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Re: [LUG] Local Primary 'upgrading pc/windows'

 

Quoting tom potts <madtom1999@xxxxxxxxx>:

I moved into the area a month ago and went to see a
local primary school for my eldest (3.5) and they have
about 12 pcs with windows (w2k and a few blue
screens1) They are in the process of upgrading and I
thought I'd see if anyone knows of any Primary school
open source stuff before getting too evangelical.
I'd like to try and put a little package/presentation
together before putting Linux to the headmaster.
Any links anyone?
Tom



Hi Tom,

A couple of us from the LUG are having discussions about this, I've e-mailed you off the list about it.

Regarding Primary School software, there is quite a bit of software out there which is both educational and fun.

Two packages I've let the kids use are TuxPaint and Gcompris.

There are plenty of other packages out there (I did have a list somewhere, I'll dig it out). On the back end side of things, there is a system being developed in the UK called Karoshi. It's aimed at schools to provide different services such as file serving, internet caching/content filtering and various other services too. As far as I know, Woodlands School just outside of Plymouth uses this software.

Other than that, there is Moodle (which I haven't read much about), and the K12LTSP project which is a server based distribution which allows older PCs to work as diskless workstations. The workstations simply boot a minimal installation of Linux over the network and connect to the K12LTSP server. To the users, it looks like the Linux OS is running on the local PC where as infact it is all running on the server. I implimented a similar server for home use. The K12LTSP server is aimed more at schools.

Other software which could be considered (although maybe not for Primary schools) is OpenOffice.org. Since it has no licensing costs, the schools could use this as an alternative to MS Office and in the process save a large sum of money, and even offer/sell CDs contaning OpenOffice.org to the parents.

Rob




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