Edubuntu Computer Lab Unveiled in NYC School

[alaithea]

Hi,

I'm the Technology Director for HERA Group (http://heragroup.org), a Long Island, NY based non-profit organization. Our company recently completed a pilot program consisting of research and technology training for a middle school science teacher in Washington Heights in NYC. As part of the project, I built a computer lab for the teacher's eigth-grade classroom. The lab consists of a server running Edubuntu 5.10 and five computers connected as terminals via LTSP. The teacher was trained in using Flash, HTML (via Nvu) and Moodle to make and deliver online (via the local server) lessons, quizzes, etc. to her students.

As far as we know, this is the first computer lab in a NYC public school to use Linux. We are gearing up to do more projects like this in the near future, as well. More info on the program can be found in our press release (http://www.heragroup.org/tree/PressRelease_2-06.pdf) and on our website under Education (http://heragroup.org/index.php?section=tree).

We will be hosting a one- or two-hour session on open source software for schools at the June C3 Expo (http://www.c3expo.com) in NYC, where the CEO of RedHat will be giving one of the keynotes. Everyone here at the Ubuntu forums is cordially invited to attend! If you are interested, contact me, as we may have a number of passes available. As our session is still in the early planning stages, ideas and suggestions for communicating the power and benefits of open source to schools are welcome.

Thanks for reading!

--Alison Rowland
Technology Director
HERA Group

[Brunellus]

wow! cool to hear that people are going ahead with edubuntu in its natural evnrionment..

and also cool for the general invite!

[K.Mandla]

Fantastic. I don't suppose we could see pictures of the lab in action? People dig pictures of cute kids. :)

[alaithea]

A couple of our people are going out to the school in early March to take pictures and video of the lab in action, so stay tuned. :)

--Alison

[John.Michael.Kane]

alaithea thats good to hear. i remember the old novell servers they had in school. good to see someone make the move to linux on the school leavel.

[majikstreet]

that's awesome! can't wait for pics!

[glug101]

Wow, I feel like I missed out on seeing this earlier. Great going at putting Linux into the hands of children and educators. This is one of the areas that Linux has a clear advantage.

[Sirin]

The command line shall prevail! In 6 months, the GUI shall be obsolete and the CLI shall rise back up!

The kids in that lab will be compiling left and right THE HARD WAY! :twisted:

[Bandit]

I am moving home in 2 months and this summer I plan on working with the local schools from my home town to push them more toward Edubuntu as well.
This would be a extreamly cost effective solution for them.
Cheers,
Joey

[DigitalDuality]

yes yes, they have a linux system now...


but can they access myspace? ;)

[chimera]

Great to hear edubuntu is acctually serving it's purpose\\:D/

btw, picsplz kthxbai:mrgreen:

[glug101]

Since there are actually people TALKING on this thread, is there anybody here that has experience with Edubuntu in the ltsp server configuration that can give me an idea what a good base cpu would be for such a server?

I'm considering working with groups in my area to get such things installed, but I have no perspective as to what type of processor would satisfy, say, a lab of 10 computers. I've heard that an athlon xp 1800 was up to the task, but I'm not confident that this is enough for most installations:)

Anybody have some experience?

[Bandit]

yes yes, they have a linux system now...


but can they access myspace? ;)
School PCs are for education, not recreation ;)

[Sirin]

School PCs are for education, not recreation ;)

But AFAIK, Linux has no censor filters like Windows XP or Mac OS X. ;)

[Swab]

But AFAIK, Linux has no censor filters like Windows XP or Mac OS X. ;)

Hmm... at the school I work at we are running squidGuard on Ubuntu... but then the children are all under 12 years old.

We have also setup a couple of the pupil computers to dual boot into edubuntu, they seem to enjoy tuxmath the most. I don't think we could do away with Windows as we have a lot of quality educational software which blows away most all of the open source programs I've looked at.

[somuchfortheafter]

actually there are firefox extensions that handle filtering...

[xequence]

But AFAIK, Linux has no censor filters like Windows XP or Mac OS X. ;)

Trust me, censors do more harm then good.

When we go to the computer lab in school I just sit there and dont do anything (normally just listen to music and pretend I am doing something) because the BESS block blocks most sites for my research.

