SEUL: Introduction

[David Kirtley <sabecon@sabecon.hiline.net>]

Just a short intro as suggested by the listserv welcome.

At present I am working as a classroom teacher (Third Grade) in South
Texas.  In my confrerence period I am many times running from classroom to
classroom trying to keep ther computers we do have from falling over and
dying.  I have taught from Pre-Kinder to 8th grade.

At night when I can, I am one of the channel operators on #linuxhelp on
Undernet irc.  (The nick is sabecon.)

In a previous life I was doing PC-Support and network installation for an
electronics manufacturer and in another I was a Field Engineer for an
oilfield service company babying along a herd of computers doing remote
sensing and real-time data analysis and logging.


I had previously thought about starting up this kind of project but didn't
really know where to start. Glad someone else did.

Just to jump right in (I have been reading up in the archives to get
myself up to speed do I don't embarass myself too much.

A few thoughts:

I don't think that a grade book would be the HIGHEST priority for
computers in education. Different districts and campuses have such varied
requirements that nobody would be happy anyway.  Better to just have
available pre-built spreadsheet templates and maybe macros that could do
as much and more than a specialized gradebook program.

Things I think would be a high priority for an educational project for
linux:

First of all is to translate basic howto documentation into simple
informative tutorial/cookbook references. Anyone read the Monitor-Timing
How-To lately?  :)

Production of materials to educate the people making the decisions for
purchases and implimentation of computers in education. Most do not even
have a decent idea of what computers can or should be able to do in
education let alone why they should choose linux to do it. 


Planning Software such as ical or korganizer modified/hacked to fit
lesson planning.

Probably until a better protocol is introduced, html based models for
instructional materials and evaluation/testing allowing for cross-platform
use of exisiting hardware and software.

Championing at least another HTML tag to allow ratings of pages to
disallow inappropriate content. The schools are having to have such
draconian firewalls and site blocking that you can hardly do anything from
a school net.  

 
If interested, I have some other ideas of what is needed but this was to
be a SHORT introduction :)

David Kirtley
sabecon@hiline.net