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Addison UK Server Roadshow for Schools
NeTraverse writes "Addison UK is doing a Linux server roadshow demonstrating Linux at schools throughout the UK. This is a easy way for schools to see how Linux could be implimented in their school. Nice resource for those schools thinking about becoming enlightened. They are demonstating thin client computing using Linux and Windows-to-Linux migration software WinLin Terminal Server from NeTraverse..."
With the Windows License (EULA) is there any cost benefit in using Linux as a thin client? We evaluated Citrix and discovered the opposite.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I think this is a good idea. It never hurts to show pupils what possibilities there are in operating systems. Otherwise they will say: 'Linux, what's that?'
(Warning: context required)
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initially linux is daunting if you're used to windows. buttons are in the wrong place, and my mother complains that the windows don't quite 'feel' the same and that she can't find all the same games!
but... beyond the fear of something new linux has a lot of very real applications within schools. not only does it give us the ability to teach all of the basic concepts, but it pushes beyond applications and should allow schools to focus on the core understanding of a concept (e.g. spreadsheet knowledge rather than excel know how).
i hope that the schools who have this opportunity to take a closer look will do so with an open enough mind to realise this though... but from my experience with my mother, i suspect it will take time before they do really 'get it'.
I'm suprised there hasn't been this sort of "push" before. Why should money be wasted on Microsoft licenses when it could be spend on something more useful? Maybe even education.
I think using *nix is something that needs to be more forcefully sugested to schools, especially with the current financial situation most schools are being placed in (at least in Michigan). You drop Windows, Novell, and expensive website solutions, and convert to open source ones and you're gonna save a heck of a lot of money.
OTOH, this approach is to bring the Windows environment to Linux using thin-client computing. How does it enlighten students about Linux? Maybe they'd get the impression Linux is always meant to ape Windows?
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
So when they grew up, they knew the ins and outs of their favorite Windows OS.
The point? If Linux is to grow big, focus on making it a great gaming platform. Todays gamers are tomorrows professional users.
Soon there will be Linux CD sharks hanging around the school gates, pirate copies of the latest SuSE, rumours that Linux can actually run on "normal" PCs, and so on. I'm half serious, actually: anything kids are forced to pay attention to, they learn to hate.
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(Without reading the article - as usual ;)
:^o
;)
;)
I'll assume they're going to visit high schools and primary schools...
This is a good idea...but:
I see (at least) three problems:
(I'm going to get flamed to a crisp for this
1) From (my own humble) experience...the teacher who takes the 'computer class' at high school is not necessarily a very experienced computer-user. He is usually a random teacher who was sent to a course to learn about computers, someone else set up the network for him, that is all he knows.
More often than not his students know more about the computers they are using than the teacher.
(Ah, sweet memories...Anyone here who did NOT hack the high-school computer network?
Now it's stupid of me to generalize like this, but I don't see the average teacher installing linux just like that without help. I'm not saying that teachers are stupid - just lacking experience perhaps - and no, not all schools have an IT department. (OTOH Usually there's a 'whiz'kid around, who's more than glad to help...)
2) Don't Micro$oft and Apple sponsor schools and
give them free computers? Do they still do that?
(The obvious idea is: Get the kids to use your
software and computers in school --> they'll want to use them at home and later at work as well --> more customers)
How do you convince the schools to switch to linux (and potentially miss out on future freebies?)
3) See 2, the kids (and parents - the ones who pay the bills) will want what 'everybody else' uses. Experience with $%#% Word etc is perceived as being essential for getting a job. OpenOffice? Hmmm...don't think so.
Of course it's not all bad....
Obvious advantages (for a school)
- Linux is cheap.
- Linux is secure.
(And it will be placed in an environment where
its security-model will get thoroughly tested
- By 'exposing' kids to linux earlier we can increase it's acceptance. (see 2)
- Will run on older hardware (schools have limited budgets)
</rant>
I used to work for a large educational organisation in the UK. Microsoft wanted to work with us on their stand at BETT, which is a big education fair in the UK. I met with the Microsoft people and they explained what they wanted - basically educationalists from the organisation I worked for to do various demonstrations using MS software showing how it could be used in schools. We would get a load of free software in return.
I raised the point that I thought that the demonstrations they were suggesting were not very educational and poorly designed. I was amazed at the response I got from them. They basically said they didn't care if they weren't educational. They were just there to get schools to buy MS software and to try to get the maximum profit from schools. They actually said that, bare faced. I couldn't believe it - at least they could have pretended to be a bit interested in the educational aspect.
