On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 22:51, Mark Johnson wrote:
> I heard recently (from my wife, can't confirm the specifics)
> that MS is suing a very poor public school in Philadelphia
> for making copies of Windows for its students to run in its
> classrooms. It seems that for such a school (and really any
> school) that linux would be just a perfect fit.
Here's the article:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/microsoft_school/index.html
It's a very interesting read.
> Does anyone know of any elementary and secondary schools
> using linux? I know many, many colleges are, but I'm more
> curious to know about other schools.
I don't know of any schools, but by the looks of it there will be quite a few
adopting GNU/Linux in the future. Australia (my country) appears to be
heading down the same sorry path as the US, where public schools are
seriously underfunded and parents are being pushed to consider private
education. This is an environment ripe for the spread of free software.
> I could imagine all sorts of really cool things that students
> and teachers could do with linux. I would think that ISPs
> could donate or discount an internet connection so that the
> students and teachers could learn about setting up a LAN
> connected to the internet; bring up some private news and IRC
> servers for discussing homework; develop virtual web sites to
> show case student work, syllabuses(sp?), and message boards,
> etc... They could use the OpenOffice, it would probably be
> possible for some of them to run linux at home. If people
> would recycle and donate there old systems to the schools
> they could have contents for students to win those computers
> for home. We have a Goodwill Computer works in here in my
> town with some descent systems available that could easily
> run linux and even X. (I've heard some parts of the east
> coast have been having lead problems will old moniters begin
> tossed out - I shudder to think people are dumping thier
> computers in dumpsters!!!)
>
> It would be really exciting i think -- but maybe I'm too much
> of a geek. You'd really have to have buy in from the
> teachers and staff... most likely, except for a few of them,
> will probably be too terrified of computers in general to
> even contemplate using linux...I would think local LUGs could
> train teachers and staff so they could become much more
> comfortable with the whole thing.
That's an excellent idea! Get local LUGs involved! It'll be a great way for
them to gain more exposure and hence gain more members and funding for
themselves and for the free software community in general. It will show
people that free software is good and not the "cancer" that M$ says it is.
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jeferson Lopes Zacco [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 6:51 PM
> > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
> > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > Subject: Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
> > >
> > > Speaking seriously now, If I ever get to be a good C/C++
> > > programmer and ever manage to understand QT libraries and
> > > whatever it takes to make programs for KDE/Gnome/X than
> > > I really plan on releasing a ChildDesktop for Linux.
> >
> > What a FANASTIC idea!!!!
Sounds like a good idea. I think the best way to go about this would be to
run a 'shell' on top of GNOME or KDE that limits certain functions (e.g.
command line access) yet has other, more child-friendly, features. Such a
shell could be very light (and hence easy to maintain and install), since it
would be using components from the main environment underneath.
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan.
"There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
