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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?"
I understand that "Red Hat" was implied there, but I still think that the not-so-minor distinction between one of the many Linux-using distros and the kernel itself should have been made, if not by the original story submitter, by the
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Screen? KDE AND Gnome?! Slashdot is not the place to ask for suggestions on what software to use - your school district should have somebody who specializes in educational software and stuff of that nature - the software has to fit the grade level, because, as much as you use the computer for fun, and for computer science - these are elementary school children who will use it as a tool to learn fractions and other basics of Reading Ritin and Rithmatic. Don't force useless, rather advanced programs on them because they are 'cool' - purchase or isntall programs taht assist your teachers in instructing the students in their classes.
And yes, I know what I'm talking about - I've been working in K12 IT for over 4 years now.
For an editor, you have a lot of choices. While there are the command line ones, I assume that you want something in X. My suggestions would be Kedit (a great notepad/wordpad replacement) or use something like Koffice/OpenOfficfe if you want something more like Word.
There seem to be at least a few versions of BASIC for linux. You could also just run QBasic in DOSemu :)
As shells go, I think that bash is the easiest, but that's just me. It's the default anyway.
As for other things make sure to put on Konqueror/Mozilla/whatever for the web, and don't forget to put a few games on (XBill! XBILL!).
That should hopefully get you started. My only other suggestion would be to get a list of programs from the teachers that the students like/use (or just categories) and try to find versions/replacements for them. Or just wait untill someone asks for a program ("Mr. Teacher, I want a program to paint happy faces in") and find one.
That makes me think, I belive that the Debian Jr. project has quite a few good programs aimed at little kids. Debian Jr. is here
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
1. The best person to talk to to find out what applications should be installed on an educational machine are the teachers and school administrators.
2. Determining what apps to install should begin with finding out which ones best meet the need of the curriculum.
3. Unfortunately most open source apps are best suited for geeks like you and me than for children. Most apps designed for kids are also designed to run on MS platforms.
I myself just set up a multimedia lab for an elementary school. It consists of 16 IBM NetVista A21's, a SmartBoard (i.e a touch sensitive projection screen that acts as an input device), and a projector with a laptop.
Most of the teachers are familiar with MS Office and kid oriented software that run on an MS OS. I am trying to expose them to Open Source versions of the tools they use (i.e. OpenOffice, Mozilla, Opera, etc.). It's hard enough to get them to embrace these let alone a whole new OS.
My recomendation is to go slow. I have set up these machines as dual boot. Only a few people in the school know this. Introducing the entire school to Linux, GNU, et al. is going to take time.
The kids will always more adept at using the computer than the teachers. They like to experiment. With that in mind, I think installing software that gives them the most freedom to explore without risk of blowing the computer up would be a good idea. As long as the learning curve isn't too steep, I'm sure the kids will be able to pick up the basics through trial and error.
I would also think that keeping 'internet time wasters' like IRC and Instant Messangers off of these machines would be a plus. There's really no suitable classroom application tat I can think of anyway, besides distraction.
Always keep in mind that the teachers probably won't know what the hell is going on, so make sure the kids can do as little damage as possible.
=Smidge=
I probably shouldn't be surprised as I used to work with a bunch of teachers who insisted that our MacIntosh computers in the lab were "CD-ROMS".
That said, my advice to the OP would be to make things as easy as possible for the kids to get a taste of computing and learn something usefule without scaring the teachers in the process. Teachers project their feelings to their students. If the teacher thinks something is too hard, the bulk of students will probably think so, too.
Real software engineers regret the existence of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC.
Even if you don't like it, it can do some pretty amazing things easily. If you don't believe me, you've never seem the movies that Alan Kay made in the 70's. He had 10 year olds writing programs which they did simple animation on.
If you read that too fast, read it again. He had 10 year olds writing programs used to make animation.
When I saw that it blew my mind. That's when I really realized that CS hasn't gone anywhere in decades. Hardware has gotten faster but programs haven't moved a Goddamn inch.
Emacs is much more feature-rich and robust, and is an industry standard.
Yes, emacs is available for every *nix, but vi is included with every *nix. So, which one is "industry standard", again?
Its menus make those difficult-to-reach key commands unnecessary.
vi has front-ends, too.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Apple III "clusters?" "Linux 7.2" ?? "http://north-vietnamese-army.mit.edu/krog/" (Have YOU seen where that redirects to?). This whole story was a fake wasn't it.
Trolled.
Would anyone please tell me how many
A) middle schools have 8 year olds
B) Aptivas (originally a home line since discontinued) could be sold... there's a possibility that they could have been donated, but then why not stay with OS/2 or the windows licenses with the computers?)
C) people consider screen an easy-to-learn tool (for someone who has X and doesn't use *IX for more than an hour at a time, much less that many times a year...)