Re: Linux in education advocacy side Re: Edutainment

[Bill Tihen <bill@tasis.ch>]

At 08:55 AM 12/8/98 +0300, you wrote:
>In Gnome it is even easier that in Win...

I just got RH5.2.  I'll play with GNOME.  Up to now I have only played with
kde.  But I have to admit I am still for some reason a fan of tkdesk and
fwvm?  Even though it doesn't adher to my standards for student use, I like
it the best anyway.

>>	o Can they manage files simply and graphically?
>This I can't understand. It's a headache to manage files graphically.
>Much easier to do it by norton-like app. I saw many people
>working with norton or far in win95
>
>>	o Can they have access to a server graphically and easily?
>This is up to setup!
>
>>	o Can they have access to the floppy drive graphically and easily?
>"graphical" mount/umount is up to setup/administrator.

I tried this with kde.  I almost had it, but for some reason my graphic
never worked properly.  So I gave up.

>>	o Is there a word process that behaves in a standard way that double 
>>	  spaces and uses RTF format?
>Hmmm... StarOffice?

Perhaps once I figure out how to set it up for multiple users.  They have
an odd way of configuring it for more than one user.  It also takes a lot
of RAM it will run very slowly on many of my machines.  Most of my machines
have 16 MB of RAM or less.  Plus, some of my harddrives are so small that I
will not be able to install the software locally, which will further slow
it down.  Of course the price is right!  Can't beat free.  And it has a
full suite of productivity software and it is what we are currently using.
It is given away to schools in Germany.  Main problem is figuring out what
they call a network installation.  Unfortunately on the versions they sent
me I can't find any documentation.  Grrr.  It's even a problem I need to
figure out on the Windows side.  Any help would be very appreciated!

I hope Maxwell, is soon stable enough to use with students.  It's small and
has all the features I need.  (As a wordprocessor).  Or perhaps the new one
being developed.

>And don't forget you are teaching YOUNG people. They  are  more
>flexible in their ways. And it is not so important for them  if
>they do it this way or that.

However, I will be making dual boot systems in the near future.  So
hopefully, I will be able to pacify all people and start experimenting with
full integration into the classroom.  Kids can then choose their OS.  I
will offer my lab as a guinypig for those who want to try out their
software with students.  

I will also take specific suggestions on how to make my interface better.
I have mostly used Linux as a server and programming workstation and have
not tried to use it as an windows like workstation.  Since I've been using
Unix for about 15 years it not something that I need, but others seem to
want the graphical interface.  In Linux at least they have a choice.

I maybe required to use it exclusively on some machines because they are so
old.  I don't think I will be able to use them for the intended curriculum.
 Yes, but the department chair is not young.  He makes the final decisions.
 But they are the computers I will have to work with.  (My department chair
has taken the good computers for his classroom). 

>My most painful Contras are not GUI or "easy of install", but:
> 1 - lack of edu apps
> 2 - lack of internalization in existing software

I don't understand the last point.

Bill Tihen