer Word Perfect over MS Word, and have done so since before Microsofts predatory behaviour dawned on me.
By stating that using this or that for K-12 kids in school because todays business use or dont use it is absurd and had it been applied before we would still use feather pens and ride a horse to work...
And, even if they use more advanced things such as automatic table of contents, columns, merging, or anything else that I myself have never used, wouldn't it be better to get people to use document formats with open standards (such as XML, others?) instead of lame proprietary standards?
What if she does not want to ?
Are you going to deny her option to be a secretary ?
Is it really a sterotype if that's what she wants to do? Does everyone have to follow what you think their life should be? Isn't the point of "breaking sterotypes" just to be yourself? What if that's what she, or even he, wants?
Hell, I've love to be a stay-home dad, myself. I wouldn't mind at all. Is that not ambitious enough for you? Should I go to the top just because I could? Or should I just be happy?
Whatever makes you happy, and for some, that means a fairly mentally trivial job. That requires training, usually in MS Word and Excel. That will no longer be provided.
This is definitely a move in the right direction for linux, i hope this sets an example for other schools to follow along. Not only will this introduce linux to newbies that would otherwise only consider using it after living in a microsoft world for a while, they might even consider adopting it as their main operating system at home. If it weren't for apple pushing schools so hard to use their computers, they wouldn't have made in nearly as far as they did. maybe we can see the same for linux ?
Your time has no value.
I am a Linux user, both at home and work, where my advocacy sometimes gets me in hot water. I think it's great that these schools are going Linux, but having "parental volunteers" maintain the network is, or can be, a recipe for disaster. Unless you get some slick Linux people in there, the AOLers and the A:\SETUPers will not be able to support it properly. Thus, it will be a classic straw-man case for Windows. Any budding MCSE geek can keep a Windows LAN limping along, and there are a lot of them.
That all being said, I think this is a great way to teach people, kids especially, how computers and networks actually WORK, instead of creating another generation of double-clickers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Uh oh, if schools take up Linux, Macintosh will lose a lot of customers... unless they put linux on a Mac box, but that would be rather expensive compared to the minimal cost of a low grade PC.
~ now you know
From reading the article, it looks as if this school district is doing the same thing as Largo Florida. They're basically taking a bunch of old and otherwise useless machines and outfitting them into Linux thinclients that run off a master server. This is great so that schools aren't only strapped to keep up with costs for software, but this frees them from having to keep up with the latest hardware to run that software. Bottom line for the residents of the towns using linux are either (A) lowering taxes from not having to spend so much on computing resources, or (B) better overall school performance by using the extra cash to help the school run better.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Honestly, it would be so much simpler to get a Mac OS X Server (which can do Windows Domains (RSN with 10.1), YP, and Mac domains). Then get a small group of each kind of computer. Life is good. As people use more of one kind, get more of that kind; user accounts will move with the person. Then there's no debate over liscensing from the server and/or what kind of computer you use.
A school oriented Linux distribution, with only the basic stuff installed (Browser, mail reader, office application, ...) would be nice.
So yeah, it's happening more and more and we see a story here and there... some city government adopts Linux and now some school. That's wonderful!
Some other reader comments that it's a mystery that it took this long for that to start happening. Well, no it's not... the teachers and administrators often choose the computers and OS's. What *is* a slight mystery is why Apple failed to donate to the school... now that's a mystery... are they slipping or can they no longer afford to do that?
The best part of this is that it better assures Linux's acceptance from the ground up. Now it's in the hands of more kids. Let's face it, the younger Linux users fit the profile of that kid (played by Matthew Broderick) from "War Games." Now we should (hope) to see an increase in comfortablity with this "new OS choice." (Okay, so it's not "new" to us, but it's still going to be very new to a lot of people and isn't that part of the detractor of Linux? It's new and/or unknown?)
As for these 43 machines... I have to wonder if they are "good enough." Will the impression grow that Linux is slow to the point of being unusable? My first adventures in Linux were on my scrap computers... not powerful enough for my Windows usage... But since Linux was making a name for itself (at the time) for being able to run on my more modest hardware, I expected great things. When I didn't get great things I was very disappointed.
I hope this new direction goes smoothly for these new pioneers because these first impressions can mean a lot. Now we are starting to migrate from FUD to FACT and Linux's reputation is even more on the line than ever. The solutions to problems may ultimately be simple but if the answers aren't to be found, it often makes some situations appear impossible under Linux. It's not time to celebrate yet. I would love to see a follow-up on this story with interviews of the support crew, the faculty and the students about their reflections on the migration to Linux. It could be important information for anyone who is concerned.
I recognize that a "greater percentage of the web" is viewable with i.e. over Netscape, especailly on linux, but I think your appraisal goes way too far in how bad off they are. I also think I may be being trolled. Anyway, what sites do you think that a *high school class* won't be able to view using netscape? MTV? ESPN? I think the more academic sites are less browser-specific.
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God I wish slashdot had spell check
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
I remember that schools had Macs alot, becuase Apple made it a better deal for schools. Everyone used Macs in school, but now those mac-educated kids use Windows (or Linux :) So the idea that Linux in schools will get them hooked while their young isn't supported by experience. Nor, I suspect, will the school using Linux make the kids into Open Source advocates or linux-hackers. It's for the internet, apparently, so they're not going to be learning to use a command prompt. Sure, it's a good thing, and maybe one or two kids will turn to Linux, but it's not a real victory for expanding the Linux user-base. Most of the kids will go home to their Windows ME computer, log onto AOL and maybe might mention that "teh puters n school r weird" to their friends in "Teen Chat 56735"
Erik
Erik
"You," Bite me.
"Each and every one of you." Bite me.
Make room everybody, Bernie has brought in his Beowulf Cluster for show & tell...
Instead of giving her teacher an apple on the first day of school, Suzy brought in a G4, running LinuxPPC.
As someone who came of age in the days of cassette drives and TRS-80 model 1's, I cannot imagine anything cooler.
I remember that it used to be Macs everywhere in the schools. The major difference I can see between the Mac of the late 80's/early 90's and linux today (at least as far as the general public would see it) is that there wasn't an abundance of business software available for the Mac back then. There is a ton of quality, low/no-cost business software available for linux today.
There is also a good number of 'fun' software packages out there too -- MP3 players etc. to attract the Internet surfing masses. We just need a killer browser.
As I remember my high school days (which coincidentally weren't too long ago), there were not evn any system administrators for the basic networks. If they couldn't successfully manage a Windows network on the staff they had, imagine trying to keep a Linux/BSD network? It would just be a huge security hole. The only time UNIX was ever used in my old high school was when I found an old Sparc system and wrote a perl script to catalog music at our radio station, and even then they had their inhibitions. Schools used to be domainated by Apple, now it's Microsoft.
Sorry, if they want free software they can use Linux, but they are rightfully expected to pay for commercial software. Why should government agencies (which schools are) have software free that the public pays for.
How long before local governments decide commercial software must be made free for the benefit of the people (but only to governments, businesses can pay full price)
I cannot see how its backfired for MS, they are a corporation, and corporations are supposed to make money. If the schools don't want to pay they have a choice.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Slashdot doesn't work when I use Konqueror. 1.9.something (I think?). I have to hand edit the URL. An extra "slashdot.org" is in every link. I don't think that would be good in a school.
Best Slashdot Co
Personally, I wish them good luck. I think that the chance to play around with an alternative OS and not confine their use to Windows is a great start in life - particularly as the kids involved will probably end up learning more about technology in the process. Just like the Mac has enjoys a good place in schools, if this works, maybe others will take the leap and go over to Linux.
I don't believe that it will be an easy task though: it will be more effort than the article appears to make out. I know sysadmins who will only buy technology that requires an absolute minimum of maintenance and attention. It's definately a brave decision, and if they manage to pull it off, then well done.
I've been using StarOffice to submit my weekly status reports to my boss. The difference is imperceptible. In fact, we recently discussed the possibility of putting Linux on our corporate workstations, just as an in-the-back-pocket concept, and we spent about two hours creating a test workstation that would do everything our users needed to do. smbmount and smbumount made attaching to the Windows NT network easy. Mapped drives, created word documents, etc. The fundamental lesson I learned from this was that no matter what was running underneath, if the user interface was kept consistent the end-user need not know the difference.