And before some of you respond "they're a business, what do you expect, it's only about profit" etc... I have worked with various companies before on joint projects between industry and education and most of them have been great - really helpful, genuinely interested, really wanting to do something to help educational organisations. IBM were great on one project for instance, and they didn't try to milk it for publicity either. That day with Microsoft I felt I'd really seen into the heart of the beast, and it's not pleasant.
This is a good idea - and reading it over it seems to be aimed at the non-savvy user. That being said, do you think they will get confused when they click on contact us and there is no actual contact information?
none, zip, nada. Not even an email address or a mailto: link...
Anyway - good idea, just don't be surprised when the requests *don't* flow in...
Create music
Kids can learn important computer skills on ANY operating system. Schools should be using Linux cause it allows them to put money back into other educational programs, like arts -- not because of some fancy road show, and certainly not because it can run Windows apps.
I Geek
Well, there might no point in "enforcing" several operating systems early in life.
Every people will have to deal with different languages in his life, but how many people on the whole will have to use linux ? Unless (and sometimes even if...) you're working in the IT or do scientific research, chances are that you'll never have to deal with linux.
So I believe that learning unix-like OSes should be a personal choice. Most people are happy using MS Word, and thus I don't see myself anytime soon praising the benefits of early "latex editing in emacs" learning.
I'd rather see me children (which I don't have yet...) learn italian than linux early in life.
But I'll bite. :)
This isn't college. Kids will only learn the basic usability issues that'll get them ready for "real" CS courses -- provided they even want to go that way.
By learning through Linux, they'll probably be one step ahead of the students bound to Windows. As a general rule, those familiar with Linux have no problem running Windows. The opposite is so not true.
That being said, I think that "word processing" computers should remain Mac OS or Windows.
*Today, this is only true of some distributions.
I know of a distro at ofset.org that is available. It is being used at quite a few places in india to demonstrate linux and its capabilities for school children.
"acknowledging the cold, hard reality that MS Windows and Office are and will be the de facto standards in business worldwide for the decades to come."
I don't remember what the de facto standard was when I was at school. It certainly wasn't the same as it is now. Technology changes constantly, that is its nature.
Children need to be learn general principles not how to use Microsoft Office 2000 SP2.
I work in several Primary schools in the UK and, although this is a step in the right direction, it doesn't stand a chance.
Most schools have already got full networks with windows. They won't be interested in replacing them.
Even one of the local "showcase" schools which doesn't use the Research Machine software which is all-but monopolistic in British schools (thanks to government approval), has a massive RM network with Windows. The windows licenses are already paid, the hardware is already there, the thing is configured and working and cost a lot of money to put there.
Schools are kept in a constant upgrade cycle to meet new pupil/computer ratios all the time (yes, even Infant / Junior schools). That means they are spending £10,000 a year or so by just keeping their networks up-to-date enough to run the latest kids software, putting enough machines it. There is certainly a need for a thin-client structure here, especially with all the old donated machines etc.
But, they won't be interested in re-training / hiring staff that can work the server or in "yet another" network upgrade. They won't be interested in replacing their systems with an "unknown".
Most schools are currently being offered and considering, as well as actually buying, XP upgrades for their RM networks (we're talking in the region of £40-50,000 for a small, suburban infant school, here). Thin-clients alone would save costs, certainly. Thin-clients on a Linux-based server is even better.
Even if you could convince the board of governors and the school itself to make such a quantum leap into the unknown, they won't know what it is, they can't/won't see the benefits and they can't afford the downtime.
I am hired purely because the networks they have are in and working. Most of the problems I run across are basically things which teachers can do but just don't have time. Most secondary schools have IT-specific staff and I'm proof that the Infant/Junior schools are heading that way.
Once they have trained, knowledgeable IT staff with ***purchasing power***, we can start.
They also should have started publicising earlier... it's coming up to end-of-term and most schools already have their full upgrade for next year planned out and paid for. One school I work in has their entire IT budget for the next three years planned out on 100BaseT CABLING.
This project could also be helped along by things like Tesco's Computers For Schools voucher schemes etc. Free computers if the kids parents spend enough in a supermarket.
