Introduction / Free Educational Software
Dear List,
having subscribed to this list only yesterday, I feel like I should
introduce myself - at least roughly:
Teaching computer sciences ("Informatik") at a comprehensive school
("Gesamtschule") in Westphalia, Germany, I am deeply interested in
promoting the usage of Linux in gerneral and especially at schools.
Luckywise (?) I am also in charge of administrating our network (50+
machines) and projecting our further expenses.
Having local access to a circle of people who localize and adapt the
Norwegian skolelinux solution into German, this is my current focus.
Besides the idea of continous updates with debian, the idea of a
terminal server solution with thin clients is what I like most with
this project: Administration-free clients, cheap and silent, and the
possibility of sustainable usage of - in terms of redmond - out dated
computers is what convinced me.
On the other hand, I am not only teaching comuter sciences, but also
math and social sciences (virtually geography). Hence, I lack the time
to get as much into developing source code my self (alas); instead I
started to evaluate existing free educational software (for now minor
German comments only) and propose the inclusion of one or another
package into debian-edu / skolelinux.
To make a starting point towars this direction within this group, I like
to vote vor the R-Crane project, which addresses basically high school
level: As far I can tell, this is a SAS like statistical software under
GPL.
As for skoleknoppix, which I reviewed briefly in German, I'd plea for
re-introducing educational games such as KAtomic or Sokoban, maybe even
Enigma (formerly known as Esprit/Oxyd).
Okay, I wouldn't mind if this posting induces a new thread about
educational software :) For now, I wish to thank everybody being
engaged in developing educational software!
Regards
Ralf
P.S.: Two more remarks: I could imagine to do minor (=short)
translations into German (worst case back into English) or, at least,
reading translations over (sometimes translations fail at technical
terms, e.g. with audio software which is a personal interest of mine).
Second, I am one of those who hope that Java will be free one day, so
cross platform software for schools can be integrated into GPL
distributions (e.g. javakara).
Reply to: