Hi Charl These are all good questions, I'll try to respond from them from my point of view...
On 11/11/2010 23:00, Charl Wentzel wrote: > 1. Is Edubuntu = education software? > This was the obvious starting point, delivering FOSS eductional software > to kids/schools. Is this "big" enough. It seems that educational > software is only on of the aspects a school looks at. It seems > infrastructure is becoming more important, i.e. websites for schools to > make content available to schools, tools to assist schools with > scheduling, tools to make information available to parents, etc. More > and more customers/schools want total solutions not parts. Edubuntu > cannot survive on its own and will either increase its scope over time > or partner with other projects. Currently, (kind of officially) Edubuntu is a group of people who want to make Ubuntu a great system to use in schools and homes for education purposes (maybe even one day universities). That surely includes getting the best of free educational software out there into Ubuntu and part of the Edubuntu installation. From a technical perspective, I think it should certainly include non-education specific tools that could make Ubuntu more desirable and friendly in schools. Tools that bring down system administration, such as LTSP, certainly is useful in many environments. Then there are also tools like Schooltool that we'd like to get included, while it's not education-specific, it is specific to schools. There are also many other software that we should really pay attention too, but with limited resources we have to prioritise. Besides the technical aspects, we also need to think about our community, other communities in education and especially our end users. There are many people, processes and systems to take in to account in a project like this, especially considering that mixing technology and education in some cases is like mixing oil and water! In particular, some technologists know very little about education and all the terms and technical terms that are used, and also vice-versa. There's sometimes a big gap and I think part of the Edubuntu project should be to help bridge that gap. > 2. Is Edubuntu = LTSP? > This is obviously one of Edutubuntu's strong points which fall into the > catagory of infrastruture. The aim is to lower the cost of implementing > labs at schools. Is LTSP the only options? The conversation started > wiht DBRL. I've been playing with it and I had it running in an > instant, something which I still can't do with LTSP. And it has both > Thick and Thin client modes, plus extra! Don't through the idea away if > you haven't tried it at all. Hmm? I'm not sure I understand. LTSP is a 2 click installation when installing Edubuntu, and doing a fat client build is only two switches to ltsp-build-client :) > Either way, LTSP or DBRL, both offer a good solution for overcome the > problems of kids with their own laptops at school. You can use a lab PC > or do a network boot over the network on you own PC. In both cases you > end up with a pre-configured environment with the things you need (and > are allowed to use) DRBL does indeed offer similar benefits than LTSP, if we have enough people in Edubuntu who are willing to support it, then there's absolutely no reason for it not to become an officially supported part of the system. Personally I'd be only to happy for Edubuntu to support DRBL well. Also, from a personal perspective, we already have LTSP so there hasn't been any reason for me to do any work on it in Edubuntu. > 3. Enabling different modes of operation > The discussion spoke about people with PC's at home (their own top of > the range or donated entry-level). Using bootable USB stick is an > excellent idea, it would definitely keep parents happy, not messing with > their PC's. How does Edubuntu make it easier to do this? Do most > people even know they can boot from the DVD and install on a USB stick? Nor sure, although we do mention that a live DVD can be transferred to a USB stick in our installation guide: http://edubuntu.org/documentation/10.10/installation-guide#Using_a_USB_Disk_ > The question is: Are we looking ahead? There are plenty of > individuals/companies looking ahead, but is Edubuntu as a project > looking ahead?... far enough? How do we assist those forward thinking > guys? How do we bring back some of those idea into Edubuntu so that > everybody can benefit from it? Is mentioning these ideas in the forum > enough? Shouldn't the Edubuntu road map reflect some of these ideas? Currently we focus on the next release and what we can do during the next release cycle. We have vague ideas and know of a lot that needs to be done in a longer than 6 month period, and we cut that down a bit further with every release that passes. So yes, I'd definitely say we're looking ahead (and moving forward). Far enough? I don't know. When it comes to ideas, we've always had enough of those, we just need more people to implement :) So no, just mentioning ideas in forums is certainly not enough. That doesn't mean that ideas aren't welcomed though, we love them. I think our roadmap does an ok job of including ideas that are planned for implementation in the short-term. We shouldn't include things in our short-term roadmap if we know that they won't be done, though. > To be honest, I don't know. I know what I'll be doing this week... > reading, lots and lots of reading! Great. -Jonathan -- edubuntu-users mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
