Re: K12 KLUG possibility: Demolinux possibilities

["Ralph M. Deal" <deal@xxxxxxxx>]

I love this listserve!  Great response to my mailing.  Bruce started it off with
some excellent points.

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

[I had written:]

> >As the relatively inactive person responsible for the K12 page for KLUG,
> >I was delighted to find just now this review by Patrick McGovern of
> >DemoLlNUX which had interested me for some time as a way to get public
> >school teachers exposed to LINUX with no threat to their normal
> >operating procedures.   I had given up on the idea at my working model,
> >my wife's (principal) middle school (Olivet MI)  where I volunteer
> >because the person then running Information Servies at the Olivet
> >Community Schools was somewhat anal about security and would not allow
> >teachers access to their own hard drives, requiring they all use group
> >and individual  partitions on the servers' hard drives.  That person has
> >now resigned and the temporary person may be more open about giving
> >teachers some control on their own machines.
> >Interestingly enough, the temporary replacement person has almost no
> >LINUX experience and the system he inherited operates all its servers
> >with LINUX (RH yet)!  So I shall play a larger role in the new regime
>
> I hope this person is very "temporary". Drag him to some KLUG meetings.
>

Great idea except that he runs his own educational consulting firm which gives him
little free time.  His wife is a teacher in my wife's school, by the way.
Actually by working with him, I should be able to convince him that LINUX is a
great system and get him to recommend it schools for whom he consults.

>
> >and may be able to persuade the school  system to look closely at the
> >advantages of converting most of the operating systems to LINUX.  It
> >would be great to allow teachers to choose from their 'own' classroom
> >computers which operating system to use.
>
> I don't know, it could make it impossible to support.
>

Yeah, guess so.

>
> >I had thought WINE would be
> >an ideal way to implemement such a system.  I'd appreciate any
> >information on the effectiveness of using WINE to make both MSwindoz and
> >LINUX easily accessible on a networked classroom computer.  Maybe
> >DemoLINUX would be a better way to go.
>
> There's little point in installing Linux and then emulating windows (I know, I
> know, WINE is not an emulator,  blah, blah, blah....)  What do they use the
> computers for?  There is a fair amount of "educational" software for Linux, and
> certainly lots of utility/officy stuff.

Good question.  Mostly word processing and spreadsheets.  The school has very
little equipment for projection of a window onto a wall, etc. so I suspect little
use is made of 'educational' software.   I'll find out.
There is one computer class in the middle school with a new teacher who is
learning with the students.  I'll work on him after he becomes more comfortable in
his new teaching assignment.

Looking forward to more great ideas from KLUG,

            Ralph      deal@kzoo.edu