February 2002 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: The chalk face
by Edgehill e-mail service 06 Feb '02

06 Feb '02

---------- > From: Bruce Miller <mail(a)brucemiller.co.uk> <snip>> -----Original Message----- > From: Ian [mailto:ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com] <snip>> Flattery will get you everywhere :-) > _________________ > > The old 'divide and rule' thing I guess. - if we can't find agreement and a > voice then the goverment will keep walking all over the top of our us at > chalkface while we squabble. ^^^^^^^^^ > > The _chalk_face is the bane of my life. Oh for dry-wipe boards that don't clog your fans and power supplies! - nor do they short out the mother board in damp weather! Oh for teachers who don't put their damp board-dusters over the fans to dry! Oh for something to get the dust from under the keys and out of the mouse! Anyone else have any stories about classroom computer disasters? > > <snip> ---------------------------------------------------------- The campaign for chalk-free boards. Join now!! <wry grin> End of morning whinge. Thank you for listening.

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] The changing face of ICT
by Bruce Miller 06 Feb '02

06 Feb '02

As a post script to my earlier missive: I am still finding my feet with Linux. It seems to me though, that there are a lot of people trying to make the whole thing a slicker and more GUI driven. Compare www.debian.org to www.xandros.com who have built upon the Debian then Corel distro. Even the name Debian is a bit naff now. ((Debra and Ian)4ever) Well intended in it's day but we need to get much slicker, much sharper and much more professional. Ok, text only interface, 640x480 x256 colours are still used by third world and poorer countries. We still need to address the issues that these people have. However, the other side of the coin is that Broadband Britain is happening, albeit slowly, but it is happening. Where does Linux fit in with these new horizons? We have Gimp. What else does Linux have though? What is there in the line of Macromedia Flash? Is there an equivalent to Dream Weaver? What about 3D Max and AutoCAD and Adobe illustrator? Do we have any good DTP software like Quark or even to match MS Publisher. I know Corel have dabbled but this has all been discontinued it seems. Does any one know anything about these ? Are they available or are people still hankering after text interfaces and command line OS's and there is nothing doing ? Bruce.

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The changing face of ICT
by Bruce Miller 06 Feb '02

