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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?"
Don't install BASIC on those computers. God, why repeat the mistakes of the past?
Put something that won't damage them for life. Better than BASIC are:
-Logo
-Python
-one of those programmable robot fighting games where you write programs to control fighting robots.
-Even LISP would be better than BASIC
-Pascal
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
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
true && more || less
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.
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.
Well, if you install it now, by the time they get out of college, they just might have mastered it.
1;
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!
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.
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.
Obviously you have never tried teaching children anything. Your choices are way off.
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.
vi is a toy editor. It's cute, and handy for tight memory situations, but should be avoided by those wishing to get real work done. Emacs is much more feature-rich and robust, and is an industry standard. Its menus make those difficult-to-reach key commands unnecessary.
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.
On the contrary, interpreted languages are a great way to learn programming without the complexity of Makefiles, command lines, objects, and debugging. I'd recommend the Mono project, which is a Linux port of Microsoft's C# language, as a good introduction to interpreted programming.
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.
Mathematica might help in college, but what about after graduation? Nobody in the Real World uses Mathematica. MatLab is the only sane choice here.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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=
Python is an excellent starting language.
Some folks I think have even written up some presentations to help teach Python to beginners.
Other than that, I think a web browser, an email client and LyX is probably about what you'll need.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I know this may not be a very popular opinion, but I really think the best way to teach them to program is to use an IDE with a language like java that makes things point and click, to create graphical programs, at least to begin with. Why? Teaching Hello World that prints out to the console command line using Emacs is not going to excite middle school students about computer programming, it is most likely going to discourage them. However, if they can make programs that look like real programs they use every day from day 1, they will be alot more likely to want to play with things and see what "tricks" they can do with their programs. Starting out by creating a window and printing hello world in that, and then moving onto buttons, basic if logic, loops, while loops, etc. Middle school students really need this coddling. Then work out something w/ the high school where they force emacs and C on them.
An alternative to teaching students to "program" is to teach them Html, and then move onto improving their pages using javascript or php. This will not really teach them solid concepts about programming though, although it may work out better in getting them interested in programming.
They've already done your work for you. Don't reinvent the wheel again.
Nope, no sig
Would you care to elaborate, and also explain how those 'other programming languages' aren't?
While you're at it, go to this forum and try to explain to them how their favorite language reeks.
Here is a good version of BASIC that appears to be free. Requires Line numbers but is very interactive. i.e. It remembers variables that can be manipulated outside of a program. You can load a series of programs and GOTO a line number to continue with the same variable values, or just load 1 program with all your routines and GOTO them when you want them. Google Search for UBASIC version 8.8 appears to be buggy but 8.74 is good.
FYI, Red Hat != Linux. Red Hat == Linux Distribution Please use the correct reference.
assert(expired(knowledge));
First, read "Hi Tech Heretic". If you still have questions, reread it. If you still have questions, there's not much I can do for you.
Turtle graphics. It's simple, and does something kids can appreciate. It is better at subroutines than most BASIC I have seen.
But really, if you knew why you had the computers there in the first place, you would have already answered your own questions. It seems someone wanted computers just to have computers.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
just rember that theyre 8, and theyre not you, a rare few will even care what is running as long as it continues to do so. Dont shove your os politics down their throughts, just give them something that works and isnt complicated.
as for paper writing just use openoffice, i cannot even understand vi or emacs or whatever, nor am i willing to take the time to learn, because i alerady have a solution that works for me with OO.
and you may want to ask the teachers what they NEED and want. they will most likely give you genres and not specifics
I want 2D games back.
Seul/Edu Educational Application Index
Suel.org Home Page
Dmoz.org Linux: Projects: Education
tux4kids
... if you don't have a plan for the software in place already? Why'd they select your bid? What benefit to the children would replacing the systems possibly have?
I'm sorry, but classroom time, especially for third graders, is way too valuable to be wasted on computers. You're not going to find educational software on Linux that in any way replicates the software that they were using on their Apples, no teacher is going to want to spend class time teaching eight year olds about the tedious minutiae of futzing with shells and program invocation and KDE's ass-backwards menuing systems and the zillion other counter-intuitive tasks that dealing with computers entails -- to say nothing of learning it all themselves.
These systems will be gathering dust before the school year's out, in all likelihood. Now, that's not your fault, really, still less Linux's, but the situation is basically pointless. You might as well leave them in console for all the good that they'll do.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Good shells?? text editors?! I don't know what kinda schools most people here went to but at my middle school (hell, at my highschool for that matter) a majority of the people would have had no clue what to do with a dos prompt. Something like vi would have left them scarred for life. (just for reference, my school system was pretty good academically, sent a number of kids to the ivies, etc).
Don't forget also that if you're doing K-5 a number of the kids won't be able to read, or at least read well. I would stay as far away from command prompts as possible. You can leave them in of course for the adventurous few children, but for god's sake go gui.
I'm sure many of us here from my age and around have fond memories of early apple ][ type games. Oregon trail! Number munchers! That crazy game where you did math and built space ships or something. Get good games like that and hope they will run on linux.
Make sure you have good easy to use art software (ie, not gimp) -- that can be easily used by kids to draw fun little pictures and maybe print them out. Paint brush in windows is perfect for this.
I don't recall writing too many papers in my elementary years, and certaintly NONE AT school, but I suppose it can't hurt. Another good idea imho would be to get a lot of bookmarks made for your browser, so that kids can go play flash games, read websites targeted for their age groups etc. I'm guessing you're putting no censorship software, but it seriously might be a good idea to block porn sites or something.
Programming languages are also pretty unimportant. A few kids will get em no doubt, but I'm guessing those kids will already have computers at home to play with.
Remember, short attention spans, things that can be done in a group good and are fun are good! Good luck finding linux software for most of this (might try wine for a lots of it).
They are middle school students. From where I went to school, this means handing in typewritten papers. Nowadays, that means papers processed on computers for the most part.
So, we have the WYSI(sometimes)WYG word editors like Work 2k and Word XP, and we have LaTeX2e. In Word, I can spend hours fiddling with colors, fonts and the like, trying to get it to display the way I want it to display. In LaTeX, I can write out the report with just a few commands that will automagically create a TOC, Index, footnotes, and bibliography. LaTeX will handle the font sizes and layout for me, letting me concentrate on getting work done.
That being said, I'll admit that it won't fly. Unfortunately, LaTeX requires a bit of initial knowledge and study before the system works, and even if it might save people hundreds of hours of work down the road, they won't take the time now to learn it. Same with vi.
So give them OpenOffice.
I'm going to go back to my cave and gnaw on the bones of lusers now.
As others have mentioned, the software that is installed on these new systems needs to be consistent with what the teaching staff wants/needs to do. You can probably get a good idea about this by looking at what is currently installed on the old Apple systems. Then see if you can find anything close that will run on Linux.
Personally, I'll be really surprised if you find much Linix compatible software that is suitable for the mission of these computers. I'm currently running Win98SE on my kids' computer, because I have not found much educational software for Linix. To be fair I must mention that my kids are younger that the users of the systems that you're working on, but in this case I don't think that the difference matters.
You might be confusing LyX with TeX (LyX is the WYSIWYM front end to LaTeX). I use LyX for every paper, even when I don't need formatted equations. I've come to find it much better than a standard word processor in the WordStar lineage. The advanced stuff is a little trickier, but I found that the initial use was extraordinarily simple -- I could get off the ground in no time at all. I can visit the LyX tips and tricks page to get more advanced stuff, and now I'm slowly learning TeX as I need it, making me infinitely better prepared for serious studies in Grad school.
Ceci n'est pas un post
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.
You haven't lived until you can say you played Oregon Trail in elementary school.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
replacing a lab of old apples with linux?
step 1: download an apple ][ emulator
step 2: download oregon trail
MORTAR COMBAT!
to typing, reading and problem solving.
Load ZORK!
Worked on me.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
What surprises and kind of upsets me is that the school committed to a particular OS before they have a clue as to what software they need or want, and whether it is even available. I'm not saying Linux is the wrong choice, I'm saying that in this case you don't know yet, but the money has apparently already been spent. This approach to putting computers in classrooms is one of the reasons people vote against school budgets.
This seems dumb.
8 year olds with Linux?
You must have gotten the contract based only on price.
The approval board didn't bother to think that there
would not be any software beyond the OS?
The kids would probably be happier with the
Apples.
They already know how to use computers, either at home, or at friends, and on much better hardware than your school district can afford.
Computers don't give kids a magic leg up on learning: see allianceforchildhood.net They just make people think they're "doing something".
FYI: I taught computers to Grades 4 to 6 for a few months, we all had a great time, and I didn't turn on the computers in the lab even once!. I spent the time TEACHING.
Are there really people out there who haven't heard of Dijkstra?
In his paper dissing goto statements, Dijkstra didn't consider BASIC syntax harmful. He considered BASIC's distinctive "feature" at the time, namely overuse of goto, harmful. He considered languages without else, for, and while harmful. Guess what? Microsoft QBasic and most other semi-modern BASIC descendants have else, for, and while and rarely use goto.
Will I retire or break 10K?
See Debian Jr. for more information.
Your first stop should be Here
Your second stop should be here
Your third stop should be here
Your forth stop should be here
Your fifth stop should be here
Open Office would be my choice for an office suite (that or Star Office)
KDevelop is a decent enough development suite for use in a school, but with
this age group I would use this
project
For a good teaching language This
is a good place to start.
Hope this helps!
There's really no suitable classroom application tat I can think of anyway
What about using AOL® Instant Messenger to call home to get a ride, when the parents are online with dial-up and thus cannot take a POTS telephone call? That actually happened to my lab partner in a course we took last summer at the local tech college.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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...)