Good money decision, but really bad in the long run.
Aside from your misunderstanding of what constitutes an "education", exactly why is this bad in the long run?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Who's to say that Linux won't become the new standard?
More recently, I've seen several churches and charities make the switch. Again, it's an issue of licensing. Such organizations usually get 2 or 3 year old hardware donated to them, Linux fits the bill in that it doesn't necessarily need to be the bleeding edge to do the "office stuff".
As other applications, such as attendence, inventory and other fun stuff get up and onto sourceforge & freshmeat, and as long as Linux to get friendlier and friendlier, more and more charitable organizations will make the switch.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
test
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Hook 'em young, I guess. Never mind that, like it or not, Windows is a corporate standard that people need to know to get "standard" jobs. This is great for the kids that want to be sysadmins or network admins, even programmers, but for the girl that really just wants a job on the side as a part-time secretary and spend the remaining time with her family (not uncommon, even these days) this is not going to give her the education she needs at all. Hell, even for people that need to do design docs in Word, this won't help. Please, don't feel the urge to mention StarOffice or OpenOffice as we all know they just flat suck.
Good money decision, but really bad in the long run.At first anyone might see it that way. I mean MS Word and MS Excel are the two most commonly used office programs right? So you'd be doing a disservice by not teaching them right? Wrong.
If you can use a word processor then you can use a word processor. If you can use a spreadsheet program then you can use a spreadsheet program (i.e. you know what a "formula" is). It's more important to grasp the concepts then to memorize keyboard shortcuts.
For instance I was looking for a manual on Photoshop. Most of the ones I found promised to teach me what all the filters did and how to navigate my way thru all of the menus. Meaningless. I already knew how to do that without a 50 dollar book. But I found one that taught me the basics, how to use different colorspaces to your advantage, details that were independant of the graphics program. This is truly education because it enables the student to use any program he/she wants to or is forced to by their future employer.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
It is an incredible irony that the school's homepage was created in Microsoft FrontPage.
(View the page source)
Schools are for training the kids into USEFUL skills.
Except you're missing a major point. Most people have no need whatsoever to learn about how a computer really works. That's like requiring kids in school to learn how a car engine works, how their microwave works, how their television works, etc. 'How a computer works' is completely irrelevant to about 99% of the population. As long as they can USE one, that's all that matters. So, if you want them to realistically be computer literate, then Linux, sadly, is not the answer.
I was thinking the other day about my high school art teacher - I was wondering if he has incorporated computers into the art process. I must admit that if I were still in high school, I'd be spending some time showing off the Gimp to him. Who, eight years ago, would have imagined that a free, Photoshop clone like the Gimp would exist in all the splendor that it does today? In middle school I remember the horrible experience of using M$ Paint to do projects. The fact that these kids in this school have access to a Scheme-scriptable image editor makes me....well, jealous.
If you didn't read Slashdot yesterday, there was an article about the Linux Browser war. You see, on our free platform, we have 5 or so browsers, and they are all competing with each other. The competition is fierce, since all want to be the best, so most of these browsers are quite good and getting stronger by the day; people who are using other, closed platforms are stuck waiting for a single vendor to release something called (I think) IE6. Not much competition there, is there?
Just imagine - now kids will learn that they have CHOICES. Instead of being spoon fed Microsoft propoganda they will learn that there is an OS available to them the lets them do what ever THEY want. They have choices in almost all the programs and can program their own with the wealth of tools available!
-->If Linux was written by Bill Gates & Co. - no one would want to switch !!
but for the girl that really just wants a job on the side as a part-time secretary and spend the remaining time with her family (not uncommon, even these days) this is not going to give her the education she needs at all.
Dufus. That 'girl' isn't going to be looking for a job too soon necessarily. But I also want to point out that you are "chicken-egging" the situation a bit. Futhermore, you could say the same about the presense of Apple computers in the schools. You are basing the concept of the future on the notion that nothing will change from this point on. That's rather unreasonable.
But don't worry. Apple has been trying to maintain its market share through donations to schools and such. It hasn't made a tremendous change in the work place. What makes you think it will make a big difference now?
Okay, how about WordPerfect Suite 2000 for Linux? Costs about a quarter of MS Office and has full functionality. And don't give me this crap about how MS Office is SOO much better unless you have ACTUALLY TRIED both. WordPerfect is as good, if not better than Word. QuattroPro is not as good as Excel, but it is not something to scoff at. The everything else, Presentations, Paradox, etc... is as good as any MS product. Just because MS has illegaly used their monopoly to pressured the computer manufactures to install MS Office, and on top of that, broke all conversions as soon as they had the upper hand, thereby creating larger dominance in the market does not make their product orders of magnitude better.
Funny thing, unless the people are trying to attach Visual Basic scripts to their documents or spreadsheets, which I doubt your part-time secretary will be doing, someone who learns on WordPerfect and QuattroPro will have no problems with moving over to Word and Excel. This is probably because MS copied the WordPerfect and QuattroPro layouts (yes, WordPerfect and QuattroPro were there before Word and Excel).
Anyway, cost is a huge deal. When I was in high school Windows 95 came out. First the school was not about to install Windows 95 on their 486SX25's, but they A) didn't have the money for new computers, and B) didn't have the money for the OS. 20 licenses at $100 each is $2000, that could buy one classroom full of books. And considering our US Government class's text book was from 1984 we desperately need the books over an expensive OS.
Look at today. If you are a principal who is working with a very tight budget you have a couple options.
- Spend $X per license each time MS comes out with a new OS or a new Office suite. That way your school can produce those workers for the "standard" jobs. Thereby running your school in the ground by spending way too much money on expensive software.
- Have the volentary Sys-Admin install Linux, which is free, and then 1/4th as much on licenses for Office software that is just as good as any MS product.
In the end it not only costs less to do the second plan but there are also other benifits. Students can learn how to work with a UNIX environment, which, in big businesses, is not as uncommon as one might think. The students, especially in a charter school, are probably getting quite a bit of experience with Windows at home anyway.Disclamer - Opinion of Person
The process of installing and operating Linux usually entails learning something about the hardware it's running on, so sitting a child interested in computers in front of a computer running it might actually have that additional benefit over just plunking him/her down in front of a locked-down Windows system. Besides, are you that certain that Windows will remain a standard over the next five to ten years?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I think you're missing the point. There are many purposes for computers in a school system.
Unrelated to the actual teaching mission, computers provide database capabilities for tracking the students' progress and special needs, if any. Grades, attendance, counselor or faculty notes, all can and should be retained electronically. Computers provide communication via messaging or email between administrators and faculty who are likely in widely-separated buildings and often widely-separated towns. They permit rapid production of mind-numbing statistics and colored charts that are so in vogue with top-level edubosses.
Within the educational mission, though, there are a lot of things computers can be used for. For the schools fortunate/large enough to offer computer-focused classes, does the operating system matter? Well, if you're learning C or C++ or Java or Python or whatever, then not really. If you're in a class teaching computer basics (what's a CPU, what's RAM, etc.) then again no. If you're in a lab and using a computer to interface with a data-taking gadget, once more we find the OS to be irrelevant. Foreign language tutorial? Electronic arithmetic flash cards?
There _is_ a role to be played by Windows, though, and you've hit on it. Students who intend to pursue clerical jobs should be exposed through their vocational classes to Windows and Office. Those, as you point out, are the standard tools and it's reasonable to expect that the students will need to know them. However, even these students should be exposed to alternative office suites on alternative operating systems to prepare them for the fact that they might end up in (for example) a Macs-only office. Exposing them to concepts that span a single product makes the difference between teaching and training.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
I think that a number of events may conspire to give Linux a possibility of entering the mainstream market over the next few years, the most prominent events events being...
a) MS tightening up on casual user piracy by actively preventing multiple user installs.
b) added cost of licensing MS products under the new scheme, this will mean that companies will think twice about paying for MS when a similar amount of bucks buys you a single RH Linux disk and a fairly hefty admin staff.
c) some (currently small) demonstrations that Linux now has the capability to function in school and public service environments
d) KDE and Gnome genuinely appear to offer almost everything on the desktop that Windows does (OK the Office suite for KDE is not there yet, but real progress has been made).
