On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 09:57:34AM +0100, Derek Harding wrote:
Here, here about school/educational software on opensource. I've just been told that my proposed terminal server setup won't get the go ahead unless I can prove the educational, not financial, viability!
Who on Earth told you that? I'd be tempted to throw it in their face and ask them to prove the educational *and* financial viability of your current software. I can't see that Netscape/StarOffice on a thin
You'd be hard pushed to find actual curriculum and exam board requirements which you couldn't do on stuff 10 years old. IMHO Windows is probably about the worst possible platform for an educational environment. The discless Acorns we have mostly thrown out, though the science department have been using for the last half term, are far better machines for letting school kids (and computer illiterate teaching staff) near. Windows stuff is just far too fragile and fussy. LTSP enables you to regain robustness of an A3000/A3020, as well as centralising application managment. You can even run Windows apps this way. (Better than Windows can manage in some cases...)
client has any less educational worth than IE/Office on a thick client, and I can see that a number of purely Unix apps have
You can run Netscape/StarOffice on a thick client, it is still more robust and easy to manage compared with the Windows option.
considerably more educational merit than either.
Let alone that a thin client terminal will either work or it won't work. Also the whole system will either work or it won't work. Teachers (especially for none "techie" subjects) tend to get upset when they end up wasting half a lesson discovering that X out of Y machines don't work correctly. (e.g. because some kid found the latest "cool" "click and install" website.)
The financial advantages are largely self evident in terms of licensing costs and reduced time costs in nursing the system.
-- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763