Maine School & Linux

Feztaa writes "This story talks about a private school in Maine that has introduced linux into their computer labs, with smashing success. Apparently, they spent less than half of the money that other schools spent on new computer labs, and got better hardware to boot."

Comments

Computer lab or vocational education?

[gentlewizard]

Most middle school and high school "computer labs" seem to be oriented around the business department vocational education model. That is, they teach people how to keyboard quickly, use office productivity apps, maybe even edit a web page or develop a PowerPoint presentation.

Using Linux in the computer lab is closer IMHO to a real computer science lab like at the university level, where one learns how computers work.

It all depends on your intent. If the intent is to teach business apps, Windows is the right choice because that's what businesses use. But Linux offers a richer environment for understanding computer principles.

Cloning

[JohnFluxx]

"Having purchased 20 new, identical computers, it made sense to completely configure one machine and then clone the hard drive to the other 19 computers. However, Microsoft's EULA prevents a user from doing this, even if they have 20 copies of Windows."

Surely this isn't correct... is it?
Not even MS would do this - it makes no sense.

Maine & Linux

[DigitalVolume]

I'd like to see these schools get adequate support. I know that a few Linux distros are supported by their teams, but what happens in a core dump? What will Mrs. Teacher do when she drops back to a command line? What commands does she throw?

Without proper training, this is bound to fail. I know all of the public schools in the state of Maine have iBooks for their 7th and 8th graders. It's been given quite a bit of praise under that program. While I'd LOVE to see Linux make it here, I don't think that it's ready yet.

My $0.02

More interesting story than I had expected

[bafu]

That was a pretty bold move considering his previous experience was very light on Linux. I found the bit about the common questions he was asked particularly interesting. I'm used to the assumptions about Windows and Linux that exist in an IT environment, but hadn't considered that education IT had it's own set of Linux/Windows shibboleths... ;-)

Hm... speaking of shibboleths, I wonder how many posts it will take before someone seriously handwrings about it being a "Christian" academy adopting Linux... ;-)

Kids and computers

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

In 15-20 years time, Tech Support at companies is going to be SOOOO much easier.

Currently, there are old farts that work at our place that take about 20 minutes to position the mouse cursor over the appropriate widget, and another 4 minutes to pluck up the courage to actually click on it.

Last weekend I watched my 4 year old nephew as he fired up a PC, quickly and confidently navigated the START menu to his games folder, loaded a football game, and equally quickly and confidently maximimsed the window etc. What made it more interesting was that I then showed him Microsoft Paint. This was the first time he'd seen the program - but he immediately went for the Maximise button to make the application fill the screen.

This means that he'd learnt the concept of the Maximise button - i.e. his understanding was deeper than simply pressing it as part of the start-up procedure of playing his football game.

I guess I may just be underestimating the abilities of 4 year olds, but I tell you, when this generation leave school and get jobs tech support will be a thing of the past...

Yup

[ucblockhead]

An OS like Linux is far better for teaching about the guts of software because everything is exposed. And I'm not just talking about "the source". On a Linux box, you can go look at things like startup scripts and installed drivers, while on Windows, such things are (mostly) hidden.

Windows does its damndest to prevent users from accidently encountering any confusing internals. Good, I suppose, for someone who doesn't care, but lousy if you are trying to teach those internals.

Re:Maine & Linux - from a Mainiac Tuxer

[johnlcallaway]

My girlfriend (yes ... even 40 year old L/Unix admins have real girlfriends) works as an admin assistant for the maintenance department of a local high school They use Windoze, and have more troubles than you can imagine. Now, to be fair, their admins are not the brightest pixels in the stream, but schools tend to not pay the most money, so they get what they pay for. Her boss has been waiting for a couple of weeks to get his 98 box fixed. From what I can tell, she knows more than the IT guys.

That said, I taught a Linux class to several people a couple of months ago. Maine recently began a program to distribute laptops to all 7th graders. Since most schools had Apple systems, they were at a loss on how to integrate them.

Enter Linux. In two days, I taught a group of Apple and Windows skilled folks Linux basics, stressing command line skills and how to use Google for support. I was blown away by how quickly they came up to speed. Since they already had basic computer skills, all they needed to do was learn a slightly different way to apply them. All but one were able to build Linux boxes with SAMBA and DHCP services that both the Apple and MS boxes could tap into. The one that couldn't refused to adapt and constantly whined about using the command line. (I know, almost all of this can be done with a GUI. But I wanted them to learn more than how to point, click, select the defaults.)

So, I say hogwash to this failing. Those that don't want to learn, won't, you can't change that. Those that are able to take knowledge and apply it to new ideas will flourish.

People that can learn and adapt will be the people most sought after in our society because they will move it forward.