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The worst offenders are commercial sites of all places.
But if they use their Internet connection for mainly educational purposes then I cannot see them having that many issues, if any at all. In fact most sites run perfectly well (never had Flash lock me out due to it being old! Had it lock out on some werid 3D stuff though).
In fact some IE sites may just lock you out based upon the fact you're not running IE, even though Konqueror/Mozilla may well render the page correctly.
Really your issues are purely FUD and are hardly based in the real world to any large extent. Right now I am using Konqueror.
This is great that a school has done this. Hopefully more will follow, then finally the owners and designers will have to think about providing support for Linux. Support for Linux basically means good web design anyway.
StarTux
If Linux plays their cards right, this could just be the launch pad they need. Many schools in the past have used Apple computers due to lower costs and donations of the systems. If Linux is able to get in with the younger students, as the students grow, they will more likely stay with the familiar operating system.
What the school system in Canada does is put Macs in Elementary Schools, and Middle Schools, then in High School they gave us PCs with Windows 98, I think instead of having all the PCs in High School use Windows, or Linux it should be Half and Half to give the students a choice and this will also have introduced them to 3 OS over the 12 years that they are in school.
Mozilla for Linux is a very capable browser. I've managed to get Realplayer, Java, and even flash working well(and I did it rather easily). What more do you need for good browsing? Sure there are some sites who only offer Windows Media player, but even in some of those situations, XMMS can be used.
What's even better, is Mozilla has a great gui e-mail proggie. It's very basic when stacked up to Outlook of course, in fact right now it barely keeps pace with Outlook express, but it will do the job adequately.
Go Lakers!
Give us some real news. Dead jews, dead niggers. Anything but this bullshit.
This is not a Troll, but are you all on crack? This is not a good thing. For hardly anybody. Putting Linux in a k-12 school system is not a good thing. Despite what anybody here says, Linux is not as easy to use as a Mac, or even windows. I make no bones baout this, and it may be part of the reason I love it so. Linux was designed for servers, and high end workers, not kindergarteners who have enough trouble putting their coats on, much less operating KDE. As someone who supports an elementry school's computers, software for schools often needs to be bright, simple, and colorful. You guys remeber MECC software, and Broderbund? Elementry school are places where using Print Ship can be a challenge, and the concept of "where did I save my work" or "I have to save my work?" are allmost insurmountbale. 9 times out of ten, teachers tend to be the least computer savy people you'll ever meet. And this is not necesaarily a bad thing, since they deal with very small children each and every day. Perl scripts aren't skills they need. Remember the idea here is total cost of ownership. Linux takes time to learn, time that teachers don't have to put in.
Mod point free since 2001
Maybe students will now be able to have the opportunity to start *learning* something about computers, rather than just dinking around with them like they do at my high school. Sure Linux has its downfalls when it comes to a desktop OS, but you sure as hell learn a lot about how computers really work when tinkering with Linux. Few public high schools offer any computer classes beyond keyboarding. Once interests sparks in teachers, students, and parents for Linux, public school education systems hopefully will recognize Linux as a useful tool in computer education.
I think a subtle point you miss here is that nowadays children ARE more computer literate in the sense that they know how to use a computer to do things for themselves. The difference with these children is that they will be Linux-literate instead of Windows-literate.
;)
Think about it. A big reason why I use Windows today is because I grew up using DOS. If I'd grown up using Linux and StarOffice, I'd probably be using Linux today as my main OS.
The biggest problem I have with talking about Linux to most people is that they've never even seen it, much less used it. It puts them at a disadvantage, and since most folks like to pretend they know everything on the 'net, they certainly can't admit they're at a disadvantage.
These kids are going to grow up knowing better. And they're going to wonder why all these people bothered to pay money for office and OS software that was dramatically inferior to the free stuff.
And take notes on usability. Lots of notes.
What are they going to do about taking work home? Not every kid has a copy of StarOffice or AbiWord at home...
Um, save files in RTF or another format that can be read by whatever those kids are running at home?
~Philly
The reasons that I like to be able to browse books online are
a)It's easy to flick between relevant pages (assuming that keywords are hyperlinked)
b)It's incredibly easy to search them for specific phrases/words (as long as they have a search function, of course)
c)Um, that's it.
I don't see how flash would improve any of these criteria, in what circumstances do you deem it necessary?
That requires training, usually in MS Word and Excel. That will no longer be provided.
If the students learned how a computer works by using Linux, then using another system becomes less of a chor especialy if it is windows. also, I use word and exel on a daily basis, most of it was self taught since I came from a claris works background in highschool and applewrite on the IIe. the only thing that matters with office software is the basic concepts of how things are done. once that is leared all the user has to do is to poke around to find where the new program places the commands and formating options.
it is the same in any field, programming for example. my high school taught pascal on macs. I had not Idea how this was going to help me become a programmer as it seemed like and underpowered language. but guess what, the concepts I learned made it simple to learn a new language, I just had to learn the grammer and commands, which was very simple.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Great question! Every time I hear some goof talking about how children are supposed to learn ``the standard'', I wonder whether this is supposed to be a general education or is it supposed to be vocational training. And you never hear a decent argument about why teaching a vendor-specific product is the correct thing to be included in a school curriculum. Heck, when you hear any arguments at all that attempt to support it, they all boil down to ``we got a donation from the vendor'', blah, blah, blah.
What was that Isaac Asimov novella again? Oh, yes: ``Profession''. Should be required reading for any numbnuts that proposes teaching a vendor-specific technology in schools.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Lots of schools depend on donated computers.
Most donated computers are usually pre-used by businesses or indivuduals who have upgraded to faster machines...
therefore the schools get 3-7 year old boxes, which would be too slow to decently run Windows, but handle Linux nicely...
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
... some of the kids will notice that their favorite page isn't rendering very well in Mozilla (compared to how it renders on their home computer). And then they will notice this giant directory named "/usr/src". And then one or two of the kids will figure out that they can tinker on the browser themselves.
That's how I learned to program -- not with browsers, but with games in BASIC like Hunt the Wumpus, back in the day.
I wokr for a school division in Canada and the costs for licences here are about to go way up because of a deal we had with MS runs out in November... no more win98 licences for 60 bucks....
We are seriously looking at free software and Linux. Just now we're moving to 602 Suite (free) and I'm toyinw with some Linux ideas....
Problem is, teachers and boards of education don't understand all that well and it's hard to convince them of something they have never heard of....
As another poster mentioned, it makes a lot of sense for schools to lean toward *NIX, since it *is* what a pile of universities use and teach CS in (including Colorado State U. in Ft. Collins).
PhilMills
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be quoted out of context on
More wannabe crackers and script kiddies
What are they going to do about taking work home? Not every kid has a copy of StarOffice or AbiWord at home...
Why not give out a copy on disk as part of class materials?
Meanwhile, the world turns foolishly on and ants tickle his butt.
It's nice that everyone feels that Linux use in schools would be good. But if you want to see Linux in use at your local K-12, get out and volunteer with their technology committee. I did, and it was an eye-opener.
Because school administrators aren't technical, they decide what to implement based on what other schools in their area are doing, and the Windows status quo is maintained. Install Linux? What's that? How would you do it? It's free, sure, but without an expert to help them learn, all but the bravest will stay away. They have too many other issues to worry about, like getting electrical upgrades, equipment, and developing computer curriculum with teachers that aren't up to speed.
If you volunteer and work as part of a school technology team, you'll be helping them move through all of these issues with minimal risk. It's then that you'll be able to bring up Linux, piquing their interest with the cost, helping them understand why it's better, and assisting with the implementation and the learning. They'll be exceedingly grateful, and you'll get to increase your karma somewhere other than here.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
Oh no! Somehow I think if you can teach someone to use VI, they can figure out how to do ANYTHING in Excel. j/k :P
It's not about forcing people to break stereotypes, it's about allowing them the choice. Unfortunately these days young women are not socially *allowed* to be geeky at all. The idea is making more choices not less. Pull your head out of your ass and look around.