06 Feb '02

Firstly,I thought it was time that the now misnomer of 'Plans for Linux distro' came to to stop and was re-named. I don't intend to answer every single point of what Ian says other to say that in general, I agree. I also agree with a lot of what Frank is saying too. What I don't agree with is this harsh way in we are talking about future members of our society. Frank cited his sitting AEB instead of Oxford maths. If if teachers hadn't been wise to this situation, all those years ago, then Frank could then have been condemded to the 'scrap heap' perhaps? There are a lot of new technologies in the world and lots of new study areas these days as a result. We have seemed very polarised in discussions on programming. Should there be RAD or should there not? This seems to the hub of the argument. In my view their should be RAD and the discipline of top down structured programming is too restrictive to creativty and not fast enough for a modern world. We just need RAD that is more robust. There seems to be an obsession with with maths and programming as the only solution to ICT training as well. I have twenty students all wanting to do an A'level in multimedia, web design, Flash, 3d max, cinema and games design. The head is on my back to come up with the goods. Universities are now offering courses in this but I can't find an A'level syllabus because of this obsession. Maths and programming has it's place but computing is about more than just this, these days. About time the GNU site had a graphical revamp too. (IMHO) Bruce Miller. On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 10:35:05PM +0000, Ian wrote: > On Monday 04 February 2002 15:13, 'Frank Shute' wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 08:06:28AM +0000, Ian wrote: > > > > Yet my understanding is that people doing the hard technical subjects > > at A level is falling & universities are failing to fill their places > > for engineering/sciences. > > Falling because there is more choice in a whole range of other things. That > simply makes it even more competitive for the relatively small number of > maths students with straight As. Fair point. > > > Admissions tutors know that a good pass in any of these subjects > > (but especially maths) indicates they've got a student who can think > > logically and is bright. > > Yes but there are too few of them to go around. That's my point. So some > students who can't hack A level maths to Computer studies, GNVQ ICT etc and > the universities need to fill places so they take students that they would > not have done a few years back. That's my point too! They're taking students they really shouldn't be taking because a decree has gone out that 50% of people should go to university. So irrespective of the individual merit of an applicant, university's are feeling compelled into dropping standards to fill what is by any stretch of the imagination a bogus quota dreamed up by some think-tank. > > > Computer studies at A level? From the sounds of it, it's a glorified > > MCSE in a lot of cases without the pupil necessarily having even > > programmed in a proper language or with an understanding of the basics of > > how a microprocessor works. > > Whatever, that is not the real point. The thing is that these students get > access to the courses otherwise quite a few university lecturers are out of a > job. As I indicated, I don't really care. Why give people jobs if they aren't worthwhile? > OK I agree these courses could be improved but you also need sufficient > teachers capable of teaching mathematically more rigorous stuff and they > simply don't exist in the numbers required. Now we are beginning to suffer the consequences of the more choice/falling standards/lack of people doing intellectually rigorous subjects. The few who do go and do maths/engineering at university get immediately cherry-picked by industry for well-paid jobs thus leaving education to pick up the crumbs for maths/sciences teaching. The result is declining teaching standards & even fewer students going on to do maths/science at uni. It's a vicious circle. > > > > Schools are driven by bogus league tables that mean their and their > > > > pupil's & staff's success is gauged by exam passes. > > > > > > If you look at any situations where league tables are introduced, > > > standards rise. Look at Rugby Union. > > > > You're looking at the wrong thing. > > No I'm not. If you take the NHS, it is pretty easy to argue that standards > might well have fallen further without the league tables since under-funding > is the main limiting factor. (Culture is 20 years out of date too but that is > just another non-controlled variable) Example: A govt edict goes out that hospitals should reduce their waiting lists, the hospital managers pressurise the consultants to sort it out. After much moaning from the consultants the difficult but more severe cases are pushed to the back of the queue & the people with ingrowing toenails, piles etc. are dragged in to be operated on. Result! The govt has turned the health service around & they've got the facts to prove it - waiting lists are coming down and the hospital league tables indicate that less hospitals are `failing' and meeting the Stalinist govt's bogus targets. But there's a price to pay - the patients with the more important problems now have to wait longer to be treated, the consultants are pissed-off because their clinical judgement with regards the urgency of treating patients has been ridden over rough-shod and