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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.
"We've been talking about doing this for some time, so we just decided to drive off the cliff."
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.
I thought M$ admitted that they couldn't compete with the Linux's TCO? They switched the page claiming a lower cost with a page outlining the benefits of windows over linux.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
We setup linux in one of our labs using old computers that otherwise were useless. Using ltsp [ltsp.org], we managed to make usable workstations for word processing and internet access. Based on our experience, linux definitely was cheaper than the expensive windows terminals and citrix licenses.
My school uses nothing but Win2K. It takes 5 minutes to log in, and all is disjointed. The sad thing is that they have just lost their last Linux server, which says a lot.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
"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
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
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.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Also check out The Linux Terminal Server Project K-12, a cool project devoted to this sort of thing.
You are not the customer.
We use Linux in the robots labs at my University's CS department. Because it's robotics we're talking about here, the cost savings aren't significant as the hardware is much more expensive than the software, ratio-wise. The benefit of using Linux is its 'hackability'.
E000-VB14-G8RY
I see a problem with the corporate linux vendors being too dependent on selling support. Would that make them hesitant to develop a turnkey network distribution that could be set up to keep a school humming with minimal effort?
It will probably take a specialized, targeted distro to really break the Microsoft monopoly in schools.
The way you used to be able to set up a simple AppleTalk network should be the goal for a modern classroom OS.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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.
I think this is a great step towards educating technology students about platforms other than Windows. I think its even more interesting that they are doing robotics in high school. We had a similar program at the high school I went to where we did all sorts of stuff with electronics from robots to electronic repair. The courses counted towards credit with the local university. The program eventually grew to groom students into network engineers working on getting them prepped and ready for their Cisco certifications (maybe a few others at this point). Its good to see that with all the criticism of public schools, that some are still scrapping together enough money to do some interesting projects.
When I was in high school the programming that we did was all done by telnetting into a Linux box and using GCC. This proved to be cheaper for the school district in terms of licenses for compilers (zero cost). This way we were able to keep the costs for computer science courses separate from the costs for maintaining a computer lab. Also, using Linux (and before that some form of UNIX) for computer science put me lightyears ahead of those who had never touched the command line in introductory college CS courses.
The TCO in this environment should be far lower then a Microsoft equivalent. The operating system is free, there are no licenses, and no fees for the purchase of the renewal of licenses for Windows based development software. The support overhead should be non-existant, as the school district IT staff should just set them all up as terminals, or can have images handy for quick ghosting (if needs be).
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.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
The GHCA (Greater Houlton Christian Academy) has a nice Linux based lab too. They say they saved a lot of money doing it this way, which seems pretty obvious... Their webpage is here
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.
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 !
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
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
"One Linux operator can manage 45 computers while a Windows operator can manage only 10 because it's harder," Mello said.
/usr/local/etc/apache, get stuck? Dig through millions of irrelevant howto's and newsgroups posts to find the answer. Live support? Go into IRC and get called n00b by every facist l33tist in there. Try a suggestion, and it breaks something else, rinse and repeat.
FUD ALERT! That's just plain malarky.
I started off managing windows systems, and later moved on to linux. Mello is just plain wrong here.
Now as far as flexability is concerned, yes you can do all sorts of neat tricks with linux, but for day to day admin operations, MS has very polished tools that save a MS admin tons of time in implementation.
Let's compare services...
Web Server.
Windows, go to add/remove software, add IIS. Run the microsoft management console, and tweak it to your delight, if you get stuck the help file is right there, or burn a call on the credit card to MS support.
Linux, go to apache.org, download the source, make install, go out and have a cig, come back and see if the compile is finished, go out to lunch, come back. Ok now you have to edit your rc.d scripts to run apache on start, do a little configuring in
It took me a good 4 years of tinkering with linux before I became proficient enough to run a server, compile my kernel (which is m00t these days because of modules) and basically make it do the same things my windows boxes do. Most of this time was spent wading through useless irrelevent documention, trial and error, ect.
I charge for my research time, don't know about you other IT guys out there, but everytime I read a howto, or browse support.microsoft.com i'm earning.
As far as desktop management is concerned, group policies, netlogon scripts, and active directory makes it easy enough for a child to manage a MS domain.
I'm not trying to bag on linux here, it's awesome to have a system that never crashes even on shitty hardware. If linux had gui based management tools that were on par with their MS counterparts, I would agree with the above quote. I've tried everything from linuxconf, to webmin and all tcl/tk tools in between, and yes they are quite good, but not nearly as good as what i've seen come out of redmond. None of these tools have anything even closeley resembling the functionality of creating a software group policy object that will install across 1000's of computers in an organization.
