Re: [Fwd: brainstorming]
Sean,
On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, S. Champ wrote:
> there are some astronomy packages for linux. has anyone seen how their
> children take to these?
Not yet. I expect as my kids encounter it shortly in school (my eldest
are 10 and 9 and are both just starting grade 4 today) I'll be digging up
whatever I can find and trying it out with them.
> xearth might be a good means towards the teaching of geography, and of
> whatever field(s) of knowledge that the day/night periodicity would be
> categorized under ( astronomy, again, perhaps. )
ssystem looks great for astronomy.
> one idea, which may be applciable here, is something that came up in reply
> to something at teachernet.com. the idea, then, was a database of
> classrooms that were ready for establishing some
> (audio|video|text-based-messaging) conferencing sessions. the idea,
> now, would be the same, but probably on the person-to-person level,
> rather than classroom-to-classroom. this might be valid as an
> inclusion in a curriculum about networking. the 'jabber'
> messaging-client might be a step about this.
Have you checked out seul-edu? Perhaps they have some thoughts on this.
I'm trying to draw the line between "packages for kids" and "packages for
schools" and am focusing on the former with Debian Jr. and leaving the
latter for the SEUL-EDU group (see the Debian Jr. web page at
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/ for a link). Which is not to say
that SEUL's stuff won't trickle back down to Debian Jr. I most certainly
expect it will. Still, they have more people there focused particularly
on Linux in education, and that makes it a better forum for discussion
school-related issues.
> i've got a terrible pattern of saying "let's shoot for the moon", and
> then { stopping | being diverted } before i'm even close to the gantryway.
> maybe the saying of it will serve in the dispelling of it.
Tell me about it. I can relate. It seems to be a common problem for the
computer hobbyist / tinkerer type of person.
> grants are an option that might be worth some pursuit.
I'd like to see where we go with the volunteer model that Debian is based
on. I think we can go quite far without money. Still, I'm not
discounting the idea. Down the road, if the project gathers momentum, and
it looks like money is necessary to help get us where we want to go, we
should approach the Debian project as a whole and make a proposal.
> something in previous-email or document-referenced-from-* held a mention of
> some other linux-kids projects, with a focus on collaboration. this is
> a key point, and the issue (as it seems to me) is "how exactly is the
> collaboration going to work out? good in theory, but how in practice?"
I think Debian is a good working model for collaboration. Look at what
we have accomplished. Debian Jr. attempts to leverage a project for kids
off of that firm foundation.
Ben
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
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