There are computer room monitors at the local high school. They are there to help students when they can't figure out how to do something. Unfortunately, these people were given jobs for some political reason and not for being actually qualified for the job.
When I was there, NOBODY was allowed to use the 40 IBM machines in another room, everybody had to use the 20 Macs. There were many reasons why we weren't allowed to use the DOS/Win3.1 machines. I personally was blamed for attempting to crash the hard drive by removing the "Leaf" wallpaper from Windows 3.1. They really flipped out when they saw me sitting in from of a command prompt typing in DIR. Apparently that causes hard drive crashes as well.
They EVENTUALLY got off my back and let me do whatever I wanted after I kept ignoring them and using the IBMs anyways. Gee, no HDs ever crashed either.
But the moral of this story is that no matter how many computers you have, you still need somebody to show the kids how to use it. And how many schoolkids are going to have Linux geeks for parents? Do Linux geeks have the ability to get a date, let alone procreate? Just kidding. But I don't see this helping out so many rural schools due to lack of knowledge and lack of funds to acquire knowledge. Linux may be free but somebody has to learn how to use it. Of course, if one of the major distros were to have an install feature for "Super-Secure-Only-StarOffice", then it may make this a little more likely in a lot more schools.
Don't let the "I'm sure I'll be modded down" make you mod this up. What a lame ploy. Please, mod this idiot all the way down, just like it says.
Installing Linux is something I would be thrilled to do, since it is what I work with and it is the OS I am the most familiar with - plus it won't cost them anything. But what good is that if there is no educational software available? I'm thinking elementary school stuff, like spelling/grammar, mathematics, geography, educational games - that sort of stuff.
I'd prefer if it was opensource - not because I'm a zealot or anything, but since english is not our mother tongue, I guess I'd have to do a bit of translation work before they can use it.
I'm totally ignorant as to what's available, any suggestions (reply or mail) would be very welcome in deed.
^]:wq!^M
I hate to rag on Wired, but this article is a huge Linux puff piece that takes as fact everything that the people involved with the effort say. Why don't they have any responses from people at Microsoft or Apple (who in particular is hugely invested in the education market) to any of the issues brought up?
It (the post) doesn't suggest that you should use imperfect software to enforce your will. It suggests that the shortcommings mentioned aren't in the realm of concern.
The poster freely admits that the web browsing functionality is substandard. The point of his post is that why worry about functionality that you don't need. The poster is not praising the shortcommings, but merely stateing that they don't matter.
In that light, his statement is quite enlightened, as opposed to "That statement is so stupid, I am not even going to answer it, except to call it stupid."
I know you, but what am I comes to mind.
Examples of useful command-line calls:
I agree that it's good to have these things in menus and such, but please don't take away ready command line access. As others have pointed out, having stuff in $PATH doesn't hurt anything.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Please hear me out, as I could very well be wrong. I just want to know exactly what for and why you _need_ to use Flash, and Shockwave for. I mean, you work for a publisher. Why does a educational publisher need flashy web graphics? Really, I'm not being elitist. I am merely curious.
Fact is, many times, once you stop and evaluate what you need to do and how you are doing it, often times you will find that you're overkilling it. No bad feelings to you, just asking.
C Pungent
A school computer system using primarily donated 486's and Pentium 75's isn't going to have its students sitting around waiting for Netscape pages to load or even IE pages. They're going to use Lynx.
Even IE under Win95 is horribly slow rendering HTML on a computer of that vintage. If they do use a graphical browser they're going to disable image rendering.
Hmmm, if you mean secretarial stuff, then maybe but the majority of software I see running when I'm out at shops, or at the dentists, are THE MOST ARCANE, HIDEOUS, TEXT-BASED DATABASE PROGRAMS I never imagined where still in use.
If people can be trained to use them, then something as simple as MS Word should be a breeze.
But I found one that taught me the basics, how to use different colorspaces to your advantage, details that were independant of the graphics program.
Agreed. Technique, the "art" of what you are trying to do is independant of the interface you use, as long as you are familiar with that interface. To be honest, it took me no time at all to transition between Windows and KDE, and even my mother (who used Windows to browse the web on -gasp- 2 occasions) was able to start browsing the web on KDE as well after about 2 minutes prompting. (I wouldn't trust her to startup/shutdown either OS BTW...)
Now we're going to have third graders screaming their heads off at each other about the merits of emacs vs. vi and Gnome vs. KDE!
/. accounts!
If you thought the arguments were juvenile and immature before, just wait until those first graders get
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Growing up and tinkering with computers since I was a kid, I had thought that everyone who used a computer knew what I did. Everyone knew how to configure hardware and software, run scripts, communications protocols, etc. Then one day it hit me: the vast majority of people using computers are retards.
Before you starting bitching about my politically incorrect statement, hear my out. I have users in my office floor who can't do the following:
Defrag a hard drive.
Map a network drive.
Copy a file from one folder to another.
Search for a file on their computer.
Make a "shortcut" on the desktop.
Know the difference between the monitor and the computer.
They're completely retarded. What's the saying "Make a computer easy enough for an idiot to use and only idoits will use them"? It's happened.
TODAY:
I'm got 512MB of RAM! I rule!
So, how does memory work?
Uh. It lets me do....stuff.
YESTERDAY:
I've got 16MB of RAM. Of the 640K of main memory, I've manged to free up 604K by placing part of DOS and my other TSRs in the high memory area. Oh, and I've configured EMS beyond 1MB, here, check out my config.sys! Etc etc.
Oh, and the "shell/TV" arguement blows, my man. Anytime you manually tune something (doesn't have to be a computer) will bring you a much better understanding of how it works. Do you push a button and pictures magically appear? Or do you know that you have to tune the associated number with a specified frequency? Hey, how's that frequency thing work, anyway? Let's find out...
And to those who say "you don't need to know how something works to use it"? You fall under the above user category. You're the morons who stop by bitching that they can't find they're little icons on their desktop because there's a window in front of it. How do I move the window? Why should I have to know this!?? I just want to use my AOL!! Why are computers so hard to use? I don't have time to learn, I've got to drive my kids to soccer practice! Can't you just do it for me? It'll go much faster, and I won't have to bug you again until tomorrow!
Why don't you actually take some responsibility in today's feel-good, pass-the-buck, I-deserver-to-have-things-handed-to-me world and learn how things work?
You have it wrong. The guy said to teach without the GUI. I'll tell you a story which might change your mind...
While working on a grant at SDSU, I heard of an instructor in Maryland who found that her students who used a DOS-based PC to write english papers received better grades then did the Apple Mac counterparts. A 2 year study found that she was correct in that the DOS-based PC users used larger words, had a higher wordcount per sentance, and used more complete sentence structures. The students were enrolled in an English class because they didn't fail the entrance exam but also weren't good enough to bypass the English requirements altogether. The English department at the university didn't determine exactly what was going on but figured it was because at a DOS-prompt, you have to think about what you need to do next. In a GUI, you are prompted.
The DOS-based users has the DOS prompt staring at them and THEY had to figure out what the next step was. When they got to the wordprocessor they were already in a higer thinking mode then when ICONS lead you thru the task.
Once you're well versed and trained in the skills the computer is HELPING you with, you don't need to have such a bare-bones interface to get to what you want to do. Teach kids how to think and they will take off from there.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Do everyone a favor, if you are going to just nakedly display your sexist asshole attitudes in the same breath as your typical conservative shithead "if it's small and different it must be bad because" status quo industry shill" rhetoric, post as an anonymous coward so people don't have to waste their moderation points pointing out your flamebait
Have you ever used a GUI before? You sound like you stopped using computers in 1983. I think you need to upgrade your skills.
"what are dependencies?"
What kind of dumbass example is that?
You think dependencies are something new that Microsoft brought us with VC++?
Funny, I could have sworn last few programs I've written were dependant on other shared libraries.