money and time has been wasted treating elderly patients with ingrowing toenails who if you'd given them a few months would have snuffed it anyway. I can give you any number of examples from the health service because that's one are that I'm familar with. Now repeat ad nauseum for other scenarios and other public services. The fact is that huge amounts are being wasted to meet the bogus targets which do nobody any good except the government because they can then advertise how `successful' they've been & hence get re-elected. They then whinge about `years of under-investment' which people swallow whole & have then got the hide to raise taxes in order to `sort things out'. The newly raised taxes are then spent on building MPs the most expensive office space in the country whilst building hospitals on the never-never. > > > Look at the NHS, standards have > > fallen. You can't gauge the performance of a public service > > empirically > > You can judge exam performance. If you want exam performance improvements > (not necessarily an improvement in the educationservice as that depends on > your point of view) you can set targets etc and it will improve - it has! > That doesn't necessarily mean anything other than exam technique has improved > but since so much store is put on exams its still an important indicator. It's an entirely useless indicator. It indicates precisely nothing. It could be one of many things: * Teachers have got better. - as I've said before I think they're about as good/bad as they always have been with the exception of maths/sciences where there are too few to go around. * Exam technique of students has got better. - Possibly, but then you should make the exams harder in order to get more comparable results year-on-year. * Students IQ has improved. - Although it's said that IQ has improved, I personally think IQ is another entirely bogus statistic & can't be measured satisfactorily. In fact, Darwinism would seem to say that since the brain-dead can live on social security and procreate, people should be getting thicker. * The exams are easier. - Look at papers now & papers 30 yrs ago and judge for yourself. IMO they are a country mile easier. > > > > The fact is that there are many many more students > > > in the system and in the pre-league tables era, many of these would never > > > have passed a GCSE or an A level let alone gone to Univ. > > > > Yes there are. But what are they studying at uni? And why are more > > passing? More are passing IMO because the system is such that you can > > effectively `buy' an A level certificate from an examining board by > > hunting around and choosing the one with the easiest papers. > > Gross exaggeration. Exams might or might not be easier. Independent > studies suggest they are different but no easier. Then the studies suck and are done by people who are far from independent. > But in any case lots more kids go to universities to do a wide > variety of things. My youngest son is doing a degree in film making > and some of that course was on data storage formats. He is one that > did not go through a conventional A level route so in my day he > would not have been at uni. I am glad he is and what he is learning > seems useful to him in what he wants to do - set up his own business > making films for companies. I'm glad he's enjoying it but IMO he would have been better off doing a more `hands on' subject at a traditional Poly or College like he probably would have done 20 yrs ago. Back then they managed to integrate such a subject well with job experience and such like. There was a more varied education available then: Unis, Polys, Colleges, apprenticeships...and everybody could find their niche. Now the whole damned lot is being dumped into university in order to fulfil a govt's entirely political target. > So should we deny these kids on the grounds they can't pass A > level maths? No, you should deny them on the basis that university isn't the best place for them to learn such a subject. Education needs to be stratified but not just on the grounds of academic ability. > > > > If we believe getting more students into HE is a good thing the > > > current problems inevitable. OTOH if you believe HE is only suited > > > to a minority, you have a point and we should be requiring A or B > > > grade at A level in say 4 or 5 subjects for anyone to enter any > > > University. > > > > HE per se is a good thing but that doesn't mean that 50% of students > > (or whatever the govt's 10 yr plan says) should do it. Whilst going to > > university is equated as being the ultimate in educative success, as > > determined by the bogus league tables, then the system is skewed into > > sending people to university whether it's suitable for them or not. > > > > > Bear in mind this would also > > > mean redundancies in university teaching staff. > > > > So be it, they can always get jobs elsewhere. > > Maybe but perhaps its just as easy and cost-effective to change the nature of > universities to be rather broader in their scope. Broader scope means less real choice as to what sort of education you get - universities are just becoming higher education comprehensives and IMO comprehensives are good for no one except the politically correct. > > You're right in that it's symptomatic but not the real pathology of > > the problem, but ICT in schools as it currently stands is shameful. > > Yes, there are good schools but is there anything more than guidelines > > for them to follow? There should be examples of