From a personal standpoint though, I would pick any *nix or BSD for running my mission critical applications any day of the week over a MS box. For managing a buttload of user desktops and apps, MS wins hands down.
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.
I live and work in Logan as a UNIX engineer/CTO of a technology company -- this is great news. If you guys at Logan high school need some UNIX/Linux expertise, let me know. I'd be happy to donate my time/services. :) (brian@zyx.net)
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
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.
My school has been adopting Linux in many areas. First of all the forum server (where students get thier homework, and teachers discuss) runs Redhat (I wanted to put Debian on there but Redhat was a much better distro to teach the people who will be taking over when I am gone next year) which was migrated by me and another student from Windows 2000. Many of my friends use Knoppix instead of the Novell junk, and we are workign to get a few computers in the Senior Computer Science classes set up with dual boots so that other people can learn the ways of the penguin. Although I do admit that since I am the Linux guru of the school I have been the one to make the most difference in the degree of adoption that my school has pursued thus far, many students other than I are taking Linux into thier own hands
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
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.
With no MS software, who knows, maybe MS would audit anyway. But all you'd have to do is say, "take a look--no MS software", and the audit would be over.
As an LHS alumni, it's exciting to see that my alma matter has made Slashdot, especially since they did something GOOD to earn the honor.
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I agree with what your saying, you have paid your due's and now your probably being compensated well for it. After four years of trial and error, your probably quite proficient with your craft.
Seems that getting things setup and working is only 20% of the task tho, and keeping things running is the other 80%
I wouldn't be surprised if someone who has 4 years experience in Linux really 'knows' the underworking of the OS and the critical components much better than someone who has been admining a NT server for four years. I wouldn't be surprised if that same person has ability to easier manage more servers because of the profound skill and knowledge he has of the environment than a shallow understanding of how high-level gui's work.
I am sure that as distributions get more and more advanced, not as many Linux users will know how to write their own custom init scripts, watchdog monitors, runlevel options, boot into single user mode, etc.
I can't believe that just because Windows is easy to use that these same tricks of the trade are any easier. If anything, in my experience, getting things going in windows is quite easy, but when something goes wrong, really wrong, is when I seem to get quite frustrated. Now, the only experience I have had managing windows software was a small NT server at a company I was at that used it for exchange and file serving. I admit, I am a programmer and not an admin, but small companies.. you do what you have to do
I have spent about 4-5 years myself working on linux.. VERY long nights of hacking and playing, twiddling and recompiling.. endless greps through uesless mailing lists, etc. But in the end it has paid off BIG time, I am landing more a year than any windows admin I know and am using a tool set that I control and understand.
Your much better off having taken the harder path my friend, I am sure when something goes wrong you understand the problem, and not just the symptom. You will be much more effective in solving problems when shit really hits the fan. I dont think you keep 1 NT admin per 10 servers for when things are going good... or getting setup, but going bad and having problems. Maybe thats why you don't need so many people to manage linux boxes.. not for deployment, but for post deployment trauma.
Enjoyed your post tho.. I agree that Linux does need a standard base for configuration. But don't worry, we will get there
Cheers
This setup makes administration of software/network related issues a breeze. This is the model School District 73 in Kamloops, BC, Canada is using. 37 elementary school labs running over 1500 desktops, all running Linux. Most of the hardware was donated from the governement or purchased used via Computers for Schools.
:)
Remote administration via SSH and VNC/remote X is a snap, and most problems are solved interactively with the teacher in the school, reducing downtime. Updates are a matter of scripted SSH sessions afterhours.
The only downside is that it is all done using Linux. But, that's a personal bias, as I find Linux to be horribly disorganised, disfunctional, and a royal pain to work with compared to FreeBSD. That's a discussion for another time, though.
The students all love the system, the administration loves the system, the software techs like the system more and more as they use it, and the teachers love it as well. And it does save money in the long run: $10-20,000 in Novell licenses, $10-20,000 in MS Licenses, per year. And the time savings are enormous.
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
Linux is perfect for a local school district.. Schools have the benefit of free student labor, and they don't have to worry about deadlines or downtime. Linux on cheap hardware is perfect for this kind of environment.
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.
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.
This is a long tale of woe, but it does get to the point eventually. Bare with me, I suspect other school tech folks have had similar experiences.
I am a District Technology Coordinator. Last summer our small district (3300 students) in the Mid-Atlantic paid Micro$oft over $100,000 in license upgrades. The state had a number of sessions scheduled with the MS Reps who came to explain the new licensing agreement. The company was moving from Upgrade Advantage to Software Assurance pricing schedules.