"You can develop programs IN windows?"
Yeah, I'm sure that question came up a lot.
Dude, it is obvious you are talking out your ass.
Ok, I know that there have been several posts pointing this out already, but I have something more to add. Even though I've completed my training as a Linux Knight by building my own distro, I still consider myself an average user. I play games and surf the web for pictures of anime babes and download songs off of napster (all hail Gnapster!) and all that other whatnot. However, I still have yet to come to a site that I can't get at with Konqueror. My own personal experience is that everything is available. Sure, I can't see stupid shockwave intros, but then I just click through with skip shockwave intro. Flash works fine, as does Java 2. I honestly don't understand where the naysayers are browsing under Linux (or KDE at least) that they can't see the web with Linux.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
"They won't be using IE to browse the web," they complain. So what? Outside of flashy entertainment sites, what REAL educational web sites use Active-X and Windows-only plugins? None.
"They won't learn how to use MS-Office," they whine. Really? So every student who has an option to use a different word processor at school will automatically be ignorant of another word processor? Couldn't it be that maybe, just maybe their parents have a computer at home running MS-Windows? And just perhaps, they have MS-Office as well? I can tell you, I grew up in schools surrounded by Apple IIE's, and 68k's and PowerPC's, but somehow I still know how to use Windows -- and Linux! And even further, EVERY word processor now offers pretty much the same features, interface, etc (except for LaTeX which is WYMIWYG not WYSIWYG). Not to mention that's it's a friggin' graphical interface. I've met people who have used MS-Word back to Win 3.1, and they still don't know any key commands -- they go to the pull down menus. I knew every WordPerfect key command in 5.1, but somehow I still managed to transition to Word, StarOffice, AbiWord, etc..
"Licenses are only $30/seat, that's really not that expensive," they argue. You know what's a better deal than $30/seat? $nothing/seat. (whoa -- kinda looks like Perl). Linux offers them web-browsing, e-mail, remote administration, virtual virus immunity, default filesystem permissions and the school doesn't have to pay $0.01.
"They need to learn MS-Windows for a job." You know this is pure crap because not every company uses MS-Windows. Aside from that, almost every GUI out there looks and acts the same. They all stole the design from Apple, who in turn stole the design from Xerox-PARC. It's a Graphical-User-Interface. MS likes to brag about how it's so intuitive. So it should be no problem to pick up Windows for a job. And if they want to be a secretary instead of a sysadmin, that's fine. But then they don't need an in depth understanding of Windows to do that job either. All they need to know is where to start typing.
You know I don't want to get too Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence on anyone, but isn't their some practical value to having a deeper understanding of how computers work. I'm not talking about requiring assembly language to be taught in every school. I'm just saying that if people understood more about why their computer does the things it does, then maybe they wouldn't hate it so much. And it seems that the best way to learn this is to use a different operating system. To see how the same machine can appear and run completely different, but still do the same job.
For as much as these same people bash over zealous Linux advocates for trying to force their views on others, they are just as guilty for trying to force their system on kids at school. Most higher education institutions in the country run Unix, so doesn't it make sense for secondary schools to do the same? Especially when it's free?
What are all these people afraid of?
almost 100% of school staffs are the opposite of smart
Yes, when I pull my head out of my ass and look around I see female co-workers and a female boss, who codes as well. Hmm, yeah, you're so right. Mmmm hmm. What you see is not always how it is everywhere.
ok....well....as a taxpayer and a skateboarder....this is great....who needs word when you has the worlds most powerfull editor = vi
GUI is great for:
"Oh look, I want to write a letter, check my email, and check out slashdot at the same time.
Terminals and shells are great for:
I want to search this directory for bmps, take them and convert them into jpegs. Oh, I also want to count up how many of them there are, and make a nice sorted list of them showing me where they all are. Incidentally, I know there's over a gig's worth of images to process so please don't do it till 3 in the morning, and only if nobody else is using the system.
I challenge someone to do the example above with a GUI.
> > for the girl that really just wants a job on the side as a part-time secretary...
> hopefully it will perhaps allow that 'girl that just wants to be a secretary' to break out of debilitating stereotypes
The continued propagation of that sort of stereotype (e.g. guys code; girls type) is one of the reasons so few of my gender want to get stuck in sunless offices with the current crop geeks. I know females who dislike geek attitudes enough to have no interest in in persuing computer studies.
So, yes, the steroetype is debilitating to females because it means fewer of us will learn computer skills, but at the same time, I believe it also harms the male geek. Some girls assume all geeks are chavanist pigs, and they don't want to be around them. If computer study had seemed so gender biased when I was in school, there's no way I would have gone near it. Heck, the Engineering Frats made me disgusted with Engineers (though not with Engineering).
Would it have been so hard for the initial comment to use the word "person" instead of "girl"? Or perhaps I should assume that geek boys want to be as unattractive and unwelcoming as possible to the opposite sex.
P.S. to the boys in High School: offer to help a female install linux on her PC -- but DON'T install it for her. Let her get involved with it. That way, she is less likely to find you pushy, and you'll have a topic of common interest.
"The girl makes Godot look punctual." -- Buffy
Surely the closest equivalent would be "Windows startx in schools"?
-- Arm yourself when the Frog God smiles.
I heard that M$ gave away licenses to public schools. Is there truth behind this or am I misinformed?
it's a sig, wtf?
Only 20 papers were selected for review out of more than 4,000 in total. The review itself was carried out by a bit of software rather than a human, and the paper apparently doesn't consider the point that the DOS users and the Mac users were using different word processing packages (one good? one bad? who knows?) let alone different operating systems.
The fact is that computers are tools to help people: by definition the tool that people find easiest to use is the right one for them. For most people today, that's graphical. It won't always be that way, but it won't always be the command line.
-dair (I refuse to believe we'll still be using awk in 300 years)
The reason? Prohibitive costs for licensing, of course.
This is only true for Windows. My school was able to negotiate a very good licence from Apple for both the Hardware (G4 Server, latest iMacs) and the OS - a mix of 7, 8 and 9. Additionally, the school has a licence which enables it to give copies of FileMaker Pro to all pupils and staff (about 1000 people).
And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.
In what way? The browsers aren't a patch on IE5, believe me - we've been using Netscape for the past year an there are a whole host of sites that don't work (notably a friends online interface for his email sever on his cable modem) because netscape can't handle the Javascript.
Also, our school has a wireless network and 8mbit ADSL connection, but the primary use of the network is for the schools Database, all in filemaker, containing all the data on pupils, staff and the like, which is used from everything to the school address list to creating cirtificates for winners of races in the Swimming and Athletics competitions
Using macs when everybody uses PCs at home is no problem, but it in no way makes pupils more computer literate. IMHO being computer literate is more being able to adapt to new software based on your experiances in other software - I can use MS Office, so I can use appleworks, I can use Mozilla, so I can use IE and so on. But even so, there are some whos ability with computers consists of turining it on, logging in and connecting to the internet or running a game - one guy I know has to get one of his brothers to install software for him - even though there are IT lessons at school.
It odesn't matter what you use, people will not bother to learn more than they have to to get on the internet or to their favorite apps.
-- John Linford
Love the attitude. Back here in the real world you need to realize that whatever the ideal for the world, it is still in the same state as it was thirty years ago in many respects. There are an increasing number of people "crossing over" into what were gender-specific jobs, however there are a large amount of people still stuck in the sterotype. This is not a problem; if that's what they want to do then that's their right.
Though before flaming me for one sentance again, you should have read the previous comment like yours in which I stated that I would not be against being a stay-home dad. It's not sexist, it's reality, folks. Sometimes things don't work like the books say they should, and a lot of women are still in clerical jobs, so I used it as an example.
I'm also sure that had I used any reference to age or capability of a person, however accurate and demonstrated in reality, I would have been similarly attacked. Please think before you type. I never stated advocacy for the idea, only acknowledged that it exists.
The number of you people that have social disorders is, quite frankly, astounding.
