David, it sounds like you have a good setup there. I am planning to do something similar in my school next year. I would like to have an equal numbers of KDE, Gnome, Windows and OSX computers in the lab, then focus on teaching concepts and principles, it would then be up to the students to work out how to apply it to whatever system they are sitting in front of that particular day. One of the problems I need to consider is how to store all their settings and files so they are accessible from any system. How have you set up the roaming profiles to work between different systems, without one system changing the others settings?
On 30/03/07, David Trask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My take on the following: +++++++++++++++++++ It shouldn't be "teach them Windows or teach them Linux", but rather teach them concepts vs. applications and OS's. Once you teach concepts....the OS is largely irrelevant. I'll use my own school as an example. Today's eighth graders entered this school in the fall of 1998 as kindergarters. At that time, many of the computers in this school were not hooked up to the Internet at all (I came on board in the fall of 1999 and fixed all that) The computers were old LC580's and LC II's (Apple) running System 7.1 or 7.63. They ran applications like Clarisworks, Netscape, and others. The few PC's we had were running Windows 95 or 98 and all sorts of older software. Fast-forward to today (a few short years later)....we have Linux thin-clients in every classroom....a lab of Linux thin-clients....Apple iBooks in the hands of every single 7th and 8th graders (provided by the State)....a lab of eMacs (Apple) which can boot or run as a session - Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X....and a scattering of eMacs in special education classrooms to run Lexia Reading software. Now...if we had expended all of our energy teaching Clarisworks....or Windows 95....where would we be now? Instead we focused on things like how to save documents, proper keyboarding, keyboard shortcuts like CTRL-S, and so forth. As time went on, the kids were able to adapt quickly, sit down, and get to work...regardless of the OS. They now float effortlessly between computers, laptops, and OS's as if they made no difference and they don't). The other day, I had a 1st grade teacher come and ask me for another Linux terminal so her kids could type more. She made the comment that she prefers the Linux machine because the clipart is better. (go figure!) :-) One other note....roaming profiles is a huge key to success in many of these case...especially in a thin-client terminal environment. Anytime you can make it so that the users documents. preferences, etc, follow them regardless of where they log on or sit....you'll have a much easier time with the transition. ++++++++++++++++++++ <snip>
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