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.

Comments

Its about time

[CONTROL_ALT_F4]

Linux will have a much better corporate future if tomorrows business execs actually learn how to use it.

It also warms my heart to see fewer tax payer dollars going into Microsoft's pocket.

Re:Its about time

[KJE]

I don't know if you can draw that parallel between Linux and Apple, they're two different entities. As a company Apple might have tried to get their computers into primary and high schools, but what are kids doing with computers at that age? Mostly drawing pictures, writing essays, making posters, and maybe a little bit of programming. Extend those uses out a couple of years, and you see that Apple computer is competitive in the desktop publishing and artwork worlds. This is not to say that Apple didn't shit the bed in terms of marketing itself (and introducing marketable items) in the late 80's and early 90's. But for you to say that it's nonsense that linux wont be better off if today's highschool kids are using it, just because of Apple's faults, is a bit off.

More experiments before going with Linux...

[$$$$$exyGal]

First:

"Microsoft had us do an audit last year that took two weeks out of my schedule," Rugg said. "That's two week's work of taxpayers' money to satisfy Microsoft."

Then:

Weeks said more experiments will have to be done before Linux could be considered for schoolwide use.

Too bad they didn't do such rigorous "experiments" before they decided to go with Microsoft. If they had, then the Microsoft audit wouldn't have been such a surprise.

--sex

Yes yes yes

[nocomment]

This question comes up all the time. Is Linux a viable solution to use for $_?

The answer is always yes. It's a viable alternative for database servers, for number crunching, for scanning the skies for aliens, to calculating water flow, and yes for high school programming labs. IN fact definatelly for high school programming labs. I think anyone who start programming on any *nix machine, will have a better understanding of how to prgram on windoze if they need to anyway.

Re:Yes yes yes

[nocomment]

Well that's a bit different. Compare ANSII C to sign language. Anyone who uses sign language will understand anyone else who uses sign language.
I think if someone learns the correct style in order to write things will be better off in the long run. Even if/especially if they are a windoze programmer (God keep their souls).
Windows is by nature very sloppy, uses some funkdified junk. Look at any SMTP server log to see the munged helo/ehlo traffic a M$ client sends. Think if someone with a unix background, who actually reads RFC's and understands how the traffic is _supposed_ to look would have gotten that right...yet it's remained broken for years.

just an example of many many things that are a bit off-kilter over there.

Re:Yes yes yes

[zcat_NZ]

Yeah.. I think that anyone who has learned Japanese will have a better understanding of how to speak French, anyway.

And you'd be right.

Learning a second language is very hard. Learning a third or fourth language is MUCH easier. If you've already learned Japanese, you'll be able to pick up French relatively easily.

Yes of course

[kasperd]

Is Linux a legitimate solution to school districts facing a financial crunch?

Yes of course it is. Some people says students should be tought to use the software being used in the "real life". Why? If the students learn to acomplish the same task with cheaper software, how could that be bad?

But much rather than sticking with one choice of software, I'd see students trying a few different systems, so they can learn what are the differences and similarities between them, and they can learn how to learn using a new system, and they can make up their own minds about what they like and dislike. Because you cannot teach them how to use the software they are going to find themselves with in a few years, but you can theach them how to learn.

So let them try Linux, Unix, Windows, BSD, OSX, and let them find the best for each task.

Linux is more than cost savings.

[d00dman]

People should quit spending so much time talking about how low cost Linux is to use. If thats all that mattered, people whould be using it exclusively, wouldnt they? especially in schools where money is always tight. Its this type of news which is holding the Linux and other free UNIX vairants back by making them look "cheap". There are too many people who believe you get what you pay for. What really matters is how a platform can make your life easier.

Is Linux a viable alternative to Microsoft?

[pongo000]

I'm a teacher in a 50,000+ student school district. The district is seriously considering tossing off Microsoft's yoke, dumping both Microsoft and Novell, and setting up an all-Linux network. Microsoft has been trying to extort more and more from the district (a few months ago, one of the reps was simply asked to leave the Tech Center), and school districts in Texas are all facing reduced state funding next year.

So yes, Linux is being considered. But it's a slow road. For example, I'm working with the district to set up Linux servers for use as internal web servers in the high school computer labs. An incredible amount of emphasis is focused on security, since all grading is now on-line as well. As you can imagine, high schools have their fair share of script kiddies just wetting their pants over the opportunity to hack a new box on the network. We will be monitoring all hits on the boxes to try and profile what kind of attacks occur so we can keep the boxes as secure as possible. Whether or not the district decides to pursue Linux on the desktop depends upon how secure we can keep the lowly intranet servers.

My suggestion to anyone who is thinking about trying to convince school administrators to go open-source is to start small. Don't propose retrofitting the entire district in a summer--this simply doesn't fly, and makes you look like a zealot with an agenda. Offer to set up and administer a few Linux boxes, and go along with the security program. If they don't want qmail or sendmail running, fine -- there's time later to broach the subject.

As it is, news has quickly spread through our district's 7 high schools that we are getting our own server. Now they want one too. So I've been given the mandate to start setting them up for all the high schools. All because I pitched the idea of one lowly server for a computer science class I'm teaching.

Re:Lucky people

[MattCohn.com]

due to Win2K's crappy manageability

I belive what you ment to say was due to the incompatance of the network administrator or the crappy hardware you are using.

Re:Hasn't it been proven?

[Politburo]

If Microsoft admits it, is that proof? So in cases where Microsoft speaks against Microsoft, their word is absolutely correct, but when Microsoft speaks for Microsoft, nothing can be trusted?