Re: [seul-edu] SEUL/edu Linux in education report #19 for May 8

["Paul Sutton" <psutton24@hotmail.com>]

>From: Dan Kubilos <dan@oxnardsd.org>
>Reply-To: seul-edu@seul.org
>To: seul-edu@seul.org
>Subject: Re: [seul-edu] SEUL/edu Linux in education report #19 for May 8
>Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 21:43:33 -0700 (PDT)
>
>New to the list.  Great work fellows.
>
>Great points made below but in the interest of effectively promoting linux
>to California k12 folks in particular you should know. . .
>
>California negotiated a State buy program with MS.  OS's and Office Suites
>cost about $42 per seat.  NT client access licenses are $5 Nt 4 server
>license is $90.
>
>Even with these numbers the linux savings is huge.  Support is the biggest
>key I think.  I have never gotten anywhere near the level of support from
>MS or any other commercial vendor than I have gotten from the open source
>communtity.
>
>DK
>
>Dan Kubilos, Technology Coordinator
>
>Oxnard Elementary School District
>http://www.oxnardsd.org
>
>On Tue, 9 May 2000, Dan Kolb wrote:
>
> > Doug Loss wrote:
> > >
> > > David Bain wrote:
> > >
> >
> > It's got almost every programming language you can think of available,
> > except fancy GUI ones like Visual Basic. Borland should, however, be
> > working on porting Delphi to Linux.
> >
> > The source code to almost all the programs is available, if you want to
> > teach advanced programming, and show how something is done.
> >
> > "There's no support for it" is a familiar argument. Maybe there's less
> > 'official' support, but it's normally better, and faster than the
> > paid-for ones. Try your local LUG, www.linuxcare.com, comp.os.linux.*
> > newsgroups, www.nowonder.com, etc.
I agree with the programming stuff, and think possibly that this is why we 
have a skills crisis,  most of today's best gamer companies (codemasters in 
the uk is one) started out in the bedroom,  Kids then had programming tools 
to hand, now this is not the case,  I think we need more simple books,  back 
in the speccy days there were loads on basic and even machine code.  So they 
had a headstart.

Kids should be encouraged to program and given the tools to do so and the 
resources,  the net makes it much easier to code.

Also part the problem is hacking or they way is is percieved, i.e hacking is 
about breaking into computers, damaging or stealing data.  Kids should be 
taught that this is cracking and that hacking is about programming and 
improving their own knowledge and pushing technology to the limit, the 
problem will arise from a person (school admin, politicians and people who 
make the decisions about software and schools) with the wrong impression of 
Hacking reading that Linux is put together by hackers,  and what will that 
say about Linux.  So it would be in the best interest of the community to 
get this across (yes we are trying but we seem to be a losing battle in the 
UK anyway).  Parents are not going to want their kids involved with hacking 
if it is percieved criminal.


Thats all,  apart from that I am currently using Mandrake 7, and look 
forward to Mandrake 7.1.

Paul



> >
> > That's all I can think of at the moment. Please discuss, argue, flame,
> > whatever, about what I've said above. And now for a 'rant', which might
> > be applicable to computer education in schools generally:
> >
> > In the 80s, there were a large number of 'bedroom' programmers coding
> > games to sell/give away for their C64s, BBCs, Apples, etc.. At schools
> > (at least where I went) they taught programming, and that's what a lot
> > of people had to do to get anything interesting out of their computers
> > (I had to program from when I got my very first computer, as it didn't
> > come with much great software). Now, it seems, schools don't teach
> > programming any more, it's only how to use MS Word and MS Excel (and
> > perhaps Access). At home, people don't program any more, they'd rather
> > have a game of Unreal Tournament, or similar.
> >
> > I don't know how other people feel, but I think it's a great shame that
> > potential programming talent is being wasted by not being nurtured
> > (people I was talking to about this a couple of months ago agree with
> > me). If things go on as they are, I'm going to bet that there will be a
> > shortage of skilled programmers around. Hopefully with Free and Open
> > Source software, people will start being 'bedroom programmers' again,
> > and schools should also start teaching programming again. Any
> > agreements/disagreements here?
> >
> > Seems to be a reasonably long post here :)
> >
> > Dan
> > --
> > dankolb@ox.compsoc.net  Oxford University Computer Society Secretary
> >
> > --I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or
> >   opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above--
> >
>

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