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Re: Educational Desktop Design: e.g. Linpus



El jue, 10-07-2008 a las 20:39 +0200, RalfGesellensetter escribió:
> Hi there,
> 
> when looking for minimal desktops that are appropriate for primary 
> schools, Linpus seems to be just another approach that could teach us 
> some things:
> 
> http://www.linpus.com/xampp/webmaster/Products/Linux9.4Lite.htm
> 
> There is also a live CD, but originaly the system aims at small systems 
> like classmate or eeepc, I think. 
> 
> In this area, sugar might be more interesting - but it's always good to 
> look beyond one's own nose.
> 

I'm not totally with you on this: sugar is good for primary schools, but
it's too childish for secondary schools. OTOH sugar is good when you
have a not too big number of users concurrently. Imagine my secondary
schools with 400 or 600 computers on, trying to show in the screen the
buddies of all the users.

I do think we must re-think the educational desktop. Current desktop is
totally office-oriented. In my experience, I've seen teachers that after
four years of "using" the computers have never seen most of the things
contained in the menus.They only click on the apps or icons that are one
click (or two, no more) away. The menu branch that opens from the lower
(or upper pannel) and has a lot of branches is ok for people used to
computers and other non-free systems, they are used to menus with
several levels of submenus. For newcomers, they just ignore most of that
stuff. I've used linpus on an Acer One and I like it, also the Desktop
we did for primary schools was pretty succesful because ther was some
animated bars with the main apps one click away. I do think that if we
use the computers to teach computing, current desktop is ok, but if we
use computers for the students to learn everything, current desktop is
not the best option.
Obviously, I'd like to get more feedback about this, because I'm
planning to spend some time this summer working on new ideas for the
desktop.

Regards.

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