Our implementation of Ubuntu is being used in Language Arts
(That is, "English class" for English speakers),
and so they are mainly using the OpenOffice suite (Writer in
particular), as well as the web browser (Firefox).
We're encouraging the teachers in those classrooms to make
use of our Moodle server, and are seeing some progress in
that, but then that's platform independent as far as the
user is concerned, it's simply having the 1:1 computing
environment that makes that so useful.
On the sysadmin side, we're a previously homogenous
Microsoft network so Samba is incredibly important for
reaching the students' "lockers" which reside on a
Samba share. I'm still in the process of figuring out LDAP
and Kerberos to make our Linux workstations function as any
other workstation on the network: authenticating to the
Active Directory, and using Kerberos so as to only need to
sign in once.
I'd really like to see an "Active Directory
Compatibility" package that can be simply installed
through Synaptic that depends on all the necessary packages
and configures them correctly, and I'd be willing to work on
that (though I've never worked on such a thing before, I'd
need guidance). The sad truth is, in any large organization
that is previous Microsoft homogenous--like ours--Ubuntu
will only be a viable option when it plays nice with the
locals without much effort on the sysadmin's part.
That said, and with an eye towards the future, I'd like to
see educational software for all areas, especially what we
call "Academic" subjects: Social Studies
(Geography, History, Government, Economics, etc.), Math (We
teach from Pre-Algebra through Calculus and Trigonometry
here), and the Sciences (Very broad topics, these,
Chemistry, Biology, Earth and Space Sciences, etc. - our
Physics labs has sensors that plug into the computer via USB
and communicate with a proprietary program that runs on
Windows, very spiffy stuff, though I don't know if Wine
would run that or not...).
The arts are fairly well represented in Ubuntu with the GIMP
and Blender, but how about Music? (Programs that can be used
for Music Theory classes, for example, not just Audacity for
recording music).
Sim?n
________________________________
From: edubuntu-devel-bounces lists.ubuntu.com on behalf
of Richard Weideman
Sent: Wed 10/18/2006 6:20 AM
To: LIST edubuntu devel
Subject: Edgy+1: Edubuntu for Secondary Schools &
Edubuntu for Universities
So:
* if you are involved at a Secondary or Tertiary level what
would you
like to see ?
** if you are involved at a Secondary or Tertiary level, and
are using
vanilla Ubuntu with your own choice of application installs,
what do you
already have running that is proving useful to the educators
and
learners ?
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