This is a victory for "free as in beer"; "Free as in speech" wasn't a player. Implications with respect to political agendas, possible corporate countermeasures, etc. should be obvious.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
It's sad that the primary use of a computer in a shcool is "The Internet"
whatever happened to expressing creativity through code? I remember when I was in High School, our computer room was a bunch of TRS-80 model III's. Computers in schools should be a tool to learn. Internet access??? Why? Maybe a networking class, with your own web and mail servers to play with.
Let's not forget why children are in school. To learn important skills they can't get elsewhere. How does being able to browse web pages help this?
The dress code.
"string DressCode.xls | more" works wonders on that Excel doc...
But what no-one ever did for her was give her any direction.
She has talked to school councilors, and career councilors and after they perform their little tests they tell her she can do whatever she wants.
By the way, right now she is working through a temp agency and gets jobs as receptionist, filing clerk, etc and she is pretty happy about it.
Considering she was taking a course an electronics / computers when I met her it is kind of sad. (Although I am glad she found something she can feel good about).
What was that Isaac Asimov novella again? Oh, yes: ``Profession''. Should be required reading for any numbnuts that proposes teaching
vendor-specific technology in schools.
I hate to be a me-too, but that story has to be among the most insightful ones in recent history. I think mine is in a collection called "10 tomorrows".
A dingo ate my sig...
Elitists are too full of themselves.
...dare I say...only tools to be used to achieve a greater objective? Not everyone is using them to become a l33t h4x0r or make kernel changes. Not everyone is trying to maximize the performance of a tool that they might use once a year. Not everyone needs to know what every little function does for every little program.
Honestly, do you understand that maybe computers are
People ranging from office assistants to managers to data entry personnel to telemarketers (ugh, unfortunately) all use computers but they don't need to know how they work.
I would hope software engineers, people in CS/EE, etc. do know how to code but that is their job. As long as your fellow workers can do the job, it is fine that they don't know how things work or aren't running the latest kernel that has XYZ feature to make it 0.005% faster in ABC applications.
On the other hand, if you are in a hardcore software development field, I would suggest you get the hell out of that company if the majority of users around you do not know about computers.
Gee wiz, is Linux so unused in schools that an installation at *one* school makes it to Slashdot?
(not trolling, being serious)
First off, the GUI doesn't make one computer illiterate it actually lets more people use computers. It raises literacy. Maybe not to the level you like, but that's your opinion. The millions who use PCs and have no understanding of their innards are about as much as a problem as the millions of people who can't rebuild the engine in their car or replace a C-V joint.
Secondly, they're still using windows at home which is good because when they move on to college and then some job, chances are if they aren't CS majors they'll be using windows.
The problem, if there really is one, is that no one is programming typical home machines and there's an assumption that you have to know C++ and some Unix to get a handle on it. If you're using windows, use Visual Basic.
I'd much rather see a school teach VB or VBScript in a Windows environment to automate tasks and actually program the thing instead of being limited to whatever software you can buy.
I don't have a problem with the linux + windows solution this school is using, but this elitist attitude of dropping the GUI is just short-sighted and stupid. With linux advocates like these its no wonder it has such a teeny tiny market share in the workstation market.
by definition the tool that people find easiest to use is the right one for them
No, fool. The tool that yields the best results is the right one.
I believe someone said that about BeOS as well.
Real geeks use punchcards!
I have a suggestion for the ASCII art poster. Make the outline of the picture in bold so we can see what you're spamming us with.
I think anything that educates kids that there's a world beyond Microsoft can only be a good idea.
My school here in Argetina is considering coming over to the light side, and I'm doing a feasability study as part of a business project. I've got Debian up and running with GNOME on one machine, and so far there's been plenty of interest from pupils and staff alike.
One major problem is the system administration (who's ever met a decent sysadmin in a school?), ours doesn't even have a clue what protocols are used on the network for filesharing, authorisation etc. The ability to install windows and add a couple of network settings is pretty much it as far as qualification in this field goes.
The plan with this installation is to test how well a group of students can adapt to GNOME from Win2k. All that really goes on is simple stuff like word processing and web-browsing, and they should have no trouble at all using mozilla and abiword, so I'm optimistic that al will go well and if we're lucky the school network will be liberated before WinXP gets its clutches on it.
Now if I can just get the Quake 2 demo on there...
mmmmmm.....open sauce
I attend the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia. While most of our school's machines are running Windows, our most advanced computer lab, the computer systems lab, has some thirty workstations, a 16-machine cluster (sorry, but it's not Beowulf), and some nice servers which provide standard services such as mail and the school web site. Everything is running Slackware, so students wishing to take advanced computer science courses will be given an introduction to Linux (as well as Lisp if they take the AI class!) here.
But we've made it even easier to maintain this network - the system administrators are mainly students (a team of 7 or 8, with some assistance from teachers in the lab). This way, the students can also learn a thing or two about system administration (although some prior knowledge is a requirement) and Linux in general, maintenance is absolutely free except for new equipment and a rare piece of software such as Mathematica, and we can show off our high-tech skills to the rest of the world.
It seems from my experience that not only does Linux work in schools, it can work when run by students. The school featured in this article apparently has its share of high-school students; maybe some of the more tech-savvy ones who would normally be bored by schoolwork would appreciate the chance to help run their new network.
Elitists are too full of themselves.
...dare I say...only tools to be used to achieve a greater objective?
:)
If your comment is directed toward the poster, I can assure you that neither of your assumptions are correct. If not, then I would agree...to a point.
Honestly, do you understand that maybe computers are
I absolutely agree. In today's world, a VERY important tool, but only a tool.
Not everyone is trying to maximize the performance of a tool that they might use once a year.
People ranging from office assistants to managers to data entry personnel to telemarketers (ugh, unfortunately) all use computers but they don't need to know how they work.
If you honestly assume that the retarded end users are using computers "once a year", you really need to have your head examined. Computers have, unfortunately, become a huge part of our daily lives. They get used many, many times during the course of a day, even by those you listed above.
As long as your fellow workers can do the job, it is fine that they don't know how things work...
And that's where the problem is: fellow workers, whose job depends heavily on computer usage, do NOT know how their computers/hardware/software works and therefore, cannot do their jobs effectively. Do I wish everyone would be able to recompile kernels? No. But I do expect, as should everyone, that users know how to solve day to day problems with programs they're using EVERY DAY.
Example: I build houses and use a circle saw. Now, how stupid would I be to run and find an "expert" to "fix" my saw every time the blades get dull, it needs to be cleaned/oiled, or I need an extension cord? What if I did this every day, a few times a day? If I'd never used a saw before, granted, there's a learning curve. I might need a teacher's help initally. But as I use it more and more, I'd better get better with it, no?
Do I really need to know the specifications of the internal motor that drives the blade? Nope. But I should understand the concepts and mechanisms that make it work, in addition to the routine things I can do for maintenance or minor repairs.
On the other hand, if you are in a hardcore software development field, I would suggest you get the hell out of that company if the majority of users around you do not know about computers.
*chuckle* I'll wholeheartedly agree with you on that one.
At the risk of feeding a troll, I'm going to take issue with your statements.
Freeloaders mentality, that's what you mean right?
How exactly is it freeloading to use free software? It is provided for free and its use is encouraged by those who create it.
No, we are talking here about technical education and polluting their minds with leftist crap from RMS front is NOT what I want my tax money to be spent on.
Again, how exactly are their minds being polluted by having the GPL explained to them? Living in a world with the DMCA, the ??AA groups, BSA license audits, etc., I think it certainly should be explained that not everything is like that. What's wrong with pointing out that some software exists that won't require you to agree to a EULA the size of a novel or take away your rights to actually make use of what you purchase in a way that is most beneficial to you instead of the company that sold it to you. What exactly are you so worried about?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I think I know the real source of the more-poorly written documents...
It looks like you are writing a term paper... Would you like to use a template wizard to:
* create an outline
* fill in generic content
* have me write it for you
You bet schools mainly use their computers for 'net access. Judging by all the emails I get about horny schoolgirls wanting me to check out their websites, they must be at it 24/7.
...j
But the question he never answered in that story was: why do they call it the Olympics?
