On Thursday 11 April 2002 08:53 am, you wrote:
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
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.
Andrew I will answer your questions line by line:
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?
AN: I am referring to Academic State Standards per Subject. The ability to import your state standards into the gradebook and produce a rubric to be graded for each standard. www.media-x.com produces a gradebook that can transfer information to a palm using a desktop base program (Based in Filemaker Pro)
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. :-)
AN: Actually I am talking about a program that can produce forms from information from the gradebook on whether or not their student is meeting the state standard in a subject. A Progress report. However, some parent's do want e-mail notification on their childs progress. Part of our school is a boarding school and many parents work hundreds of miles away and we can communitcate by 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.
AN: Me too.
On the edu.kde.org site there are links to topic based programs. What do you think is missing?
I think what I am looking for in particular is "decision making software". I have used AGE OF EMPIRES and Civilization in class. What I would like personally would be a program that puts students into historical situations and roles and let them try to make alternative choices: Example: Decision for Truman - Do we drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What alternatives do we have?
Oh yeah, if you don't have it, download KDE 3. I finally got around to it last night and it rocks!
Peace --andy