Personal ideas
I subscribed to this list because i am an educator, and I have been
using GNU/Linux exclusively for well over 10 years, and Debian for at
least 10. I am not a developer; if I had time, I'd want to be, but as
a biologist and a teacher, I find it about all I can do to keep a
system running. Perhaps I can contribute something, at least some
light banter for the amusement of members of this list. I'm not going
to, ever, build a distribution or write a package for educational use.
I don't really understand what skole linux is. I subscribed to another
list, seul educational list, which I also could never figure out what
it was about. I throw up my hands in despair and say, "must be
something for running a school network, or running a school
administrative setup," leaving it at that.
My needs have been different, however. Perhaps important: I don't
teach computer science. Probably I could and probably I should. I
built a 4-machine setup for a classroom, funded by a local technology
grant, at my former school; it has been ruined since I transfered to
another school, by trashing the setups and installing Windows.
I used these for students. At one point, I was teaching AP Biology,
had about 10-14 students, and the four computers, connected at first
through a single phone line, via a masquerade/firewall dialup setup,
even at that primitive level of connectivity, was useful to the
students, for browsing textbook chapters on line, and especially web
browsing. I had some issues with plugins, and had to use that wine
plugin setup, proprietary (I've forgotten the name), against my better
inclinations. It was one of the most useful things, for both me and
students.
The user, even somewhat sophisticated, as I feel I am, must make a
number of concessions to have a completely free system. It is
important than to get to the point, as "we" rapidly are, where
users---and from an educational point of view, I have to point to
science and probably math teachers in particular---who are
constrained to Windows can access those sites on the internet that are
so helpful to us. Any "school linux" distribution from my point of
view would probably have to make some concessions, and lean WAY over
towards the teachers. I hope some readers understand. Try to read a
catalog of a scientific supplier, access a Shock Wave Flash demo of
molecules or photosynthesis, transparently access the molecule of the
week demo, use a QX-Whatever Mattel/Intel microscope (now doable),
access a scrounged Poloroid Sprint Scan transparency scanner, use the
CD from a textbook, access the web sites for textbooks of major
publishers' textbook (in particular, I have had trouble with Pearson
sites, but the modelling of sites to Internet Explorer, Windows, or
maybe Macs, within the educational arena is ubiquitious.
Perhaps that is part of what SkoleLinux and this list are about, and
seul, and if so, I DEFINITELY applaud that. I don't think so, though:
looks to me like record keeping has gotten some attention, but I had
trouble with ggradebook.
We are at the point where schools are being fed lines of S*$T and
buying into expensive software packages, which I hope won't include
grade-submission required packages (although many of my colleagues
still assume that "computer" is a synonym of "Micro$oft"). One begins
to look like a commie pinko socialist, or maybe NOT. Learning and
using Windows is so painful that people don't want to hear about
another system that might require another learning curve. Even if it's
free, and especially when the school district is going to buy into Bill
Gates's "it takes money" approach, and buy what he is selling. (Is
anyone else left with a sense of betrayal when educators are led down
the primrose path by a marketing genius with skills even beyond P. T.
Barnum?)
A look at the History of American (at least) Education will reveal that
big money was always behind remodellings of the educational system
(Rockefellar, Carnegie) and that the system they programmed for the
willing peoples of the day were designed to produce obedient factory
workers, and NOT (did I say NOT?) to educate in the sense of enlighten.
If I am correct, and I think I am, the entire American public has just
been duped (again) by that bad man.
If it has been extremely frustrating to stay completely away from
Windows, it has not been without abundant rewards, however.
When I wasn't able to get a good editor to digitize my database of
animal names in Micronesia, the Free Software Foundation provided emacs
for MS-DOG, and a number of unix-like utilities for manipulating text,
which became essential for my study. Later on, I was able to install
GNU/Linux, and to use LaTeX/TeX to typeset the work.
I was teaching at the time, and I envisioned the use of computers in
various ways. I started graphing tides, because NOAA/Sea Grant had
send tide calendars that didn't work.
No matter how I look at it (Free Beer or Freedom), it was cost that
initially drove me to free software, but freedom considerations are not
less strong in my mind and heart, because of it.
So what I have wanted from Computers, as far as my students, my
teaching, and my programs were concerned, was scientific expertise that
could be cheaply transferred to the school setting.
I think the availability of OpenOffice is helpful, as well as Gnumeric.
Still, from my limited, somewhat narrow perspective, the replacement
of the Microsoft desktop with a clone that is free is not the most
desireable outcome. That is one of my problems with KDE, and some of
the distributions (of which I was particularly disgusted by Mandrake,
in an earlier version, and I have avoided Mandrake since).
But the ice seems to be closing around us: Bill Gates tells us we need
lots of money to make our schools better. (What do you think he will
suggest we spend the money on? Do you, like me, smell a rat?) And on
a more personal level, I am surrounded by a technology infrastructure
that is not working, a school network that is so poorly administered
and so bug-ridden that I have to LITERALLY go home to my dial up
machine, most of the time, to even read email!) Maybe school linux,
etc., are targetting this problem. Every teacher at my school will
receive a laptop next week. We have a T1 that is not working. Hell,
all the while, we are told to buy our own paper to xerox.
We have a distance education facility, and here, again, tens of
thousands were spent on the infrastructure, all proprietary. We are
being led to our ruin.
On the subject of those things I have found useful---cluster knoppix
worked, sortof. I was able to get students to use my machines, and
they figured out lots of tweaks, but the machines, in two or three
years, were never brought down in spite of apt-get dist-upgrades every
six months, unattended. Well, there were a few minor issues. Students
liked the games, and they could be easily taught to edit using abiword.
Chat is possible, and students could figure out how: when I informed a
student of our acceptable use policy, that chatting is unacceptable, he
retorted he was corresponding with a student elsewhere about
observations of each on some migratory birds. Email. Of course. I
used a "students" account, except for students who were regulars, who
got accounts. The more recent distributions have made mounting
floppies easier, but it's still the first thing I have to stop and
explain. Printing is a bit of a horror.
I hope these remarks are useful to someone. I apologize that they are
somewhat undisciplined.
Alan Davis
Kagman High School
Saipan, N. Mariana Islands
aedavis@eccomm.com
lngndvs@gmail.com
--
A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to
cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate
people. --Richard M. Stallman
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