If the site is imporant enough to go to (like I NEED to go there for my project, absolutly need to) then ill just get past the block, as it is a little annoying to have to do so.

[Brunellus]

Trust me, censors do more harm then good.

When we go to the computer lab in school I just sit there and dont do anything (normally just listen to music and pretend I am doing something) because the BESS block blocks most sites for my research.

If the site is imporant enough to go to (like I NEED to go there for my project, absolutly need to) then ill just get past the block, as it is a little annoying to have to do so.
there is the possibility of legal liability by putting an unfiltered 'net connection and making it accessible to children. In schools.

[glug101]

How much do students less than 12 really need to access? Would it be impractical to start by creating a list of the main sites that the children would need, and then block everything else? Linux can handle an access list beautifully;) If there is a site that you discover you need later, enable it.

IMHO trying to block known bad sites is like trying to patch a splintered ship. Hopeless. Kids are smart, they'll find a way around it.

[Bandit]

Easy way is to block out all *.com addresses.
Normally I would agree that there is no need to filtering.
But the way things are now-a-days, school boards dont want sued cuase someone's child saw someone naked butt on the school internet.
This is another good reason for the US government to approve the *.xxx porn website extension. But thats another topic.
Cheers,
Joey

[3rdalbum]

Easy way is to block out all *.com addresses.

But too many educator-approved websites use .com addresses. Howstuffworks.com is a site that springs to mind.

Google.com is also a valuable resource, unless you want to find out anything about democracy or Falun Dafa. :twisted: lol

How about setting it up so all the websites that the kids would need would be added to the safe list, or even stored on the server for local access?

[Swab]

How much do students less than 12 really need to access? Would it be impractical to start by creating a list of the main sites that the children would need, and then block everything else? Linux can handle an access list beautifully;) If there is a site that you discover you need later, enable it.

IMHO trying to block known bad sites is like trying to patch a splintered ship. Hopeless. Kids are smart, they'll find a way around it.

Well, the oldest students tend to do a lot of searching, so blocking everything would get in their way. The students are supervised at all times anyway, so squidguard is just one layer in keeping them away from things they shouldn't be seeing.

[benplaut]

The kids in that lab will be compiling left and right THE HARD WAY! :twisted:

you mean without makefiles? :mrgreen:


and, why doesn't Explorations Middle get any press :(

we're now up to 5 servers spitting out to 3 clients each

[glug101]

you mean without makefiles? :mrgreen:


and, why doesn't Explorations Middle get any press :(

we're now up to 5 servers spitting out to 3 clients each
Congrats on having the edubuntu servers! :) I think I'm going to start documenting when I read about where these things are installed. They could make great examples to show people that might be sitting on the fence (so to speak ;) ). How powerful are each of those servers?

As far as blocking sights that the students would need for research, my idea (half baked as I typed it ;) ) was that there would be a system similar to what I had in highschool (in the pre-internet days :) ). There are many sites that are considered quite safe, like merriam websters, oxford english dictionary, plenty of encyclopedias, and howstuffworks, to name a few. These sites have a large variety of information, in larger quantities than a typical school could afford in print. When writing a paper, we were given the chance to choose a topic and then look to see if we could find enough information about it (during class time). If we couldn't then we would change it. Because of the restricted in formation (then a print library) the teacher generally could tell us ahead of time if we were likely to find enough information or not. With a teacher chosen topic, it's even easier:)

Yeah, usually the only kind of sensorship that I advocate is having the parent WITH the child when the child is on the internet, but in a school setting, that's just not practical.

I'm liking this conversation, to tell the truth, this aspect of Edubuntu is the biggest problem I haven't really gotten an idea that I like yet. :)

[majikstreet]

you know what I thought was stupid.. I was searching for stuff about montreal online, and I clicked on a link to a site about the montreal casino, and it was blocked.... really... it's research!

[benplaut]

Congrats on having the edubuntu servers! :) I think I'm going to start documenting when I read about where these things are installed. They could make great examples to show people that might be sitting on the fence (so to speak ;) ). How powerful are each of those servers?

each one is a athlon xp 2500+ w/ 40 gig drives and 512mb ram.

I'm trying to convince the school to get 2 gigs of ram in each - they could spit out to many more clients.

The dumb terminals are PII 333mhz - they could be used on their own, but it's much faster with a good 'server'