Slashdot Mirror
Building a Linux Computer Lab for Schools?
joseamuniz asks: "After giving Linux classes to Secondary School Teachers, I got in touch with a non-profit organization called UNETE. This association has donated 1,523 computer labs to public schools in Mexico. I told them about Linux, and they are interested in equipping a beta computer lab with this Operating System, with Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM PCs. The more they like this lab, the higher chances to include Linux in the new labs donated by this institution." What hardware configurations and software packages would you install on such a machine to show off the real power of Linux in an educational environment?
Make absolutely sure that any software these schools really want to run either has a native Linux version, a practically-idential Linux version, or will run flawlessly under WINE. If the schools can't use the software they want to, it'll leave quite a bad taste in their mouths about Linux.
Have you looked at the K-12 Linux Project yet? Seems like that would be a good place to start.
"Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude." - Jesse Jackson
Just to preach the common trend, I would suggest Ubuntu for the distro. The base desktop install is exactly what you would need. You get Firefox, Evolution, Gaim and OpenOffice.org. It's a no hassle install, it's Debian and you can get support for it if you want. I wouldn't suggest holding off on Ubuntu until their next release, because it's pretty slick and comes out in about 2 months.
Also, you can get free CD's from them. Just request 100 or so and have them shipped to where ever that organization is. Technically you only need one, but you can give them out to the students if they like it. It comes with a livecd, so they don't have to destroy their home PC.
I suspect that a Mexican computer lab wouldn't be all that interested in Oregon Trail anyway. Call me crazy, but I suspect it wouldn't fit into their history program very neatly.
Like it or not, these machines will be rooted or get seriously fouled up at some point. This is actually one area where Linux really shines. You can set up a net boot environment (or live cd) that brings the box to a known good state. Don't keep any real data on these boxes. You don't even HAVE to keep a desktop image. You can NFS mount / if you really wanted too (though it's probably better to have an OS image local that can be over written easily).
This means you'll probably need a more beefey (at least in hard drive space) server that this lab will live off of, but I assume you already knew that.
Zapman
Im afraid most of the educational software taught at the school level is built for windows and wont support other OS's very well. So the primary thing is find out which software is needed by them and get those working on Linux. Not many school children are going to start out running command line programs, or coding in perl and C++. Most likely, they will browse, use rich text editors/spreadsheets, chat apart form educational software. Unless of course, we are talking higer grades, even then, not all of them are going to be computer professionals. -imho
~never play leapfrog with unicorns
The major cost was time in getting it set up since all the computers have a different configuration.
BTW, VectorLinux hardware detection on these old machines is awesome. Let's just say that after setting up nearly 50 of them, I've only had to edit the XF86Config-4 file two or three times. Also, no problems with strange cards. Also, VL, being Slackware based, is extremely FAST on old machines and boots into IceWM nearly as quickly as it takes my new 1.8 GHz Athlon to load KDE. (Please no flames about how KDE is bloatware, we've all been there.)
Point of the matter is that if you have the time and you have old hardware, setting up one of these labs is a snap.
Don't go any farther than http://www.k12ltsp.org/. They have the best all around linux solution for k-12 schools. Period.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Sci./Tech.- this school has an entire computer systems lab with running on Debian, complete with Cray SV1 and cluster of 386's. The lab is run largely by student system administrators who know and learn much about the Linux operating system during their stay at TJ, which helps to prepare them for entry into the business world and tech industry where UNIX based operating systems are the common standard. TJ is a public school located in Fairfax County, Virginia. It also has a Wikipedia entry that goes into more detail than my post here (Sorry for lack of link, but Wikipedia seems to be running slowly for me as of late and I couldn't get the page).
Those who use only windows at home and at school learn just that, how to use windows.
Force them them to use something else, and they no longer just know how to use windows, but how to use a *computer*.
I've heard it said that the best way to learn how to learn language is to learn many of them. This is why we teach spanish, or why a good CS program should involve several different programming languages.
The concepts for using any OS are the same, and that's what should be taught in school, not exactly where to find what button in Word. You wouldn't say that kids should skip reading Shakespeare because every newspaper in the country is a 100% modern English shop, would you?
Educational doesn't have to mean that it be visually spectacular. My first exposure to computers was in a computer lab in South Africa in the 80's, where they were teaching elementary school students how to move the turtle around in Logo.
I'd suggest having some simple programming languages, like Logo or BASIC, and some games that run under those languages. Text games that require simple arithmetic or planning ahead to win are great. If the students manage to figure out how to use the languages to start modifying the games, or making their own, then that's a bonus.
Acius the unfamous
Check out Skolelinux (Distrowatch page) (Linux for schools, Norwegian name). Made to work perfectly with LTSP, and based on debian stable. On the install cd you can choose to install the Skolelinux server or thin clients, or a standalone install. Plenty of educational software availible. The thin client install runs fine on older hardware. Give it a try.
What educational software packages are available for Linux?
I'm not sure what you're looking for exactly, but off the top of my head (and a little freshmeat help):
Primary school level: Gcompris is great, has a large bundle of games targetting everything from spelling to geography to math, and is easily extensible.
Astronomy: Both Celestia and Stellarium provide great tools for teaching kids of all levels about our universe.
Mathematics: You can use basic spreadsheets if you like, but there's also Octave for vector and matrix mathematics and Maxima (and several others that I can't recall right now) for symbolic algebra.
Chemistry: There's stuff like Ghemical and Gperiodic which aren't half bad for exploring various chemistry concepts. Then there's stuff like GenChemLab which is pretty neat.
Physics: There's physics simulation software like Physics3D , and there are others around if you care to look.
Computing: Well, you've got all the programming tools you want, but also things like DrPython to make it easier/fun for students (even at lower school levels).
General knowledge: Wikipedia is accessible from anywhere.
Okay, there's a science bias there, but it's not a bad start for what I can think of, or find in 2 minutes of freshmeat.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts