[Newark] Getting Free Software Into Schools

Wed Oct 31 14:24:41 GMT 2007

It certainly is sad that computing isn't generally offered by most schools
at either GCSE or A level - level. I know I'd have taken it if they offered
it at my old sixth form, The Grove. Of course, just because you're putting
FLOSS into the schools, doesn't mean that you can hook Perl, Awk, Sed, etc
into the syllabuses. Unless they decide to start offering computer science
at GCSE level - which'd be fantastic. Anyhow, this was why I was sticking to
the free as in beer reasons - cold hard cash is perhaps gonna be the main
concern of most people in as far as this is concerned. That and security,
reliance and perhaps configurablility.

Anyhow, although you're probably expecting me to say that I'd prefer to see
less coding geeks and more advocacy geeks. I'm actually unsure, I think,
right now, I'd agree with you - even though we've got loads of coders in the
open source community - we could always do with more. Saying that, I feel
that the advocates have got a valuable place, and that they are extremely
useful.

Just a few thoughts there.

Chris Hayes / cbhworld

On 26/10/2007, Khismett Riddle <spindleflax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hm, what's the drill here about leaving quoted emails? Normal etiquette
> used to be that you got rid of quotes unless you were directly referencing
> them to save people downloading messages twice, but that's not really a
> problem with modern connections... I'll just leave it there.
>
> I think the award's a great idea! However, your reasons for it being good
> are a little incomplete in my opinion - focusing only on the fact that the
> publicly funded organisation and its students wouldn't have to spend all
> their money on software - I think there are a lot of better reasons that
> FOSS in schools is a good thing, but I suppose cold, hard cash is the
> obvious one. A lot of FOSS is just hands-down better than commercial stuff.
> An awful lot of big companies use Linux servers and even workstations
> (Dreamworks and Pixar are the ones closest to my heart but they're by no
> means unusual) so completely ignoring the software that a lot of the
> students will end up needing to use is a little myo- ah say- a little
> myopic. Sorry, no more Foghorn Leghorn impressions...
>
> Computer science uptake by British students isn't all that good, we're not
> upholding our proud traditions of maybe being to blame for the creation of
> computers, I don't know for sure why that is, but as someone who's got a
> pretty good idea how IT GCSEs and Computing A-Levels are, I blame the
> courses for being utterly boring. A fairly knowledgeable teenage computer
> user learns nothing at all from GCSE IT and next to nothing from Computing
> A-Level (note the distinction, Computing not IT or Applied ICT, Computing is
> the hardest and lo-and-behold fewer and fewer schools are offering it, I was
> lucky to be in one that did). We, as a nation, just don't know much about
> computers, so when we write the syllabuses, we write boring, easy tripe
> instead of a vaguely challenging course. Those of you who're fairly seasoned
> Linux users would probably be amazed at the number of teenagers who don't
> actually know what an operating system is, they just can't picture a
> computer without Windows or if you're lucky, Mac. Similarly, a lot don't
> know what the Internet really, they've not got a chance. So giving them the
> opportunity to use Linux might help give them a more rounded understanding
> of what computers are and how they work - at least for those who aren't
> curious enough to find out on their own.
>
> Of course, that relies on the teachers being able to do more than fiddle
> around with GNOME and maybe offer up a silly chart with Windows software and
> the equivalent FOSS. Firefox -> Internet Explorer! Yay! OpenOffice Word ->
> Microsoft Office Word, it's exactly the same in all the wrong ways! Gedit ->
> Notepad - oh, better stay away from that, I always used Word for taking
> notes anyway. Gnome-Terminal -> COMMAND, well... isn't that just right?
> COMMAND's just like a Linux shell. Sorry, I've gone onto a rant about how
> people subconsciously undervalue Linux and yet beef up their opinion of it
> because they want to use FOSS for one reason or another and yet aren't
> interested enough to actually learn that Linus /really is/ better than Mac
> or Windows. Perl -> ..uh.. Perl, but nobody ever has it installed; Python ->
> well...; grep -> (d'you know regex?), man -> um...  su -> ..? sed -> ?  the
> ttys -> !? Exactly...
>
> I hope we all do know regex.
>
> So, uh, back to the point. I don't know if the teachers will be anything
> like fluent enough in FOSS to provide much valuable help, and you'd better
> hope the admins have a clue or some punk who happens to know a thing or two
> about computers would probably bring down the network. That's why the admins
> at my school didn't want to install Linux even though they used it a little
> in the admin office (I even got to use it a few times, SuSE seems old..
> (SuSE, yep, I still spell it like that and I pronounce it soo-sea, not
> suzy)), they didn't think they would be able to set it up well enough what
> with their training in Windows. If one can get around all that, it could be
> most valuable to the little tykes' education.
>
> Finally...
> As some of you may remember, I'm not much of an activist, I don't care
> about forcefully spreading FOSS. Seriously, if one reorganises the time one
> would spend hitting one's head against the brick wall of FOSS community
> zealot rubbish, one can actually afford the time to really be useful to FOSS
> projects... by being a software developer! Instead of just thinking one is
> giving back to the FOSS community by frequenting forums and handing out
> coasters.  (What's with that stuff about giving back to the community
> anyway? It's so... wishy-washy.) I don't know where it got confused that
> trying to force a bunch of uninterested people to use something they don't
> want to and won't be able to is thought of as valuable community work for
> those who just can't be bothered to learn C and do some /real work/. So the
> reason I support this award isn't because it helps the FOSS community, it's
> somewhat nice that the local community (to which you were actually
> referring, Chris) might be helped, but the important point is that some of
> the kids will learn a thing or two and grow up to be useful and/or
> successful. Not everyone can be expected to teach themselves enough computer
> science, to uphold their own interest by creating their own challenges, to
> motivate themselves, and those who can't are potentially very good
> developers, admins, power users and so on who're slipping through the
> cracks.
>
> Tom French
>
> On 26/10/2007, Chris Hayes <cbhworld at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello LUG members!
> >
> > Some of you likely have heard that I am now working at ForLinux, and
> > those of you around Newark may have heard that recently, to mark the forth
> > Software Freedom Day, ForLinux created a competition to give schools in
> > Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire the opportunity to receive
> > a years worth of technical support for Free and open source software. This
> > is to help a school experience the benefits that open source software can
> > give - such as paying less on licenses - as well as making it easy for the
> > pupils to use exactly the same software at home as they do at school without
> > having to pay anything. And with the help of this award, the school is free
> > to do this without having to worry about the technical nitty-gritty side of
> > it. Which when considering applications that are considered to be new and
> > not the usual standard proprietary stuff that they know they can administer,
> > must be an large issue for most schools. The winning school was Newark High,
> > a school that has had a fair amount of problems over the last few years -
> > but has begun showing some very positive signs. Hopefully this prize will
> > help the school even further in becoming better.
> >
> > Anyhow, from a personal standpoint - this strikes me as a really
> > valuable way that companies involved in open source solutions can give back
> > to the community - and not the open source community, but rather get Free
> > software into the local community.
> >
> > Anyhow, I'd love to know what you guys think about this award.
> >
> >
> > Chris Hayes / cbhworld
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Newark at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/newark
> >
> >
>
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