[Wolves] Linux in schools

[Peter Cannon]

On Sunday 30 January 2005 08:20, Mo Awkati wrote:

>  --- Andy Wootton <andy.wootton at wyrley.demon.co.uk> w
>
> > If we go the Linux route in any way (LEAs can make
> > it very difficult for
> > a school to move away from the flock), I intend to
> > steal as many of
> > Ron's good ideas from Chase Academy as possible and
> > use moral blackmail
> > to get everyone else to help me out of the holes I
> > will inevitably dig
> > for myself. You have been warned.
>
> I will help where I can. I have local government
> experience, quite close to Education.

Although this is not really an input to the current discussion I just thought 
this might give an insight in to 'school computer commitment'.

My daughters go to Sneyd School they have a run of the mill IT 
department/class room, they keep sending the twins home (on a weekly basis) 
with homework projects that require them to surf the web for infomation. This 
in its self is fine except (1) the task is set out very badly i.e. "find out 
about the storming of the Bastille" (this was the latest one) now initially 
you might think that was straight forward but no, it turned out they didn't 
want to know chapter and verse about the actual storming they wanted a 
history of the Bastille which included the storming.

(2) I'm a bit miffed with the school sending kids home with bits of paper 
saying "Look on the Internet to get your homework done" thats fine if a 
family has (a) a computer (b) an internet connection, but what about the poor 
parents that haven't got either?

Finally the most incredulous point the pupils are not aloud to use the school 
computers because "Too many kids are messing about with them" I doubt if 
offering open source solutions to them would increase the level of computer 
usage commitment!

Rant over! 


-- 
Regards
Peter Cannon
Suse Pro 9.2 & Fedora Core 3