Hello all,
I am a teacher in greece and a have an ambitious dream to switch greek school
labs to Ubuntu. In order to do that, we have form a team by the name Linux
Greek Teachers ( http://launchpad.net/~linux.sch.gr ), we lecture about Ubuntu
LTSP, writing documentation packaging greek educational software, building
repos and so on... I want to make some remarks about Ubuntu in Education that
came from community work, the feedback from users or non users, and my personal
experience.
There are many schools around the world but i think most of them are
running windows. But why is that? If we answer to that we maybe make a
deference:
Problems:
1. The ignore the existence of Ubuntu
2. They have painful experiences with linux. Many computer teachers ask me if
Ubuntu has a
graphical intreface (!) (you can imagine what they think about terminal)
3. The majority of teachers is technophobic. The fear of the unknown is a big
issue here, you can call it also linuxophobia or ubuntuphobia. They know how to
use windows so that is enough.
4. If they subpass this fear they have no idea where to start. I use linux
back from 1998 and it took me 6 months to set up a LTSP server back in
2007. Many outdated guides, just for geeks, no real answers to human beings.
5. No idea what application to use for school.
Solutions:
1. They can advertise from mouth to mouth. How can we accomplish that? If we
supply a complete solution to their problems we stand a chance. When i am
saying about a complete solution i mean, installation guide, maintenance guide,
exercises for students about Writer, Calc, Impress, Firefox, Kturtle and so on.
This material should mobilize even the laziest teacher.
2. Video exhibitions about Ubuntu and its school use. Real people are bored
with text we should try a visual way.
3. Technophobia is solved if we can provide a map of installations around the
world and a real community so he can feel safe.
4. I have written a guide for Ubuntu LTSP for starters, exersices for kids for
various programs, but i still belive that the installation of Ubuntu LTSP is
very dificult for a non linux user. My opinion is that ltsp should have a gtk
installation interface that can be installed with synaptic from internet or the
educational edition of ubuntu.
5. A complete list of useful educational applications used on Ubuntu.
Now lets explain the title of the mail. Where is edubuntu is fitting here? I
think nowhere. Edubuntu is a pack of educational software... ok so what?
everybody still thinks that is a distro. We should kill the name also for the
community teams and start all over again not as Ubuntu educational edition but
as Ubuntu Educational Applications. Lets call it Ubuntu Education... Edubuntu
is already dead and is a very bad marketing.
Please comment
Cheers
George
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