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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?"
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.
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)
They've already done your work for you. Don't reinvent the wheel again.
Nope, no sig
LISP...right. My god, think of the children.
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?
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!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.