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Linux in High School Labs

lexbaby writes "The Salt Lake Tribune has a story about how Logan High School (Logan, Utah) is using Linux in their student programming lab. The main use is for robotics. There is the old discussion about if Linux is truly cheaper to operate in the long run. Is Linux a legitimate solution to school districts facing a financial crunch?" I hope some of the students involved post pictures of the robots they're building in class.

12 of 417 comments (clear)

  1. Quote from the article: by Genghis+Troll · · Score: 5, Funny

    "We've been talking about doing this for some time, so we just decided to drive off the cliff."

  2. When I was in school... by Fammy2000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    When I was in high school we programmed on MS-DOS (both ways in the snow!)

    Some command-line adventures would be good for kids these days.

    --
    If I had something intelligent to say, I would have said it.
    1. Re:When I was in school... by Monkelectric · · Score: 3, Funny
      Do you go to my school? RKHS?

      "yes, i was planning on sitting here listening to emo and crying all day, thank you very much"

      Finally!! The guy with the dumbest sig *ever* admits what i've suspected all along, he's a teenager.

      --

      Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

  3. Let the students do the work by SaXisT4LiF · · Score: 4, Funny

    According to Linuxworld.com, a Linux operator would earn an annual salary of about $65,000, while a Windows operator might make $45,000 -- costs a school district would bear.

    I would have gladly managed a Linux network at my high school just to get out of class every now and then, and I even had the skills to do so.

    Then again, I wouldn't have gotten out of as many classes as I did fixing the computers running windows...

    --
    Fight or flight its all the same
    Live to die another day

    --Ryan
  4. audit difficulty by 1nv4d3r · · Score: 5, Funny

    The technicians have to match up all the computers with a license number for each piece of software that is installed. This becomes even more difficult when computers are donated with unregistered software already installed.

    I like that wording. Not 'impossible' to produce licenses for pirated software. Just 'more difficult' than if you are legal. This is exactly the kind of "can-do" attitude that the youth of America needs as an example. Don't let that 5GB of pr0n your girlfriend found drag you down! It's simply 'harder' to explain than if it weren't there.

  5. Re:Yes yes yes by grub · · Score: 2, Funny


    Well.. I didn't find your post overly interesting, but I would have modded it "+1 Babelfish Skills" if there were such an option.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  6. Re:I suggested that at my school.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You (or anybody for that matter) could never hax0r my Windows XP computer.

  7. Re:Yes yes yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    scanning the skies for aliens

    No shit! I got a few mini-guns and some long range anti-saucer laser cannons all computer controlled by a linux cluster. The laser cannons are not very powerful but when the linux box blasts a saucer with one the saucer usually gets the message and takes off. If for some reason the laser malfunctions and the aliens decide to land in my backyard, the linux box waits for the aliens to get out of their saucer and into the killing zone, then the two miniguns tear the aliens to pieces. It hasn't come to that yet but if it does I'll post pictures on slashdot!

  8. Re:been thinking about this for a while by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Before you become a teacher, learn how to group sentences into paragraphs please.

  9. Its it funny by nickgrieve · · Score: 2, Funny

    How 99% of posts about Linux in high school Labs, are about Linux not being Windows. Why on earth to linux advocates devote so much mind share to MS?

    Just get on with making Linux better than previous versions of linux and let it stand on its own merits.

  10. Re:Yes yes yes by Slack3r78 · · Score: 2, Funny

    What worries me most is the personel that are going to be staffing these labs. I don't know about the situation elsewhere, but the "IT" people in my local school district (which has something like 50k students) are the most incompetent people I have ever met. At one of the high schools in town, for example, one of the admins for some reason took offense to the kids taking the balls out of their mice for a minute or two to clean the rollers since they were skipping. So how does she solve this problem, nevermind that it's contrived to begin with? She superglues the balls inside the mice. Yes, you read that right. There are still boxes of useless mice in storage at that school from this fiasco.

    The sad thing is, this isn't an all that out of the ordinary occurence around here. So yes, I love linux, I think it'd be great for kids to learn it in school... but if you have a moron for an admin, I wouldn't be surprised if the kids got nothing done because the admin neglected to set things up properly. Oh well, hopefully in the cases where this does get implemented it'll be because of school IT people that know what they're doing, not school boards pushing for lower costs.

  11. Re:Its about time by opcenter · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mostly drawing pictures, writing essays, making posters, and maybe a little bit of programming.

    And you think that business execs do any more than that?