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Software Suggestions for Elementary School Workstations?
krog asks: "I've recently signed a contract with a local middle school to replace their aged Apple /// cluster with a roomful of IBM Aptivas running Linux 7.3. Now surely I will be installing such ease-of-use tools as KDE3, Gnome, and screen, but I am looking for suggestions of other software to install. Anyone know of any good text editors/BASIC interpreters/shells/etc suitable for eight-year-old children?"
vi - With their small hands and weak retention, 8 year olds will never be able to master the keyboard spans that Emacs requires, nor memorize the lists of arcane commands.
Languages - You aren't seriously suggesting that the upcoming generation should use an interpreted language, are you? If so, say hello to 20 more years of code bloat. I think C (and definitely not the horror that is C++) would be the ideal astere first language for anyone, especially a young, impressionable mind.
Mathematica - There is no more suitable program for 8 year old math than mathematica. I mean, you installed Linux where they used to have Apple ]['s, right? So it sounds like you want to give them the big iron (heh, not THAT big iron). So don't try to give them "Blue Teaches Addition" or anything lame like that--go for the gusto and install the full professional version of Mathematica.
Well, if you install it now, by the time they get out of college, they just might have mastered it.
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How much time could have been saved in college if someone would have taugh me vi in grade school.
From 2.5 to 7.3 in one day!?
That's one hell of an all-night coding session!
I have found LaTeX to be quite sufficient for all of my school-paper-writing needs. It's free, international, supports good advanced math, and does a good job of automating many things like kerning, spacing, placement, citations, and everything else
Yup. I'm with you. I can't begin to count the number of times that my eight year old has come to me in frustration because he can't input the maths he wants to using Word, his citations are completely fuxored and the o next to his W looks like it's a mile and a half away. Don't even get me started on his beefs concerning trying to get latin, cyrillic and kanji to display properly, neither of us has the time for that pandora's box.
LISP...right. My god, think of the children.
Without BASIC, how else can you play fun pranks on the classroom TRS-80?
10 PRINT "MISS LIPPE SMELLS LIKE DOO ";
20 GOTO 10
RUN
What I should have said was nothing.