best practice for them > > to follow rather than the current seemingly ad hoc approach. > > I agree with this for the most part but until you have 10s of thousands of > good IT graduates coming into teaching and some of the so-called IT expert > decision makers at the top who actually know something about technology that > is going to be very difficult to change. Let's fight battles we can win. It is going to be difficult to change, but the way I see it the IT in schools agenda is still very much up for grabs. > > > > Too right. Linux and open source software needs to be seen in the > > > > wider perspective of what IMHO is a failing education system & it's > > > > political context. > > > > > > The education system has been failing for years, in fact ever since I can > > > remember but in reality for the most part, my observations show better > > > teaching than when I was at school. That doesn't mean everything in the > > > garden is rosey but neither is it all doom and gloom. > > > > My guess is that teachers are about as good/bad as they've always been > > it's the system that they work under (performance tables etc) that > > means that the students they are pushing out are quite frankly not up > > to very much in my experience. > > Some are. I taught a kid who won the British Physics Olympiad and he was > quite bright ;-). He went to a bog standard comp too. The students will seem > weaker if you come across more who are below the 10 percent or so that used > to get to uni. You don't suddenly change IQ by that many percentage points > across the population even with vg teaching. That's right, it's no longer the top 10% who go to university it's the top 30% and that's not because all of a sudden 30% of the populace have got an IQ of >x rather than 10% a few years back. BTW, my understanding of IQ is that you can't change it by teaching full stop. It's whole premise is that a bright Aboriginal with no education whatsoever can have an equivalent IQ of an Oxford don. > > > > > To kick off with, league tables should be binned along with the > > > > present exam boards. > > > > > > You forgot IMHO :-) > > > > > > And what are you going to put in their place? OK ban league tables but > > > with the wonders of modern technology the Daily Mail will do unofficial > > > ones. > > > > Ban the Daily Mail & do us all a favour? ;) > > > > > Ban exams boards and replace them with what? No exams? > > > > Get rid of the current exam boards & replace them with a not for profit > > organisation which isn't subject to political interference - a tall > > order I know when we've got Joe Stalin's clone in no.10 > > Not convinced that this would change that much. I remember the exam boards > pre- all this and they made mistakes too. Also I swapped to AEB from Oxford > for my kids back in the80s because the questions were easier. Things haven't > changed that much. I did all my O's with Oxford bar maths! I was in the bottom stream of maths at school so they decided to go with AEB because the paper was supposedly a piece of piss - it was too, as evidenced by my getting an A grade and guys in the higher streams who were much better than me had to sit the Oxford paper ... and some failed! But in those days, 1977, all the boards papers were considered roughly equivalent except Oxford and AEB - Oxford the standard being higher and AEB lower. Now they're all jostling at the low-end of the market and they know that the lower the standard the more revenue for the company be it Edexcel or whatever. > > > > I have some sympathy with getting rid of GCSE if most people stay on > > > to 18 but ingeneral you need some measurement of performance and > > > progress otherwise how do you decide who goes on which university > > > course who who is qualified to do what job? > > > > ATM, the exams are not really indicative of performance. Clueless > > bozos and brilliant students alike can get grade A's in most subjects. > > Again not true. If it was as random as this employers and HE would just > choose students at random. Some people who get As have no other personal > skills and some people with Cs are very effective in some other fields. But > the IQ/EQ argument is another thread :-) The exams are easier to pass, there's no question of this - the results prove it. Hence, there has to be a wider gap between the ability of those who scrape a certain grade & those at the top-end of that grade. A distribution diagram will prove this point. > > > Too much store is currently put towards not letting students suffer > > failure & making them feeling worthwhile at all costs. > > Again its a matter of balance so I would say yes and no! > > > Let them fail and experience what life's like - it's not only success > > but bitter failure too. Then they'll be better prepared for the > > outside world. > > A lot do fail. The key is to try and get everyone sufficient success to see > their failures from a position of strength and then admit them sufficiently > to improve. At all levels this is a very difficult issue in management. Give them a good kicking for being thick, stand them in the corner with a dunces hat on and they'll soon buck up their ideas. (Just kidding ;) -- Frank *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Boroughbridge. Tel: 01423 323019 --------- PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/ The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Alito -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Plans for a Linux distro
by Chris Howells 06 Feb '02

