On Thursday 11 April 2002 01:30 am, Lance Lane wrote:
I am a teacher on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. We have the same story in that most of our teachers are scared of computers and can't work them accept to use MS Word and Outlook. I think that Linux would be ideal to use in the classroom. What many teachers are looking for are programs that can help them:
1. Grade - Standards Based 2. Lesson Planning. 3. Communicating with Parents. 4. Making our life easier.
Students need programs: 1. Programming environments. 2. Subject area programs for thinking skills. 3. Programs that cover standards for different subjects.
I thought it was time for a new Subject line. :-) Desktop Apps on Linux This seems to go back to the old line of Linux makes a great server, but what else can it do? KDE and GNOME have made some pretty impressive strides, but both lack the apps you're talking about(specifically school oriented. KDE's Edutainment stuff is pretty darned nifty though. I don't believe GNOME has an equivalent (I could be wrong, please don't flame me! :-) The page www.edu.kde.org has the info from the world according to K. Questions 1. What would Standards based grading be exactly? Are you referring to a standardized method for calculating grades? We could address this with templates for KOffice and Open Office. What would these standards be? 2. Lesson Planning. There are some project management tools for GNOME, but I don't know of any true lesson plan apps. If one is developed it should be able to output to HTML. 3. I'm not sure computers will help teachers communicate with parents unless they have computers and can get e-mail. :-) What language would be ideal for use in schools? At Georgia Tech they use a non-language nicknamed Russ-cal after the guy who "invented" it. Although, there are a couple of compilers out there now I think. Anywho, what language should be taught in school. Russ-cal is very simplistic (read: unlike C). I think an interpreted language like Python on Perl would be best. But, that's just my opinion. On the edu.kde.org site there are links to topic based programs. What do you think is missing? Oh yeah, if you don't have it, download KDE 3. I finally got around to it last night and it rocks! Peace --andy