Re: Debian for education
On Fri, Dec 22, 2000 at 01:12:10PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Perhaps we have to create certain age groups (there was enough discussion
> about it- if I remember right this ended in the statement that Debian
> Jr is more targeting for children below 10). If we would find a clever
> way (really raw idea:
> task-debian-jr_3-6
> task-debian-jr_6-8
> task-debian-jr_8-10
> task-debian-jr_10-14
> ) you might perhaps find that one of this task-packages fits your target
> system (or you work in this direction.
At present, I think there are three groups that should be addressed:
1. stuff that everyone can use (e.g. desktop "toys")
2. stuff focused on the preschool/primary age range (e.g. gcompris,
lletters)
3. everything else
The "toys" should be handled by a meta package jr-toys. The
preschool/primary would be jr-basic-skills or some such, and everything
else would be categorized according into non-age-specific packages focused
on the kind of thing being installed (e.g. jr-typing, jr-math, jr-games)
I am having a hard time conceiving of what would go in an 8-10 or 10-14
age range meta package. I'm thinking once kids get into this age range
their tastes will be closer to that of an adult, and most things an adult
would use are suitable for these children too (with the exception of
violent games).
However, if you're talking about education, it may be a different matter
altogether ... I haven't really thought about age-specific educational
software yet, because, to be frank, I haven't seen a whole lot (except for
the stuff aimed at very small children). I am not an educator, so maybe
the educators on the list can comment.
> In my humble opinion another
> branch from Debian Jr would just split our efforts. Try to make Debian Jr
> fit for your purpose and all can gain profit.
Well, that may be the case, but I really am not equipped myself to handle
the education stuff. If there are enough people on the list who are
interested in doing something for education, I have no problem with
sharing some of our resources to accomodate them. It's just that home use
was my original idea, and I didn't really want to get too far off that
original vision of what I wanted for my own children, and the children of
like-minded Debian developers. Would it really split our efforts to start
a sister group, debian-edu? Since I'm not an educator, I'm not
necessarily going to have much input into education-specific problems.
Also, the way things are structured right now, I have sole access to the
debian-jr website CVS. I can just see myself becoming a bottleneck for
those who want to keep the work on education moving along.
> Kinr regards and a merry Christmas to the list
And a Merry Christmas to you too!
Ben
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
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