06 Feb '02

> I'd like to help (well, after finals; so I'll be available in about 5 weeks > time). Ah. Well before I go any further I'll just point out that I'm a final year A-Level student, and have my A-Levels in may, so they have got to come first priority. My only connection with RM is that my place of education have an exceptionally bad RM Connect 1 network (which I am using now :( ). I don't study GNVQ IT myself, but the final straw came when I heard that the school had just bought VB to teach their students (they were origignally going to teach C++ or Delphi but couldn't afford the site licenses. > Would it be difficult to make the interface like RM Connect, so it'd be easy > to pick up for people used to it? Good idea. > And, presumably, RM Connect would have some > sort of support with it, supplied by RM? I think that it would be important > to have some sort of support system in place, otherwise schools (I presume) > wouldn't really look into it. Yes, that would be a problem. However, I'm not really sure what form this distro might take at the moment, so I'll think about that later. > Also, universities are more likely to have Novell, or some sort of Unix > system, rather than RM (in college here, we've got Netware 5, soon to be > upgraded to Netware 6). Schools are going to be the most likely target > audience. Ah right. The only reason I included universities in the list is because I recently went to an Open Day at Queen Mary and they seemed to have a fair bit of RM kit... >You could use a static DHCP system - then you wouldn't need to enter the > hostname, and the server will give the same IP address to that particular > workstation all the time. (Assuming you're talking about workstation; you Yes, we would use DHCP. The thing I mean is the name of the box -- for example my machine at home is called venus, and this happens to be called itst24. > could supply a separate floppy disk & CD for the server). Presumably with the > workstation, you could just install the system via FTP/HTTP from the main > server? (i.e. having a copy of the distribution CDs copied onto the server > hard drive) Exactly. > You could use any distribution, and use GNU cfengine to make custom changes > on a per-machine basis. It's very powerful software, and you can undoubtedly > do what you want with it. OK, sound something good to look at. > - From a programming perspective, completely differently. From an end-user > perspective, fairly similar :-) I'm mainly thinking of an administartive point of view. I have no idea how to restrict the GNOME desktop, but I can do this quite easily with KDE. > > Stuff like Kylix and Open Office will also be provided. > Be careful: you may find it difficult to distribute Kylix because it's > non-Free software. You'd have to get permission from Borland. Yes, I'm aware of that ;) The reason for including Kylix is as a replacement for VB, reasons mentioned above. > KDevelop is > supposed to be nice for C/C++ QT apps, although I've never used it. Ditto. I prefer vim ;) >And provide WINE - if it's in a school setting, they'll undoubtedly have some >software that requires Windows (like ecctis). Yes. > Sounds reasonable, although ReiserFS is more mature ;-) (start filesystem > flamewars here. And end here ;-) LOL ;) Well ext3 had done me fine the last few months, it has a mailing list that the developers read, and it's compatible with ext2 :) > NIS is only used for sharing passwords. For the purposes described above, a > simple MySQL database (or even some LDAP system, for people who like > buzzwords) would probably be better. Sorry yes. I did _intend_ to write LDAP, really ;) > Or simply have /home NFS mounted automatically at boot time, rather than at > login time. The reason for doing it at login is so that each users home directory will appear in the same place in the local file system. So even if the home directory was //server1/user1 or //server1/user2 it would always appear as /home/user. etc. Cheers, Chris Howells

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] FW: Package Dependencies
by Jonathan Bacon 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

> -----Original Message----- > From: Philip Hands [mailto:phil@hands.com] > Sent: 05 February 2002 12:10 I did'nt know the mighty Phil Hands is on this list. :) I remember meeting Phil at the Linux Expo London and discussing the whole KDE/Debian problems back then. I do use Debian now. :) > I hear rumours that the ported version of Debian's APT (Advanced > Package Tool) does a pretty good job. > > A quick google search revealed: > > http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/ > > Try searching for "APT RPM" if you need more references. Is this like urpmi that MandrakeSoft did. Conectiva did some stuff also. > Of course, I'd recommend simply using Debian in the first place, but > then I'm biased. Understandably. ;P I would ove distro's to use apt or apt derived technology. SuSE with apt technology would be cool. Jono

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] OT: UPDATE Redmond Linux
by Jonathan Bacon 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

> -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Munro [mailto:paul.munro1@btinternet.com] > Well--just a quick update on RL. I networked it with a Windows 2000 > Server last night, and I didn't have to touch a thing! I just plugged > the LAN cabling in to the switch, opened up "Network Browser" > and voila! > The Network resources were there and browseable!!! > > All-in-all, an excellent start! This is looking pretty awesome - I have kept my eye on this also and it is good to see some abstraction in the networking. Another interesting one will be www.xandros.com to look for. They licenced Corel Linux which had good promise. Jono

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Schools distro
by Jonathan Bacon 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

> -----Original Message----- > From: Paul Sutton [mailto:psutton@uklinux.net] > Great idea, the latest Linux format pg 11 has a short article on blue > linux - www.bluelinux.org > which is said to be a school friendly distribution, > > perhaps you could take a look at this, this is part of the > schoolforge.project. > > Worth checking out and perhaps helping with as it seems that > both projects > would have the same aims, and in this case the distro is there, > > Hope this is of some help or could possibly save time, This looks a very promising project - and I would suggest that people work on this instead of Yet Another Distro. I am gonna keep my beady eye on this one. :) Jono

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FW: Package Dependencies
by Matt Williams 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

Hi All This is my first post so I'll introduce myself. My name is Matt, I'm a Web Developer for Yewlands School in Sheffield. We are currently using linux for our intranet server, and our firewall/proxy although I'm pushing to get it more invloved with the rest of the network. Primarily my skills are in PHP/SQL/HTML/Javascript although I'm currently studying C++ and have a little Perl experience. Okay introductions over, my question: I have normally been using SuSE but I am just taking a look at Red Hat. I don't normally use rpm's but in this case I have to. Is there any way I cen tell RH to resolve package dependencies and install them all (like you can with SuSE) or do I have to go through each one individually? Which would be a real pain in the backside. TIA m:

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OT: UPDATE Redmond Linux
by Paul Munro 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

Well--just a quick update on RL. I networked it with a Windows 2000 Server last night, and I didn't have to touch a thing! I just plugged the LAN cabling in to the switch, opened up "Network Browser" and voila! The Network resources were there and browseable!!! All-in-all, an excellent start! Paul :-)

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Teaching Programming - was that Schools Linux Dist stuff
by Gary Stainburn 05 Feb '02

05 Feb '02

Hi all, I've just spent the last hour readling all the postings that happened over the weekend, and here's my thoughts. 1) A lot of Frank said is right - there you go Frank, bet you never expected to read that? I am, however, not as emotionally charges as Frank. 2) VB should NOT EVER BE TOUGHT TO ANYONE EVER!!!! (Okay, I get emotional sometimes). Recording Macro's, then editing them is ABSOLUTELY the wrong way to get into learning. I like to think that I am young enough to remember my school/college days and the process I went through to learn my profession, while being old enough to be able to look back objectively. The methods used to teach me, I believe are just as valid today as they were then. Structure, order, logic, and top-down analysis and design are essential if we are to teach proper programming - irrespective of which language we use. We used to write our programs on coding sheets and walk across the campus to key them into gwbasic on DOS 3.3 8086 PC clones. We made sure the program was correct *before* we even touched keyboard. Now I know that is a little extreme, but the basic concept is still there. I believe that the teachers who that think that 7 year old kids will get bored not writing a GUI program are not doing these kids any justice. However, at the same time, there is no reason why this same structured teaching could not be used with something like Delphi, Kylix, etc. which will give them some eye-candy and help motivate them. The User Interface, be it a GUI or a TUI, or even a command line, is a valid and diffecult topic to cover, and such tools as Delphi/Kylix, or KDevelop/Glade would be excelent here, but when teaching programming, the main goal should always be qualitity of code, again, irrespective of language. As for the other topics of this thread, I remain quiet as I do not hold enough information/experience to hold an opinion, but I do hold the fear that this country is going to get to the point that we will not have enough real programmers, and get stuck with grown-up 'script kiddies' (For real, read correctly trained program analysts/designers/coders) I think that this will be true in many other industries too. -- Gary Stainburn This email does not contain private or confidential material as it may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown and undisclosed purposes - Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000

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