We were in the process of our Win2K rollout and we were confronted with MS retiring the ability to upgrade certain licenses. Our state contracts with a "Select" vendor who we are required to purchase all MS software. The vendor had conflicting upgrade paths than what MS had explained in the meetings.
At a later meeting when I asked about this they suggested the "School Agreement" as an alternative which is an annual subscription that allows schools to use any number of licenses but you must resubscribe every year.
I explained that I did calculations on purchase upgrades and compared the numbers to this "subscription" license and discovered that it was more expensive. I surmise that conflicting purchase information and random threats of audit in the education community makes choosing the school agreement a no brainer. If this was a marketing decision it is extortion.
During the course of this licensing process I went to the CIO of the district informing him that we could save nearly $40K by using Open Office on student only machines. Even after giving him a copy, and showing the software around to key individuals, he didn't feel that he could support Technology against the inevitable backlash from staff members.
He recommended a pilot before implementation. Since there was a deadline, we bought MS Office licenses. BTW we finally got resolution on the correct upgrade paths.
Now to the Linux in school stuff.
After this experience, the fiddling I was doing with Linux became a higher priority in the investment of my Tech Learning Time.
There is lots of great stuff out there for schools. The Linux Terminal Server Project http://www.ltsp.org/ gets around the windows legacy app problem. Or perhaps Linux Educational Apps could replace windows edutainment titles. A wealth of titles can be found at http://k12os.org/.
Personally I believe that what is best for our district is to get away from managing the desktop. So many rogue initiatives bubble up from the class room.
Example:
Mrs Jones goes and buys "10,000 Handouts Galore" CD-ROM ; ) at the grocery store and then expects technicians to not only install this buggy code from heaven knows where, but also expects poor frazzled "Fred" to divine the arcane structure of how it works, train her on it, and continually fix the pathetic workstation that crashes because the software is not totally compliant to windows standards. All this effort just so she can print a worksheet for the kids to sit and fill out.
How does this fundamentally change education? If you take the computer away can she still create a handout? I suspect that manually she could probably do it in less time with more focus on content and far less frustration.
In my opinion, district administration, curriculum leaders, principals as well as tech coordinators, network folks and programmers should work together to identify what problem really needs to be solved.
The direction we are going in is interactive web applications that provide collabortive opportunities to respond to various activities or projects.
One such Open Source package is the Authenticated User Community -- http://auc.sourceforge.net/. It is essentially groupware for education. Students can review and submit assignments, check email, post comments on a forum and store files. Teachers can track student activities retrieve assignments and initiate discussion. Mom and Pop can see what's going on from home! We are piloting this now.
Our TechTeam is using software called Tutos (http://www.tutos.org/homepage/index.html) to manage projects. This is useful software and since its on the Web it is transparent and ubiquitous.
Imagine if other useful software was converted to the web. The connection of Apache with MySQL (or other DB) could allow us to link every student activity with state standards and some sort of performance evaluation. This would give teachers the ability to make day to day teaching decisions based on DATA that will have real impact on High Stakes Testing.
We also using some network based diagnostic software packages. They are called Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math and are published by Renaissance learning (http://www.renlearn.com). These programs allow students to interactively and dynamically record their performace on-line.
Unfortunately these programs are Windows apps. They are written in ToolBook and are not even 32bit compliant. Consequently there are frequent network issues since they are being used in manner contrary to their design. I wish there was a version of this software that ran on Apache and MySQL.
If a clear vision of curricular problems drove the purchase/solution implementation decisions rather than random marketing (ed conferences and journals) and individual (rogue) initiatives, resources such as technician support and capital funds for equipment and software would not be caught up in this merry go round of assumpion, consumption, no function and blame.
Micro$oft products give users just enough ability to use computers to be hugely expensive to larger organizations. Products running on this platform are sold as solutions to users problems, but not necessarily one that needs to be solved.
Users devise their own rogue initiatives with the grand ideas sold to them, but rarely are successful without technical help. The minute a technician provides that help they become responsible for the outcome and the initiative becomes sanctified by the organization.
Linux can solve this problem. It forces decisions to be made that focus on the problem. Since every teacher, administrator and student is not familiar (or "Expert" because their nephew works at CompUSA) with this platform they are not dreaming of a panacea like solution where they take off the shrink wrap and all their problems go away with no hardwork or learning curve. District leadership has time to focus on their curricular objectives and devise a plan that has a scope and sequence of events and a series of check points to evaluate progress.
Once the problem is defined and the objectives are spelled out there is lots of stuff in the Open Source community that can be selected as potential "off the shelf" alternatives. But what is even more exciting is the notion that through collaboration with others with similar objectives solutions start to move closer and closer to the needs at hand.