We don't really know the circumstances of the school, so it's a bit hard to go
into specifics. Broadly speaking though, there's two main categories that
school computers fall into: administrative, and teaching. In most states in
Australia the administrative roles of computers are largely dictated by the
respective state education departments, so things like departmental networking
and email, databases (eg year two net, NAPLAN data et al), accounting, and now
to a larger extent curriculum resources might need to be interfaced to with the
department sanctioned OS. Using another OS might leave the school without
technical support or backup since in my experience IT support personnel only
receive training in the sanctioned OS, and department IT resources are geared
to the mainstream OS.
I don't mean to sound discouraging, just giving the advice that classroom
computers are probably your greatest chance of success here. The good news is,
the field is really wide open since the focus is usually on teaching simple
tasks.
For early childhood (yrs 1 and 2) students will normally be shown how to draw a
picture, type into a word processor, interact with simple programs and games.
Middle years will normally be expected to extend this to achieve some specific
tasks: write a story, draw a picture, achieve a specific goal or task.
Later primary school grades will extend this, but the tasks will be more
complex - spreadsheats, photo editing, a basic database etc.
Many public schools are behind the eight ball when it comes to decent IT
teaching in the classroom because the teachers mostly lack the training and
understanding themselves. Computer resources for teaching are generally
limited and have to be shared with the whole school. In many areas of course
students have access to computers at home but many in disadvantaged communities
are not so lucky.
Anything you give them should be simple to install and teach. Fortunately the
choice with Linux/Ubuntu is extensive and it's possible to find suitable
alternatives for almost any requirement. You wouldn't give them the Gimp for
photo editing for example, but one of the simpler alternatives would be
suitable.
I suggest you find out what they want to teach, and the solutions should start
to suggest themselves immediately.
If the school does not have enough hardware the should approach one of the
non-profit recyclers which can be found through searches, for example
photobank: http://www.cbq.org.au/
Chris
>________________________________
> From: Mick Skey <skey.m...@gmail.com>
>To: ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com
>Sent: Thursday, 28 June 2012 4:27 PM
>Subject: School again
>
>
>Hi guy's
>
>
>I have manage to get a meeting with school Head Mistress
>on Tuesday, I'm going to take Ubuntu 12.04 and the Latest
>Edubuntu, Thank for your help and I'm willing to take more on
>as well. Please feel free to send stuff as this my first time,
>I am not going to push Linux but to show there is something else,
>
>
>As I said before there are schools out there in the same boat as my
>2 rug-rats at and there is a opportunity for us to promote Linux.
>
>
>Please feel free to send suggestion, PLEASE feel free to help
>
>
>Cheers
>--
>M.Skey
>
>
>
>
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