[clug] Linux on new school computers [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Jason]

I think someones already mentioned the kde education stuff there are some foreign language tools in that, as well as a chemistry tool or two. Cant underestimate the value of having a good periodic table app or a queue card app. especially when they are so easily pulled from the repositories.

 From an ex school technicians point of view I can just see the nightmare of installing administering and updating all those second hand windows machines even without having to find good windows software for each task.

I cant see the whole project really working in any meaningful way without a lot of training and support, probably need to double each schools number of computer technicians and bring in a lot more to help with the initial setup. Some people are talking about thin clients, which are great for low graphics stuff but I'm my experience they are useless as soon as you get a class room or two full of kids getting taught photo-shop let alone any video editing stuff. Is there going to be any money for infrastructure? Servers and routers and cable? If this is going to be a solution for the "future" its got to be able to cope with the demands of the today.

An area I think will benefit a lot from the open source software is obviously the computer studies classes, just something as simple as using tools that people use in real software development has got to be a huge plus. What school can justify 30 licences of Microsoft visual studio? My school taught us Acorn Basic. Set the kids up with eclipse and java thought and you give them something that is used (I assume) by the likes of IBM and Sun.

Jason



On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:45:08 +1100, jm <jeffm at ghostgun.com> wrote:

> Adam Jenkins wrote:
>> Here's some more!
>>
>> http://gcompris.net/ (simple games for kids; comes with Edubuntu)
>> http://www.openrasmol.org/
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/
>> http://starplot.org/ (there's probably a few similar apps for Linux)
>> http://ariadne.mse.uiuc.edu/Info/Chime/chime_linux.html (not really a
>> Linux app but, a lot of Chemistry web sites etc need that plugin)
>> http://www.qgis.org/
>> http://earth.google.com/
>>
>
>
> Added. Keep it coming. I'll take submissions until midday tomorrow
> (20071130T1200) and try to post a rough list by 1300 for review.
>
> Need apps in the following areas:
>
> Foreign language
> Biology
> History
> Geography (some stuff in earth sciences overlaps here).
>
> I suspect that these areas are going more for websites than for
> applications.
>
> Jeff.