Educational software

po0k

My mother's a principal in a primary school and I've decided I will move them over to Linux (if I can convince them).

From what I can tell they primarily use the few machines they have for those kids mag cover CDs and other edutainment stuff.
I assume WINE would have no problem running that if needed?
They're also used for writing documents, class projects etc. - OpenOffice should sort them out I think

The secretary uses Office (still on 97 afaik, she didn't like the features/bloat of XP), and she'd be the hardest to move over as she's settled and can do all she needs to do. I assume OpenOffice's .doc support is trouble-free with Office97?

I was thinking Fedora or RedHat as distros.
The bottom line is they have to be highly userfriendly, reliable and can withstand kids tinkering.

If things go well would anyone consider helping out putting together a Schools/Education Distro?

niallb

You can't expect wine to run random software from magazine covers.
If this is the requirement, you're stuck with windows.

I'm sure wine could run almost any of the software in the end,
but I doubt very much if you'd be willing to spend the amount
of time required every week to make it happen.

That aside, there's some great primary (or pre-primary)
school software out there. Take a search for gcompris.

You'd move the secretary faster
- assuming her computer is powerful enough to run OpenOffice comfortably.
Just remember to set the default save format options
to doc and xls before giving it to her, and she'll probably never notice.
If she uses a lot of formulas and extensions in excel,
things may not work out as planned.
You say she's running office97, but openoffice 1.1 (from 2003)
really expects the same kind of computing power as office 2003 rather than 97.

It's not like me to warn people off switching to linux,
but in this case I think you'll be costing yourself, your mother and her pupils a lot of time and stress.
Spend the time on your own with a linux system tailored for this and try and get the CDs to work with wine to see what's involved.
Then maybe give it a go next year when you have the experience.
If you do switch them over, linux is much better at withstanding kids tinkering than windows.
The problem here is wine, not linux.
wine is meant to allow you run the odd application
you can't do without rather than be a desktop substitute.
I eventually got IE6 to run under wine (for when I don't believe people who say how they're seeing some site or other)
and it was a journey I wouldn't like to take regularly.

Good luck anyway,
NiallB

p.s. if you're not put off by this pessimism,
I would actually be interested
in working on a schools/education distro.
I also know two other persons who I'm sure would sign on.
Have you checked out the K12 project yet?

Dun

Originally posted by SyxPak
I was thinking Fedora or RedHat as distros.
The bottom line is they have to be highly userfriendly, reliable and can withstand kids tinkering.

As far as I know, Mandrake would probably be the most user-friendly version available. I can't speak for RH or Fedora as I haven't used any recent RH distros, or ever used Fedora.

po0k

Yeah, sorry, Typo
I meant to say Fedora or Mandrake.
I grabbed hold of a few copies of Mandrake Move (the Live CD thing) and so I can at least demonstrate it, or they can pop it in and use it when they like.

As regards the secretary, afaik she's been given one of a batch of new Dells they got (Dimension something or others, fairly low-end, ~1.4Ghz Celerons or something) so she might be on OfficeXP now.
I looked through Debian.org projects on advice from a housemate after he spotted some educational (DebianEdu I think) distro there.
From what I gathered it seems to be aimed more at secondary school thatn primary.

The "software off the magazine coves" isn't really that.
Afaik it's more like the educational titles etc.
I will of course be giving this a shot on a test system first, and as long as I can replicate or improve upon the current functions of the windows installs I'm pretty sure they'll switch over.

leeroybrown

Have a look here at the K12-Linux project:
http://www.k12ltsp.org/

I think this is Fedora and LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) based.

Afaik there is also a Norwegian Linux for schools project/distro of some sort. I'll go look.


Edit: http://www.linux.ie/pipermail/ilug/2003-December/009649.html

There have been a number of threads on ILUG about Linux for Schools (and Thin Clients) in the last few months.

parasite

gcompris is meant to be good too

Capt'n Midnight

If the PC's are DELL's then they have a windows license.

You can stick www.Openoffice.org on them and look up www.sourceforge.org for other apps.

If they are running win98 then reinstalls are a breeze - lcopy (link on the windows stickies) allows long file name xcopy from DOS - so if you can boot to C: you can copy everything to / from

Also try www.knoppix.org - you test out and show them linux without affecting anything on the PC

Can't remember if it's www.gnuwin.org or www.wingnu.org (having DNS problems) has a few educational progs on it.

po0k

I know Captn Midnight
I have a few Mandrake LIVE CDs and can easily get my hands on Knoppix.

My plan is still in the foetal stage, but I'd like to have a few levers of persuasion in my grasp when i do go to propose the idea.

newbiemodder

hey very interested in this topic as i work as an ICT lecturer at pre-service

i can well see the advantage of linux in primary schools as from research i have been doing most schools use WP, PowerPoint and net for their everyday use. I am actually looking into selling pcs into schools with lindows on it

have you thought of lindows? at lindows.com makes things simplier or so they say!!

open office is good, i have found it reads ms office docs well

lindows offers a site licence for 500$


i can see educational software as a problem, let me know your views or email me!

richard
ICT Co-ordinator