LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Matthew Geddes <mgeddes@xavier.sa.edu.au>
  To  : <LinuxSA@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 17:01:10 +0930

Re: MS Curriculum at schools and TAFEs ...

Jason Tan wrote:

> Fulltime professional IT staff at schools,.

I'm full time and consider myself professional :-). Whilst this is still
a problem in most schools, it is becoming much less of a problem every
day.

> At some number of IT staff per some number of PCs woudl be a good start.

I'm sorry, I don't understand this sentence.

> most of the problems I am aware of in schools are directly or indirectly
> related to teachers being forced into technology and roles where they are
> nto trained,, that arnet part of their jb descriptiona nd that they
> recieve no useful support for, and cant afford to get useful support.

There are mailing lists and other areas of support. I actually support a
fair few Catholic schools when it gets too hard for their IT guy/chick.
This is usually in the form of free phone support.

> Remove the stress with computers and I think you will remove the biases
> and the cause for resistance to change - ie change will cost me more
> stress and more work, which I wont get paid for and dont ahve the skills
> to do.

But by moving to something like Linux, you could easily remove stress.
The biggest problem we have is computers not working when a teacher has
a class in a computer room. 90% of problems are to do with the lack of
security on the single user operating systems that we run.

> The problem is attracting suitable staff, reatining them and convincing
> the education department/govt that they are needed in the first place.

I agree. This is a problem. Schools have no money, IT people generally
want lots of it.

> Incidently I happen to think that for a very high percentage of school
> requirments, Windows or Mac hosts are fine and even desirable.

I do disagree with this. OK, people are used to Windows and Word, but
there is no security, the stability is not there and we can't afford not
to have reliable systems. It would decrease the number of hours I spend
fixing Windows machines. I know one school is moving towards a Sun Thin
Client solution to avoid this.

> They have the required applcations base in most casses at affordable
> rates for schools, they are proably the most well
> understaood platfrom amongst both teachers and students and this is the
> most telling point against other paltforms in a school environment.

Applications are the biggest problem I see. There are the "multimedia"
(read: animated) CDs that are used as learning resources and the
software that is forced upon schools for keeping records (by people like
CEO and SSABSA). Not so much the Office suites or whatnot.

> Most schools simly dont ahve enough in house schools to adminsiter PCs and
> networks, but all the skills they do have are typcially Winor Mac based.

A couple of carefully chosen questions to this list could answer enough
questions to get a school full of PCs running linux. Given most
distributions these days, a simple HOWTO would be enough to guide
someone through setting up a (for example) Mandrake 7.2 lab.

> I do think howver that certain applications such as servers and teaching
> IT(as opposed to teaching non IT topics using a computer as a tool in the
> same way we use a pen as a tool) that linux/freebsd would be
> useful/desirable.

We are hoping to introduce a couple of Linux machines here for some of
the networking stuff over the next 6-12 months. We just need to see what
criteria we need to fulfill and how much time we've got to go into the
stuff properly.

> So what should be done is hilight he need for proessional IT staff.
> Perhaps the IT staff of parliemnt house should be allput in schoools. That
> might hilight how esential it is for computer netowrks to ahve
> professional IT staff to the pollies.
> 
> Because teachers tend as far as I am aware know taht professional admins
> are needed, but dont have the funds to get it.

Or, how about if we came up with a Zero Administration Linux (MS was
using the "Zero Administration" buzzword a while back to sell it's stuff
to schools). It would be possible to have a distribution that asked very
few questions and locked itself down real tight. Then nobody would need
to spend much money. I mean it would be *Another* Linux distribution,
but if it served a purpose....

Because it would be GPLd, people could burn multiple copies and leave it
in the library for students to borrow. It would be simple enough for
them to take it home and install (obviously, you'd have it default to
not wiping out their Windows partition - or would you?).


Matt

-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/  IRC: #linuxsa on irc.linux.org.au
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject