Re: [LUG] Linux in schools

["Jonathan Roberts" <jonathan.roberts.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just thought I'd let you all know that Truro College actively uses Moodle in nearly all of its courses! And it's very useful in my opinion - having just finished there last year. 

Sorry I don't have much to contribute: although have you all heard of 'The Open CD'...it's a collection of what the authors consider to be the best examples of OSS for Windows users and also includes a slim downed version of the Ubuntu live cd for those feeling a bit more adventureous; might be the perfect thing to give to schools in the first place. Doesn't require massive changes to any of their systems, and so I think they're more likely to go for it, but will encourage further exploration of OSS. 

Also, it includes some introductions to OSS and also texts such as the Cathedral and the Bazaar...I was really very impressed by it as an initial introduction to the Open Source world.

On 14/10/06, Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

james kilty wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 19:26 +0100, Rob Beard wrote:
>> I think if we had someone
>> to speak for us in the schools then someone might listen.
>>
> I was a governor at Helston school for a couple of 4 year terms and
> was also a Cornwall County Councillor for a while. I am interested in
> putting the case to CCC at least for upgrading to Linux in the schools
> at least and use my history as a door key. What has the group done so
> far? (I am new to the group as well as Linux). The Linux Format
> article a few issues ago is a good start.
Well we've had numerous discussions on what would be the ideal solution
for schools.  Things like LTSP and Moodle have been discussed (from
memory).  Early this year (or late last year) I mentioned about putting
a Live CD together for schools to give out to every pupil in the Torbay
area although the cost of creating CDs would have been in the region of
about £2000 for CDs, printing etc and that is before any burning of CDs
was done.

Maybe even a start would be to go into the costs of Linux verses Windows
XP & Microsoft Office.  There's bound to be some schools that haven't
got the money to spend on brand new PCs.  Putting a Linux option to them
- say a LTSP server and the PCs as LTSP clients could be a possible
option.  For the applications they need Windows for (i.e. applications
that don't run under Wine and don't have any Linux equivalent) an option
could be a small server running Windows 2003 and have the LTSP clients
connect into the server using Remote Desktop (which is also supported as
well as the X client/server).

Rob

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Jon
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