Basically, I'd love to see this. My day is filled with silly nightmarish systems that make simple changes virtually impossible (e.g. taking 8 hours to set up a wireless network between an outdoor classroom and the internal network... gave up in the end due to software problems, old hardware, poor network configuration and the red-tape associated with getting new IP addresses).
Thin-clients, on a stable Linux base is a dream for me. Unfortunately, I have to deal with "manager-style" staff in schools who ask "can I get onto the internet if I log in to the hard drive?" and "I've always wondered what the little wheel in the mouse did" (TRULY). These are the people with buying-power.
These people aren't gonna have a clue what we're on about and certainly won't part with the time or the money required to have someone come in, format ~100 computers back to basics, install a network server and have someone on hand to maintain it all.
It's a nice idea. I want them to try to convince people. Unfortunately, it's gonna be a very rough ride for them while RM still has a monopoly and while the government and local education authorities does little to try to educate them.
I don't know how the funding of computers in schools works, but I assume MS must get their cut somewhere, and as a taxpayer, I don't think that would represent a good use of my money.
As regards the 'well, the real world uses MS stuff', firstly I didn't realise that the purpose of schools was to churn out a bunch of MS-using automata and secondly, if the children are taught the principles of the various packages (i.e. what a word processor is for, the things that it ought to be able to do, how to look for help) they ought to be able to adapt their skills to proprietory alternatives over the course of a wet Wednesday afternoon.
If the UK government wants a competitive and innovative IT industry, it ought to recognise that getting kids into computers via stuff you can actually tinker with would probably be a good start :-)
I've just spent the last 21 months as network person at Moor Park High School in Preston, Lancs. I implemented two Linux servers which did internal www which staff could access parts of via their W:\ drive, mail, proxy (with authentication and ability to block kids by a gui), ability to reclone damaged NT/2000 workstations, quota limits for kids, staff and pupil shared areas (accessible via S:\ and T:\ drives), shell access for kids, remote KDE/GNOME desktops in a window for staff (not that they used them!)...
/etc/passwd in many ways) - such as ftp, ssh, local or XDMCP access, you can chown and chmod files and directories to them, and it just works. It can be, however, an absolute nightmare to set up, and so I've written a document on the subject and how to get past a number of random error messages here.
The whole thing cost them £400 in software. Unfortunately two weeks ago they still insisted on me spending 7 hours a week standing in a library doing duties telling kids to take their coats off... and all for less than six pounds fifty an hour (probably 9-10 USD per hour). They're now looking for three people to replace me. I've now gone self employed and am the cheapest IT person I know even at more than twice the rate they paid me.
The biggest difficulty I found with implementing Linux was getting it to understand our existing username/password database. You have several options, some of them being:
- Make everyone set a new password (bad idea - they'll want to know why)
- Use pwdump.c (available from Samba mirrors) to create an smbpasswd file from your existing NT or 2000 server.
- Use John the Ripper or L0phtcrack to crack your existing account database. This isn't such a great solution, as some passwords could take weeks to crack, and some passwords will get changed after you cracked them.
- Use Winbind, which is part of the Samba suite which will talk to your existing NT/2000 setup and make those user accounts appear as ordinary users. This is an absolutely great solution once it works; you can give them access to any service you want (it works through PAM, so it's as good as having them all in
- Read the comments in smb.conf
Management are always a problem, and it's the usual scenario: if it's Free, it has to be crap. If this is a problem, then instead of telling them how good it is, just show them. It's not difficult to find a spare unused machine in a school, or to boot Knoppix onto something, and you only need something with 16 or 32MB to install Debian or an old version of RH onto it and make it a useful server - machines of that calibre of write offs in UK schools right now with all the money the UK government are pumping into them. (This quarter alone, we had £27,000 to spend on IT - something like $40,000.)
Set something up, and implement a feature that your network lacks - quotas, web, email, cloning (use Partition Image - a much nicer replacement to Norton Ghost), proxy server (use Squid and Webmin so that your boss can easily add users to a list of banned people). Consider writing a cronjob to automatically copy everyone's home directory once a day, and then suddenly you'll be able to restore someones work from backup from any particular day or week (depending on how much hard disk space you have - a couple of cheap maxtor 80GB disks or something similar will do the job) in the space of ninety seconds *every time*. No more messing with backup tapes. (But still do tape backups, because you don't know when a lightning strike/minor earth tremor is going to destroy every hard disk...)
Write a manual. "This is how our Linux boxes were set up. The IP is this, here are the open ports, these packages were compiled from sourc