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

Is Linux Cost Effective ?

[dracken]

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 dont know about schools in US. In India, an entire undergraduate programming intro lab (where we were taught Unix, C, C++, Shell Scripting and Perl) were 30-40 386 boxen used as dumb terminals for a behemoth running Linux. Contrary to what you would believe the machine was fast enough to support 35 students programming (in text mode) vi, emacs and running gcc.

The lab was cheap, the 386 boxen had a new lease of life we ended up being great C, C++ programmers. More importantly, learned to love Unix. Was Linux cheap for introducing C, C++, Perl and Unix ? Surely !

I can only speak from my own experience, but

[kfg]

Between the years 1993 and 1997 my own small business, with only three computers, spent several thousand hard earned dollars on Windows software.

From 1998 when I switched entirely to Linux our total software cost has been $0 ( I was given a copy of Linux For Dummies with Red Hat 5.2 as a gift).

No additional expenditures have been needed because of making the switch,

Nor has, at any time, any "privation" of functionality ever been felt.

Indeed I've been able to greatly expand functionality because software previously out of my reach on a cost/benifit basis is now readily available, at will.

Others may debate TCO all they want. I know Linux is free.

And freeing, because now all license issues have been slaughtered on a wholesale basis. Compliance is part of the TCO.

I'll make this offer to any school. I will come in for a few days and show you how you can do what I have done, and I'll do it at *half* the rate you're paying your MS person. I'll even train the poor sod if you'd like.

KFG

Re:Yes yes yes

[nocomment]

I like the latin comparison even better. Learn latin would help you understand where just about every other European language comes from.

Here's a good example:

The latin word for Book is "biblio"
from that we have bibliography
library is based on that as well, which translates into other languages:

french as bibliothèque

spanish as biblioteca

german as Bibliothek

Italian as biblioteca

So one who was familiar with the roots of everything will have a much easier time understanding why things are the way they are.

Re:why dont schools go to linux?

[tomhudson]

What I've found is that the people "in charge" really don't have much of a clue. They know how to turn a computer on, how to type with 2 fingers, and how to hit the "save" icon -- but then they can't find where they've saved their file to.

This is unfortunate, but all too common. Mind you, there are side-effects that are "beneficial". I was once asked to hack into an administrative box because someone had forgotten their password, and it was the weekend, yadda, yadda. Took me 3 guesses, no password cracking program ... full access to all accounts, downloads, lesson plans, mail, etc.

Yep, their password system was as clueless as they were :-) That's why they don't change - most of them simply aren't capable of investing the time in learning something new, when they can "get by" with what they know.

Before I get modded down as flaming, this is the same sort of situation as last week, when people were posting about that "we're going to get a bunch of developers together to code a game, and if it sells, we'll all make money" crap. It's happened (more often than I would like) that people have approached me with their "great idea that will make us a lot of money - it just needs to be coded".

When I offer to teach them how to code for free rather than waste my time developing their wet-dream financial fantasy , most go "what the ..." They don't want to invest the time required, either.

In summary, schools won't switch to Linux because too many people in the school system are just putting in their time, w/o any real zeal for what they do. This is a real shame.

Re:Yes yes yes

[lpret]

I don't agree with your statement: Learning a third or fourth language is MUCH easier

My first langauge is spanish, then english, then tagalog, and now I'm learning Japanese. Japanese is the first language that I'm learning in the classroom and it's amazing how much harder it is to learn this way. I'm used to just being thrown into the culture and "sink or swim" were the only options. Now, I can decide to not do my Japanese hw and it doesn't hurt me in any way.

So what's my point? That the style of learning is more important than the depth or number of languages learned. I think the same could be said for programming languages, unless you have a reason to start learning them, you will not be a truly effective learner.

My HS has been doing stuff like this for years

[limproach]

I am a Senior Network Administrator at a magnet high school in Austin, TX (LBJHS). I am in my junior year (Class of '04) and I (along with three other guys) manage nearly all aspects of the network at the school - from servers to workstations and infrastructure. Our organization, Student Technology Administration Council (www.stac.org is our website), has been managing the network at our school, independent of the school district's network since 1994.

We now have 300-400 workstations (mostly W2K except one Slackware lab) being served by a small army of linux servers on our own campus T1. This program is an incredible and unique learning experience for us - being able to manage an entire building's network while still in High School with little to no aid from outside adults.

I like to brag that our network's stability is significantly better than the network that the rest of the school district is on.

Re:Why Linux is not as well-spread-

[knobmaker]

Point being, how many schools even have a full-time, dedicated admin?

Here's a sad little story. A few years ago, when my daughter was in grade school, she decided to run for student council president. She asked me to help with her campaign. I noticed that her opponents, while usually well-financed, had failed to come up with any campaign issues. So I suggested that if she won, I would come to her school and give lessons on HTML, so the various classes could have their own web pages.

She incorporated this into her campaign posters, and won, to my surprise and horror. So, in order not to make my daughter a liar, I was forced to go to the school and meet with the principle and the "media person," a woman who knew almost nothing about computers, but who was fiercely protective of her turf. After much reluctance, I persuaded the principle to allow me to teach a class on simple web-building. Two students from each classroom would be allowed to attend a class lasting 20 minutes, once a week, for the remainder of the semester. As you might imagine, this was not enough time to teach anything of any significance to 5th and 4th graders.

It was a depressing and frustrating experience, which I stuck out only for my daughter's sake. Everything had to be approved through several layers of bureaucracy, even the installation of simple freeware HTML editors on a few of the school's machines. And we never got so far as getting approval to host the class pages on the school district's servers.

So, at least at this otherwise fairly good school, even free instruction wasn't cost-effective enough for the administration to accept. I expect this sort of proud ignorance is widespread in American schools, which now seem obsessively consumed by the desire to do well in comparative testing. Actually teaching kids stuff they can use is of secondary importance.