Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (31 mails)

[Ian Lynch <ian.lynch@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 06:13 -0400, James Tremblay wrote:

> Phil, by all means feel free to help make the worlds best distro contain
> the worlds best version of LTSP , join us on IRC at #opensuse-kiwi.
> 
> Edubuntu has nothing to offer Education customers beyond LTSP . I don't
> see any reason for someone to consider it as a viable "vertical"
> solution to the education market.

I'd say a vertical solution for education would comprise of the
curriculum learning content and associated qualifications as well as the
technology providing the delivery. In that sense no distro provides a
viable vertical solution for education - yet. Indeed its arguable that
Windows only achieves this in a very fragmented way.

Take a look at 
http://moodle.theingots.org/course/view.php?id=4&edit=on&sesskey=98qPvAtIiF

This supports accreditation with government recognised qualifications.
Ok, its still a work in progress but in essence we need support for
teachers to do their jobs and to get the students qualified. Hopefully
if I seed a core of such courses in Moodle teachers can take the work
and improve it in open source style. This way we have community support
from infrastructure to getting qualified that makes maximum use of open
source freedom principles but also supports a financially sustainable
business model.

Of course any distro can contribute to Moodle resources to support
learning. However, to get a "vertical" educational solution requires
coherence for learning progression, not a lot of unconnected learning
activities in different bits of software or isolated lessons. I
approached Novel about this and got nowhere, I approached Mark
Shuttleworth, and we now have a funded project in South Africa as well
as my own work here in the UK and two Europe wide projects in planning.
So I'd have to say in terms of understanding education needs rather than
technological push, Ubuntu seems better placed. Ok, perhaps one personal
anecdote from my point of view and in any case what I'm doing is really
distro neutral in that the qualifications can be achieved with any
technology.Point is that the guy at the top of Canonical is committed to
education to the extent of committing his time to find out what is
needed and money to investment in sustainable learning resources that
lead to recognised school friendly qualifications. I don't have any
evidence that Suse, Redhat or Mandriva have any real idea about learning
needs. (I used to use Suse and Mandriva myself). Linspire were the only
other ones to respond positively. Mind I also had negative support from
the OpenOffice.org community manager after putting time into that
project as education lead and indeed some money, so there is no
accounting for politics :-)

Ian
-- 
New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications
www.theINGOTs.org

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