Yeah. Nine Tommorrows was one of my favorites when I was, oh, about nine years old.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Yes, it's all well and good until Timmy can't open his latest paper for printing because it was saved in Microsoft Word. What a sad day that will be.
Oh shit! Linux and "a school in Colorado" in the same story?
Someone had better hide this from Jon Katz... :-)
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
You whined about your post on K5... but seriously. This borders on flamebait.
Hint: People who learn more abstract ideas about computers, and more generic ideas usually have no problems adapting to other systems.
Are you trying to say that every school should be obliged to teach windows because that's what you need to get a job? Hello? You aren't in highschool as 'job training', you are in it to learn theory and academics, to gain some base knowledge. I'd MUCH rather have my kids learn a thing or two about linux than 'here's windows'
Can you point me to some information on this? I didn't think this was possible...
You cannot use an X server to view sessions served out by MS Terminal Services, as far as I know; that's completely contrary to what MS does.
I'd think users using old X terminals to view windows apps is the *last* thing MS wants.
IE 5 walks all over mosaic 1.0 that's it.
Netscape 3 is still faster than IE 5 and, Netscape 6.1 (mozilla 0.9.2) just blows the IE out of IE.
Netscape won the browser war, and they still have it won if you don't count AOL.
heh heh heh. nuff said
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Here are a few cool things you can do with Linux for just the cost of the hardware.
1. Diskless art terminals: ThinkNIC (www.thinknic.com) has a wonderful product, a diskless internet workstation. Use some technical knowledge, and you can run GIMP from a server with Remote X, get 4 or 5 of these things at $300 each, and you've got a graphics lab for under $5,000.
2. Web Terminals: I don't mean to be plugging the ThinkNIC (no, I don't work there), but you can use it as a web terminal, placed strategically, like in a student rec center, where kids can surf or check e-mail.
3. Administrative Management: If you're skilled with PHP, and don't want to spend any cash on a competitive product, you can whip up a grades management system or something of that nature with just a dash of MySQL.
4. Haxor Checks: I admin at a private high school, and we just got a donation of about 50 Pentium-133 computers, complete with 2GB drive and 10/100 NIC. So, I set up Snort and SSH on about 10 of them, and put them in the basement of our dorms, sniffing for haxor activity.
5. FreeMail: I don't know if that word is copyrighted, but if you replace MS Exchange (which alot of schools have) with Sendmail or Qmail, you can save quite a bit of cash.
6. Critical Services: Who says you need WindowsNT for a DHCP or DNS server? Linux! A small to mid sized school can run a DNS and DHCP server on one underpowerd box, say a Pentium-100.
7. Support Windows 9x: If you sit down with Samba for a while, you can make it do everything you could need it to do. I have Samba set up as a Primary Domain Controller, and this computer holds all my home directories for the whole school.
What it all boils down to
This is what I have saved with Linux:
3 Windows2000 Server Licenses. (DHCP/DNS Server, Primary Domain Controller, Exchange Server)
1 Microsoft Exchange Server License
5 Windows98 Licenses (ThinkNIC's in the art labs)
5 Adobe Photoshop Licenses (Replace with GIMP)
$2000x5 = $10,000 (Replaced actual $2,300 PC's with ThinkNIC's)
1 Microsoft Proxy Server License (Replaced with Squid)
I hope this gives you guys some ideas.
--Ted
Check out the ROX Desktop project.
/usr/local/bin). There is no install procedure required other than copying or dragging one directory. It also means that apps are compiled purely relative to their own application directory and are fully relocatable in terms of where they can be installed - I could just as easily install it in ~/bin as in /usr/local/bin and the app wouldn't care.
It's mainly an alternative desktop environment (lean, mean, not bloated like KDE and GNOME, etc., etc.) but he also has an interesting way of packaging applications that's somewhat Mac-like. Basically, all of an application's files are kept in one "application directory" rather than being sprawled all over the file system as is the current practice. The only change needed from the current system is that the file manager must be aware of these "application directories", and when the user clicks on one of these directories, the file manager runs a script inside the directory that then takes over and runs the application. Applications can thus be installed simply by copying (or dragging in a file manager) the application directory from the distribution medium or tar file into any directory in your path (such as
> Privatize all schools! Get the tax thing out of the way,
> and funding problems disappear! It's called "free market",
> and it works for everything else, doesn't it?
No, it doesn't. There are some thing for which the free market is ideal, and some where it is a very bad fit. Schools are one such area. There are several reasons:
1.) Privatizing schools assumes that everyone can afford to pay for an education. This is an extremely dangerous road to tread, as it holds the very real risk that poorer kids will fall behind scholastically, starting a cycle of "can't get a good job because of lack of education/can't educate the kids properly because it costs too much". This already happens in the public system, and there's evidence in history to support that it just gets worse if there are private schools but no public alternatives.
2.) Privatizing schools completely changes the goal of the school. The idea behind a not-for-profit venture is to maximize services given a certain budget. The idea behind a for-profit venture is to maximize profit. By completely privatizing the system, you run into some of the same problems that you encounter in hospitals, where monetary considerations can affect the quality of care.
3.) Privatizing schools can (but does not always) lead to excessive commercialism, as schools accept funds from corporations in exchange for considerations like advertising or exclusive product contracts (there are many schools that get paid money by distributors, for example, to sell only certain brands of soft drinks or snacks from the vending machines). Although public funds certainly don't eliminate this sort of thing, they do help take the pressure off somewhat.
There are some services where government oversight is necessary (think of what the roads would look like if taxes weren't allocated for maintenance, or consider that the only alternative would be toll booths everywhere to support it). Since quality education is the backbone of any advanced (or advancing) society, it must remain available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay for it.
Virg
Teach programming to everyone (Thanks to GvR) and teach kids a command line in school. Make them understand the technology that they'll use every day of their lives. Let our kids develop some computer savy and brains.
People use things everyday without understanding the full scope of how it does what it does.
If you think that everyone should know the internals of computer science, let's take it a step further. Let's also require that every student take an auto-mechanics class. They should also all have to take cooking classes as well becuase you can't really appreciate a fine Beurre Blanc sauce until you know how to make it yourself.
WIMP interfaces make people dumb.
The fact is that everyone has their own interests. They allocate their memory to other things that we have no knowledge of or interest in. It doesn't make them stupid.
In fact, I feel that if my users have to understand every little detail of computer science to get their jobs done, then I'm not doing my job very well.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
> They did afford the hardware that costs atleast 20
> times as much in my experience.
This argument comes up time and again, and every time, the failure of logic astounds me. But, I'll go through it again. The school has to buy the system hardware no matter what OS they run on it. The licensing for Windows sits on top of the hardware, but last I checked, if the school's going to run Windows they still need to buy the computer. So, if the computer costs $X and Windows costs $Y, the following equation applies:
$X is less than $X + $Y (eq.1)
So, the school saves money by using Linux, no matter how cheap Windows is.
Did you finally get it this time?
Virg
StarOffice (and soon OpenOffice) runs just fine in KDE, is definitely "there", and has everything most average users and school kids need in an office suite.
I work for the Department of Education, in Australia, and my primary role is to give schools technology advice. Whenever a school is in need of a solution that provides email/proxy/DHCP/Fileserving/Web hosting, but don't have the technical skills to maintain the server, I never hesitate to recommend E-Smith. It's the perfect set-and-forget server for schools without a techie on hand.
CLI users will just write down the exact commands to type to do the few tasks they need to do. They may even begin to memorize those commands and not need their cheat-sheets anymore. But that doesn't mean there will be understanding of what those commands mean and how to reuse those commands in new and interesting ways.
This view is based on my experience in tutoring/supporting a lab full of AutoCAD students (AuoCAD has a CLI as well as WIMP). Of course not everyone is like this. Many of these students went on to become good CAD drivers. But using a CLI at the app or OS level is no guarantee of computer literacy, believe me.
PS: Its not the GUI, its the underlying complexity that all-to-often peeks its head out from behind the curtain that makes people 'dumb' about computers. You can be sure that many unix CLI users rely on their sysadmins to fix their problems.
