Elementary Schools Using Linux

[Marious]

Had a question for you all.

Do you all think that an elementary school would benefit from Ubuntu?

As in would teaching them at that age make it easier for them to get away from Windows, because kids have influences on there parents and if we can get to them that young with Ubuntu or another distro then they can grow up using it and what not.

I bring this up because I had an idea about setting up my daughters school up with maybe a lab of nothing but Linux Desktops running Ubuntu of course hehe. She is only 5 but maybe the older kids would benefit from this the 4-6th graders since when they start going to Jr. High or Middle school they will start to use more computers. And the setup of Linux on older computers is easier, well not easier but it would be cheaper, I mean look at the videos of the mobile school bus in India with nothing but Linux. If you look at that, these kids are way ahead of our own because of that. And they wait just to be able to use that, this all could even be a pushing point to bring up to the schools themselves, we could get volunteers from the community that are familiar with Linux to come in for an hour or so on different days and teach the kids a little bit about Linux. Tell me what you all think. Lets throw out some more idea's, see how feasible my idea is and if others would actually help with a project of this nature.

Marious

[aysiu]

Go for it.

[kwaanens]

Take a look at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu It's the English language version of the Norwegian Skolelinux (School Linux). They would have a lot of experience.
Skolelinux is at http://wiki.skolelinux.no

- K

[aysiu]

And, of course, there's always Edubuntu.

[kwaanens]

This might also be interesting: http://linuxforkids.org/

[kwaanens]

And, of course, there's always Edubuntu.

Which is inspired by, or maybe even ported from, skolelinux. Skolelinux has provided shools in Norway with Linux since before Ubuntu was released :)

- K

PS: Should point out that Skolelinux is based on thin clients, as far as I understand.

[Marious]

Thanks for the response and the links guys. I will continue to work on this and see what pans out. Get some info and see what kind of equipment they are working with and what we can get if they have no equipment see what we can get and get other parents involved. Wish me luck.

Marious

[Marious]

So here is some of the things I would like to do. You all might be able to give me more idea's as times goes by I shall post to here if I run into some difficulties and how I am progressing. This will take time and perhaps if everything goes well it can be implemented next school year or maybe test it out during the summer time, I will make the proposition to the school and what not soon I just need to put a paper together the DebianEdu link you provided shall be very helpful thanks.

- Write a proposition.
- Get the Equipment. (Pending the proposition being accepted.)
- Get the software. (That one is an easy one.)
- Get volunteers to be there with the kids.

There is much more but thats the short of it.

Marious

[Benudy]

The reason we chose FOSSoftware for our school is very simple. We are most committed to helping the children learn to think.
That is why I am currently in the process of completely changing the software on the 20 machines we use for children to learn on. Yes Edubuntu is free and that's great too however the reason is the children's mental development and that would be worth paying even more than MS and Adobe charge if we thought either of them would help at all in reaching this goal for the children.

The children need to learn to think about how things work - Linux is definitely the platform for this
The children get much more opportunity to learn that there are sometimes an almost unlimited set of right answers (and possibly wrong one for that matter).
When Dad says "Windows and MS Office is the only thing that makes sense for me". Jr. can reply "that might be so but can you convert that Presentation you just made into a PDF with just a mouse click?"
Anyone who really thinks about it would know that regardless of what they learn to use in Elementary School, they will need to learn to use many other things before they graduate from university and join the workforce.

I, personally had the opportunity to learn to write programs in Fortran on punch cards for a computer the size of a house when I was in Junior High. Do I still need to know how to do that? Of course not, however; Is that almost ancient mental exercise still useful to me today? Yes, most definitely, I thank the State of Ohio for that opportunity almost daily, even when I am working with high priced proprietary software. That course 40 odd years ago (and I did not continue in the field) is the only thing that keeps me from almost throwing my new MS loaded laptop across the room on occasions. I just remember what happened when I accidentally dropped an ordered stack of punch cards and also remember the time and effort it took to make that program functional again and then I get on the Internet, contact my favorite Guru and a few minutes later my little amazing machine is doing everything correctly once again.

I beg every single school in the world to insure that the children learn at least part of the time using Linux. They are the ones who will appreciate it the most as time goes on.
Regards Ben:confused:

[Deacon John]

Last year a local Catholic Elementary school was given a donation of 25 older Dell PC's with no software installed. Since it is an inner-city school with a small budget they looked for a solution to replace their aged Windows 98 PC's in their computer lab. I had been using Ubuntu for several months by that time and said that they were willing to try something else, then I could help them. I set up all the PC's using Ubuntu 6.06 and added some of the education software from the distributions. After using it for a year, the teachers and students were ecstatic. Both learned a lot from their "experiment" and I have asked to update them again this year to either Feisty or Edubuntu 7.04.

[Akayus]

I'm a tech at a elementary/middle school District. I think it would be great for the kids at your daughter's school to have a Linux lab to work (and play) in. In fact, I feel that it would be a disservice not to, if you have the means. The more these kids are exposed to various types of technology at young ages, the better they'll be prepared for future experiences. Why wouldn't we want to show them that there is more to computers than Windows, Internet Explorer and Word?

However, it's very important to go about this kind of thing the right way. This may not be an issue in your child's school, but in many districts teachers (and administration staff) are just barely comfortable with what they know (Windows), and are hesitant to change. Kids figure this stuff out in no time, where many teachers are scared to death. Make sure the teachers will have adequate support, because some of them will probably be very skeptical or even resistant, and differences in the new machines might be perceived as shortcomings. Once a few teachers are unhappy, the sentiment tends to spread.

In my case, I'll be choosing a couple specific teachers to 'test' with; people who are relatively comfortable with computers, and with an aptitude/willingness for new things (the younger teachers tend to fit this profile more than older ones). I'm going to install some Edubuntu mini-labs in their classrooms. Once I've worked out the bugs and I have a linux success-story and some happy teachers behind me, I'll be in a much better position to try to implement more linux in the schools.

Good luck.

[Yasumoto]

In my case, I'll be choosing a couple specific teachers to 'test' with; people who are relatively comfortable with computers, and with an aptitude/willingness for new things (the younger teachers tend to fit this profile more than older ones). I'm going to install some Edubuntu mini-labs in their classrooms. Once I'vå worked out the bugs and I have a linux success-story and some happy teachers behind me, I'll be in a much better position to try to implement more linux in the schools.


I think that's a really good idea. One problem is that I find it very difficult for teachers to actually find the motivation to make the switch. Most teachers want to have a system that works, and once it does, they want to get back to the topics they need to cover (for state standardized tests and whatnot). I'm hoping that's more of a feeling with High School teachers, and elementary school teachers would be more open to letting their students try sometime new. We just need to have a good reason for teachers to devote their already stretched time to learned how to use an entire operating system.