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Setting up Linux in an Inner City Public School?
Richard Finney asks: "I have a friend who is retired. He was the chief scientist on the Landsat program. Instead of just belting down scotch and cashing social security checks, he is volunteering at Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary School #122, in Baltimore. He's trying to set up some old donated computers from the Windows 95 era. Rather than fight with Windows, he's decided to install Linux. How would you set up these systems for these little kids to use and learn about computers using Linux?"
If he is looking at donated computers truly of the Windows 95 era, he may not be doing the students, nor linux any service. Consider the standard requirements for a Windows 95 "era" machine: (from the Microsoft knowledge base article)
System requirements for installing Windows 95:
Not saying it can't be done with Linux, but this person is choosing Linux to avoid the hassles of Windows? With machines as lean as these, and today's Linux, he may be getting more hassle with Linux than the old Windows.
Even by Linux (assuming 2.4 or higher kernel, with associated standard Gnu distro packages) standards, these are pretty stripped down machines, and would be likely to be balky even running Linux. There may be some instructional "stuff" you could do with Linux and these machines, but I'd be inclined to steer clear... there's a reason a lot of these machines are donated.
An alternative would be to look for some kind of community "donation", or a grant, where half decent computers could be drummed up -- a decent computer today can be obtained for much less than before -- why not order a bunch of components from Newegg, or somewhere similar, and build computers as part of the education exercise?
I've tried pushing Linux in inner-city schools. It's hard to get support for anything new or different, even with the price advantage. If you've gotten past that hurdle, I'd suggest trying to make a good first impression. Choose a very friendly distro (Ubuntu perhaps) and configure it as trasparently as possible. Ensure that the basics (web, email, productivity, multimedia) just work and ensure that getting help is not a task in itself. While we would all like to seee opendocument being used, it's probably best to set openoffice to default to the M$ formats to easy compatibility.
The trick is not so much teaching Linux as ensuring a good first impression. The OS is there for those who want to learn, don't force it on the others or you'll risk rejection and difficult times in the future.
Let us know who it works out too.
-Tim Louden
INNER CITY KIDS DON'T USE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Because you can't steal it.
I jacked a motherfucking Emacs from a motherfucker, but I couldn't C-X C-c the fuck out fast enuff, so my black nigger ass got busted by the StallMan.
1) Try to work with the district IT people, but if they aren't responsive then continue to go it alone - WITH the support of the principal which hopefully he's already gotten. Having BEEN the red tape wielding corporate goon, don't necessarily expect a lot of help and possible some resistance. But you never know. In particular he needs to be aware of significant liability if the computers are connected to the Internet. He *MUST* provide filtering, or blocking of "unwholesome" sites otherwise it risks the school's federal funding. Typically he should be able to get Internet access either through the district or other routes including the filtering for close to free.
2) There are quite a few charitable groups that should be able to supply solid computers of better vintage, and possibly some support. At the very least check with the National Cristina foundation (www.cristina.org) Machines in the 300Mhz-800Mhz range are pretty readily available. 5 year old servers can also be gotten via charity and these days are monsters like dual 1Ghz XEON's with 2-4GB of RAM and frequently several hundred MB of SCSI RAID - more than enough for the server for this.
3) I'll second the recommendation for the k12 linux terminal server project. Also check out edubuntu (www.edubuntu.org) as it comes pre-packaged with a LOT of good stuff, but he'll need machines like those mentioned above. edubuntu site has some good getting started and how to do this type of guides.
4) Check with www.eduforge.org - there are a lot of experienced people there in the discussion sections to help out.
5) Forget about "teaching about computers". At the K-5 level it is more about using the computers as learning tool for other more practical subjects. Any learning about computers should be distinctly secondary as a result of the computers being used. Kids will pick up basic keyboarding, mouse and other skills as the use the software that helps them with other projects. No need to "teach about Linux" or any other technology as such. You want kids to be able to read, write, figure, and think, not turn out 9 year old Linux sysadmins. The national (and state and I'm sure local) standards for kids need to know about technology are a joke. If the kids are useing the computers a couple hours a week from 2nd though 5th grade, they'll meet the standards, or at least as much of them as make sense.
6) Target two specific types of activities for different purposes:
a) Drill and kill. I hate to say it, but this works for things like basic phonics, letter and word recognition, and arithmetic skills. Doing it on a computer isn't any more effective than work sheets in the classroom, in fact some studies indicate it is less effective for time spent. BUT, doing it on the computers gets the kids excited so they actually do the drills. These kinds of drills are particularly important for the children likely to be in these schools since they are starting off "behind" and typically don't get the necessary reinforcement at home. Not the most popular way to use computers, but you have to deal with reality.
b) Constructivist activities. Using a word processor to write a "paper" (typically 2 sentences qualifies in 2nd grade) and illustrating it with a basic drawing program (e.g. tuxpaint) is well within the capabilities of the machines and students. They will pick up those computer skills as they use these programs for class related activities.
7) Programs like tuxtype not only teach touch typing - something they don't really need until middle school, but help a lot with letter and word recognition. Therefore they can be used even in lower elementary grades effectively, just don't worry about typing speed.
8) Finally if for some reason you absolutely positively have to teach "computers"; Again, forget about teach "linux". Instead starting in the 4th or 5th grade look at one of the great Logo implementations (e.g. education.mit.edu/open