November 2004 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

INGOT update
by Ian Lynch 07 Nov '04

07 Nov '04

Hope its ok to post some updates on the INGOT programme. I was in Serbia/Montenegro last week setting up an INGOT Academy at the Belgrade Linux Centre. They have contacts with other former Soviet Union countries that are supported by the Open Society Institute funded by George Soros. We hope to get them to fund a meeting/conference where we can train assessors to set up INGOT Academies in many other Eastern European countries so we will be truly International. I also have someone in a college in New Zealand and someone else in Kentucky wanting to set up Academies so the International dimension looks like its taking off. I have also registered the scheme with Curriculum On-line so INGOT Academy subscriptions can be paid for using ELCs. I have put some content on the web site www.theINGOTs.org (Which has had a complete overhaul) for download to conform to the compliance rules for COL. As we build up I'll put more there if we get the resources to commision people to do the work. Of course this will be for free use so it might get copied to other places such as schoolforge over time ;-). So if you want to use your ELCs to support some FLOSS development, set up an INGOT Academy :-) We are also planning Infant INGOTs for 5-7 year olds due to demand from some of the primary schools. This will be a cut down version of the Bronze, with basic things like mouse control, basic operating of the keyboard etc. We'll work it out with a couple of our primary school clients and then make it available for everyone. At the other end of the scale, I'm setting up a partnership with Birmingham University Computer Science Department under the DTi Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme to develop the Platinum INGOT as an endorsement for entry to university computer science courses involving practical experience in developing open source code. This can develop into a model for learning computer programming by contributing to the open source pool for prospective university students. Linspire has also provided us with their name as a supporter. For this they get a link to their web site from the INGOT supporters page. Its important for us to get industry support as it provides confidence and internationally, is better than say QCA endorsement which really only applies in England and Wales. I'm also talking to Sun. Maybe Novell? Anyone interested in joining in, send me an E-mail. -- Ian Lynch <ian.lynch(a)zmsl.com> ZMS Ltd

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] RM CC3 NETWORK
by Matt Johnson 07 Nov '04

07 Nov '04

--- paul sutton <zen14920(a)zen.co.uk> wrote: > Is this a primary or secondary school environment, > are linux work > stations suitable for a > primary environment? Yes, it's a primary environment. And yes... linux is very suitable for defined roles. There are gaps that arguably require things to run on Windows (because the software only runs on Windows - and I don't have time to get wine running reliably). We use our new linux workstations for research (hence these machines are in the library) and officey stuff: openoffice *draw* is superb for KS2. I've run a couple of projects on it - great results. I had a class of year 5's redesign our town centre. Plus, using OO.o spreadsheet for the spreadsheet qca stuff works very well. No reason to use Excel. And for publishing or wordprocessing work, Writer is good as/better than Word. Literacy lessons that simply require a word processor? Why use Windows? Why book the Windows suite? There's also some stuff aimed at the younger audience. TuxPaint is pretty good. I have reservations on using the gimp, bacause it splashes up "GIMP" each time you use it. Perhaps I'm being conservative... (I wonder how hard it is to edit all the instances of the title GIMP to its full name?) And now that we use Plone for our website, Mozilla (on these linux machines) works better than IE (eg for table control in Epoz) for editting our website, which the children participate in. And more and more resources are online (subscription?) services. Our email (webmail) for Year 3's and all staff of course - runs as happily on Linux as on Windows. So, yeah, if we begin to reroute classes who need apps for the tasks outlined, from our main suite to banks of linux machines, we free up the Windows machines for stuff that only runs on them. Oh, and it looks *so* much prettier than Win98 :) The pupils love it. -- Matt ___________________________________________________________ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] RM CC3 NETWORK
by Grainge, Derek 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

RM aim their systems at schools who want a 'managed' solution. i.e. the school doesn't want to install kit itself, isn't sure it has the expertise, so they listen to the RM blurb. This is fine if you're a relatively small school, with limited IT ambitions. But many schools outgrow RM - if you want to install 'just any old package' or you want to add servers which RM regard as non-standard you are pretty much on your own. i.e. do it the RM way or not at all. There can also be issues connecting non-RM machines to an RM network. Last time I bought from RM was 1990: they happily helped install Netware then they decided they would not support it in schools, only university. Nice. They also didn't provide the necessary tape streamers, and one of the (new) server drives went down while we were waiting. Even nicer. I rebuilt the server myself. From that point we rolled our own. > Its really a > mini-version of the MS strategy focused on schools. -- ******************************************************************************** All mail sent and received may be examined to prevent transmission of unacceptable material. Wellington College does not accept responsibility for email contents. Problems to postmaster(a)wellington-college.berks.sch.uk. Website: http://www.wellington-college.berks.sch.uk ********************************************************************************

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Gigabit ethernet
by Miles Berry 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

We're about to migrate to a new server after four years of (almost) uninterrupted service on our old box. I feel quite sad about this somehow. Can anyone recommend gigabit ethernet cards that they've found will work out of the box with SuSE 9.1? If not, what have you got working and what did you have to do? Thanks in anticipation,

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