[seul-edu] In service update

[Jim Thomas <jthomas@leesburg.bittware.com>]

Hello All,

A few weeks ago I announced here that I would be teaching an in-service
about using our Linux lab to the staff at our K12 school, and I
solicited the list for advice.

I just thought I'd let you know how it went.  

This is a small school, and we only have seven teachers.  I met with
them individually for about an hour each (except that I met with the
grade 3-4 and the grade 5-6 teachers at the same time).  This was indeed
the best way to go, even though it took the whole day (for me). 
Especially since some of the teachers have been using the lab for a year
and a half already, while others had never been in there before the
in-service.  Meeting with them individually allowed me to custom tailor
the instruction as needed.

Overall, I'd say it was a huge success.  Below is a summary of what went
wrong, and what went right.

Here's what went wrong:
Our DSL link was down.  We were scheduled for two days of in-service,
and I was supposed to come in on the first of these.  But our ISP was
having some severe problems and we had no internet access.  So I
rescheduled for the next day - but we still had no service.  Luckily the
staff understood that this was not a problem with the lab.  Service was
finally restored on the following day.

StarOffice was very slow.  Until the in-service, I had never actually
sat down and tried to USE SO5.2 on *those* particular machines.  It was
painful.  After I demoed it to the first teacher, I decided to not demo
it to the others.  Clearly, I need to do something different here.  The
machines are mostly 133MHz 586's with 32M ram.  I'm thinking we'll need
to spend some cash on a manly server and run these machines as Xterms
next year.

Kalcul problems.  For some reason, when kalcul started a new game, it
painted a blank window except for a help button. The first game was
always OK - after that, there were problems.  That meant that I could
only demo the default game that comes up first - addition.  Changing to
multiplication, subtraction, or division, or increasing the level of
difficulty resulted in the blank window.  I still haven't figured that
one out.  It works on my PC!

And here's what went right:
The highlight (for me) was when - 15 minutes into the demo - one of the
teachers remarked "Oh!  This isn't Windows!"  I guess that's a testament
as to the useability of KDE.

The teachers were all impressed with the capabilities of the system. 
They especially liked that the students could not alter the system's
settings (like they do on the handfull of Windows PC's in their
classrooms).  They also like the accountability that a real login
facility provides.

No one seemed bored. 

They liked Xscrabble.

No one was upset that we weren't running Windows.

They were impressed with the capabilities of our web filter
(squid+squidguard).  Especially the logging features.

Not all the students in the school have accounts on the system, and I
told the teachers that if they wanted their class to use it, they'd have
to give me a list of their students.  So far, one teacher has given me a
list.  I created user accounts for them, and gave the teacher the
passwords.  I also offered to physically be there on the first day she
brought her class up in case any problems came up.  So far, she has not
had them up there.

Before creating the accounts, I added icons to my own desktop for the
applications her class will be using.  Then I copied the files
(~user/Desktop/*) into the /etc/skel/Desktop directory.  /etc/skel also
has a .netscape directory with pre-configured preferences.js and
libpref.js files so they can avoid the setup-the-proxy step.  After I
created the accounts, I did a test login on each account.  On one
account I checked that I could launch the apps from the desktop by
clicking on the icons, and that the account had internet access through
the proxy.

I am not anticipating any problems when she does bring her class in.  

Thanks for all the advice I got here prior to the in-service.  All of it
was good, and some of it really saved me (such as this gem - don't rely
on the internet).

-- 
Jim Thomas      **    Principal Applications Engineer ** Bittware, Inc
703.779.7770    **    jthomas@bittware.com **  http://www.bittware.com
The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that is even worse.
 - Calvin's dad