From: Michael Treacy (delphi91 at domain hotmail.com)
Date: Tue 24 Aug 1999 - 22:29:14 IST
I missed the start of this conversation, so my apologies if my post is a
little off topic. I'm a teacher of computer science in a school, and also a
Linux user - and getting more and more amazed by it each and every day,
despite having been using it for the past 3-4 years..
Forget about the Dept. of Ed EVER making a "repair crew" available to help
with networking. They won't. The Dept. are WAY behind in their attitude
towards IT. As a prime example, they recently made available, a multimedia
computer to each and every school in the country. They clap themselves on
the back showing how much they are investing in IT for school, etc, yet, do
they have a computer course for schools? NO!
I remember visiting a school back in 1987 and I was shown a computer room
full of Apple II's that had been bought by fundraising. The comment was made
at the time that the school was waiting to be told what to do with them by
the Dept (what to teach, etc). Unless they've done something about it
themselves, then more than likely they are STILL unused!
As for teachers being trained, etc, well, personally, I dive in head first
when I have a problem with the school network (Novell 4.11 and Win '95).
Every now and again, I do have to get someone out to sort out problems
beyond my control, but we pay a maintenance contract for that (expensive
too!)
It would be great to see Linux introduced more and more into schools, even
just as a server for networks. I doubt if it would be a wise decision to go
down the road of having students run Linux on individual machines, because,
as of yet, the rest of world is still running Microsoft programs. Ok, I
agree, the principles of Wordprocessing, Spreadsheets, etc are the same no
matter what package you use, but I doubt if employers like to hear that
students have worked under Linux at school as this 'probably' mean
re-training, etc.
Anyway, that's my speech!
Mike
>From: Gary Coady <gary at domain netsoc.tcd.ie>
>To: ilug at domain linux.ie
>Subject: Re: [ILUG] Re: IT2000 and Linux
>Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 17:47:51 +0100
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>In-Reply-To: <199908241620.QAA00073 at domain sced.esoc.esa.de>; from Niall O Broin
>on Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 04:20:47PM +0000
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>On Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 04:20:47PM +0000, Niall O Broin wrote:
> > Gary Coady said
> >
> > > But they are interested in Linux - they basically don't believe the
> > > required level of support is available in Ireland though.
> >
> > What is the required level of support ? Do they believe it's available
> > for NT ?
> > I'm sure that good support for NT is available (and God knows, you'd
> > need it) but
> > I'm damn sure you'll pay for it. When a school's box BSODs
> > irretrievably, will the
> > school have the money in its IT budget to have an expert come and fix it
> > ?
>
>The impression I've gotten is that firstly there's going to be a need for
>facilities to train certain IT-savvy teachers in schools to a certain
>level of ability. I'm sure they'd prefer not to have to call someone out
>for every niggling problem. But I presume that yes, if the skills aren't
>there in the school to solve the problem, they are going to have to get
>help. Which possibly brings in the idea of the Dept of Education having a
>team of people whose job is to fix schools' networks :)
>I'm not sure if this is the case, but it would seem like a reasonable bet
>if networking etc. is to become more organised in schools. So you have to
>convince them, I guess, that teachers can learn to add users in Linux
>just as easily as NT (http://www.openclassroom.org/ looks interesting),
>and that they can (if they're going to do this) assemble a team of
>knowledgeable people as easily for Linux as for NT.
>Another thing: they still think Windows is the future - therefore it will
>be extremely difficult to get Linux on client desktops. Lack of
>education/multimedia apps too. And if the desktops are Windows-based, they
>will probably think that since they need Windows expertise there, it'll be
>easier to train teachers by standardising on one system for the server
>also.
>So they would be some of the ideas we'd have to overcome... no problem,
>eh? :)
>
>--
>Gary Coady - gary at domain netsoc.tcd.ie - http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~gary/
> It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level I'm
> really quite busy.
>
>--
>Irish Linux Users' Group: ilug at domain linux.ie
>http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug for (un)subscription information.
>List maintainer: listmaster at domain linux.ie
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