DCMonkey
I think this is a great thing. I allows the student to learn even when not in school. Hurrahh! for Linux!
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Though remote administration indeed works for when the system is for the most part operational, wouldn't these schools probably need a full-time on-site sysadmin?
We all know that MS Office and IE rule, IE is the best browser and MS Office is the best office suite ever. Linux in schools is not a good idea.(PERIOD)
Cal State Sonoma hear in CA (duh) uses lixux box as client computers within the library. they are cheap and they can take the abuse. However I would prefer them to change the windowing system...the machine's are f'n ugly and not the slightest bit user friendly.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
What an incredibily clued-in teacher this Mr. Lehmann is. I wonder how long he'll last before someone realizes how subversive the plain truth concerning the utility of computers really is, and shitcans him. "[S]tudents and teachers [doing] their own development." Hah! That'll be the day. But I really don't see how this contributes to ingraining desirable consumer behaviors into the children, unless he talks up the self-esteem-building aspects. Happy children want their parents to buy things, you know.
He hasn't a prayer.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Bring her in I will test her myself
Well anyone dumb enough to pay so much for a computer . . . oh wait!
<DUCKS>
I am working as a Network Admin in a High Energy Physics Lab. This summer we have a couple of high school physics teachers who came over to do some research. We were talking about the computing facilities available in high schools. David was quite happy with Windows and Microsoft office loaded on all the 400 computers in his school. The reason being, the licensing fees for office was "only" $45 per machine, around 10 times less than the commercial value. Let us say that MS gives away the OS at a modest rate of $5 per machine to schools. At this point you can calculate the cost incurred by say 5 such schools per county, 400 computers each @ $50 per machine ... Multiply that by 100 such counties !!
Anyway cost is just one of the factors. What I am wondering about right now is - What if there was a Linux distribution customised to the needs of school children? For starters, we need
* A GUI like KDE or GNOME, both rock IMHO
* An office package KOffice or StarOffice
* Something that can help in publishing their Daily/Weekly magazine
* A package to draw pretty pictures with
* Easy Connectivity to the Internet
* Some Math packages
* more ideas...
What are your thoughts on this? In case you are still wondering about the cost, it comes to $10,000,000 (I think this is a very conservative scenario)!!
--> Your Wisecrack Here
What's a good linux disty to run on a P166mmx CPU? I only have a 2GB hard drive in the system.
The questions are:
1) Of all the people out there arguing FOR WIMP GUIs, how many of you can EFFECTIVELY manage from a CLI? More than just ls or dir?
2) For the CLI fans (admittedly, I'm one) how many of you can EFFECTIVELY manage on a GUI?
I'd bet the 2nd group has considerably higher numbers.
Nuff said. CLI users ARE more computer literate because they can perform the same tasks EITHER WAY. GUI-only users can't make that claim.
assertion: a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
The questions are:
1) Of all the people out there arguing FOR WIMP GUIs, how many of you can EFFECTIVELY manage from a CLI? More than just ls or dir?
2) For the CLI fans (admittedly, I'm one) how many of you can EFFECTIVELY manage on a GUI?
I'd bet the 2nd group has considerably higher numbers.
Nuff said. CLI users ARE more computer literate because they can perform the same tasks EITHER WAY. GUI-only users can't make that claim.
assertion: a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
Thanks for the explaination, but I do take offense to the comment:
Linux advocates must, must, must move away from thinking "if it can't be done with Linux, it must not be worth doing" towards "how, both technically and politically, can we get Linux to do this thing as well as Windows does and do so at least as easily as Windows does." Otherwise, Linux will be the sour-grapes alternative only.
Come on, man. I never said anything like that. I said I didn't understand what Flash and sw was needed for in a publishers web-site. No, I haven't used Flash or Shockwave. I have only visited sites that use it intensively once, in my pre-Linux days, and It took forever to load on a dial-up. I could say more about why it isn't a good idea to use, but I don't want a flame war, I don't want to fight. Use Windows. I don't care. I really don't. But I won't be. I think the point here is that we, as a community, feel proud when our software that we've worked on gets used to help out an impoverished school, or whatever. Thats why we get excited about news like this. We created the software to be useful, _if_, and a big _if_, it can be useful to you. Otherwise, we are not a business, I write software for myself mainly, for education and for functionality. If someone else finds a use for it, great. We NEVER said that We were trying to kill Windows. Some of the community did, but that ISN'T all of us. The most vocal are the minority.
Besides, the story is about a poor school, with 486's and P 75's. I really doubt a Flash site would run well on it anyway.
C Pungent
It's great when we see articles on Linux in Schools but I wish they would at least get the links right:
http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/index.html >> Main Linux in Schools project site, links on using Linux as a server for schools. Many examples and how-to's.
http://www.k12ltsp.org/ >> K12 Linux Terminal Server Project - 20 minute install, RH7.1 based terminal server with links to $200 clients. Very cool!
http://www.ofset.org/ >> Free Software in Education and Teaching - Some good work with software for schools happening here...
http://www.k12ltsp.org/educational_software.html >> Thoughts on educational software...
Bottom Line... We use Linux in our schools because it works well for what we need to do. It's free and support from the Linux community is the best. We're always happy to answer questions. ;-) Paul
It's like forcing a homeless person to pay a real estate tax. If the schools are tight for money, and they pay Microsoft, where is the money taken from? The children's education?? That's just nuts. I'm glad they're doing this.
But you just wait for a PR backlash in a few days.
I'd have to disagree. Actual academics *do* push Word quite hard, mostly to make it do the same sort of thing that LaTeX does by default . . . :)
However, your essential point is right. Very few people push word processors hard. Many of those that do would be better served with something else entirely.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hmm. Well, I solved the typing slow thing a few years ago by switching to dvorak. (if my nick didn't give it away). As far as the learning curve, everything is hard at first. Windows is hard if you haven't grown up with it.
If it ever becomes an issue, do the following before you have built up a limiting infrastructure:
1) adopt a server side scripting language capable of analysing requests for OS, and browser type. I use JSP.
2) Create a wrapper or custom tag for both Flash presentations and quicktime movies.
3) Program it so it responds to Apple and Windows requests normally, but for Linux it embeds a quicktime movie player applet based off the Java Media Framework program the wrapper for Flash movies to check for Flash capable Linux browsers, and apply alternative content if otherwise.
Problem solved.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
We use Win4Lin, a program that provides Windows-like terminal functions
dude NeTraverse the guys who make win4lin have just fired all but 5 of there employee's so expect to be using Vmware real soon
Apart from that this is a good thing. This is becasue all distro's of linux come with development tools which are far better then those on windows. Perhaps we will see a generation of people who completlly skip basic and go right to C.
Computers are about impowerment and not about the perverse comsumer scean that seems to have developed where people think you have to spend ten grade in licenseing just to do anything. What was it the man said about teaching a person to fish anyway
Before I went to bed last night I started xftp downloading the entire kde 2.2 SuSe directory from sourceforge. Now I've just got to get everything compiled and installed. In my copious spare time.
Best Slashdot Co
Almost all the computing knowledge I amassed in school was outside the bounds of what the teachers wanted us to do (Which, predictably, was to use Office and QuickBasic - Because the teacher refused to learn Pascal, C or even VB to accommodate those of us who wanted more)
Unless they're deliberately pulling down offensive or illegal (in terms of the law) material, and they have finished their class assignments, kids should be allowed to explore with as few limitations as possible.
You argument is sounding dangerously like a modern argument for 'Children should be seen and not heard'. Fence a child's imagination in and the child grows bitter and resentful. Let them learn at their own pace, if they show a desire to, and the difference will show.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
Bingo. The human brain is designed to take the easiest path in most cases. The easiest path is very seldom the best path. There are so many examples ( a big on in Redmond ) that I will leave it as an exercise for the student. ;)
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
But then when you're teaching a class you have to give different instructions. For each mac we have a common system that's secure and very stable, we would have to make one for all types of computers. We would have to have networking staff know all OS's and be able to fix them. It would cost more than the OS in man hours. We're talkin K-12 here.