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Re: [LUG] how do install debian 6

 

On 19/01/12 21:17, Rob Beard wrote:
> On 19/01/12 20:46, bad apple wrote:
>> On 19/01/12 19:00, Gordon Henderson wrote:
>>>
>>> My experience over the years is that most people can not, and do not
>>> want to do a Windows/Linux/OSX install from scratch. They just don't
>>> care. They want to turn a computer on and have it "just work".
>>
>> Well, sure, but I thought we were talking in the context of installs on
>> a Raspberry Pi board - if you're buying one for yourself, you better
>> know how to be able to install linux yourself because you are REALLY 
I was under the impression they were selling pre-installed systems or sd
cards, well due to teh price its worth having one to use with the
pre-installed stuff and another one for experimenting with new
distributions etc. I think the pre-installed software will be very
developer orientated,

>> not
>> the target audience otherwise. Of course for the main intended audience
>> (kids in school) then having a preinstalled SD card available would be
>> really handy otherwise the poor kids will spend more time trying to
>> figure out installation instead of actually learning programming or
>> whatever on them. But even then, their teacher bloody better well know
>> how to prep an image and have it ready to deploy or they are one
>> seriously poor IT teacher.

why, ? many primary schools have an IT co-ordinator, who thanks to the
way schools do IT ends  up calling tech support because people like RM
lock down the system and or they are NOT allowed to change things but
the most basic settings.

    A lot of schools don't have a dedicated IT technician either,  if
you look on the forum there is one school that has some older computers,
that hardly work properly teachers DO NOT Have time to fix stuff,  I
think schools are really struggling and budget cuts are not going to
help either.
   
    Schools could install Linux but then could still think that each PC
capable of running windows MUST have a license,  so that rules out
buying new hardware minus OS,  raspberry PI could be a way round this.  
I am aware becta were trying to sort this out before they were
disbanded, but it is a crazy situation,  when schools are forced in to
Windows,  of course they use Windows and office in secondary so
secondaries put them under pressure to ensure the kids can use office, 
rather than teaching the basics of word processing and developing
confidence to pick up any word processing package and type on that.

    You still need staff to maintain it,  would have to re-write all
your schemes of work and lesson plans around running libreoffice for
example.

In general the IT co-ordinator has to teach other subjects in primary
anyway.  In secondaries the teachers can simply teach IT, but still have
to contend with things breaking down,  5 mins before a lesson or having
to put up with the system taking so long to start up,  they can't
deliver the whole lesson they have planned.

>
> I think that might describe maybe 50% of IT teachers out there these
> days.  From the people I've spoken to involved in schools, the IT
> teacher seems to be the one who knows how to use MS Office.  Luckily
> for some schools the IT Teachers are a bit more clued up.

Well they are teaching MS office,  unless schools have people who know
about alternatives.

This is why I am not that convinced how well the new curriculum will
work,  a lot of kids who want to do programming are doing so already so
end up ahead of the game.   I can see kids who enjoy programming either
being dictated to on what they write, or getting fed up due to the tasks
given to them being too simple, (as you have to consider the whole class), 

Programming at that age used to be FUN which is why raspberry PI is
aiming to get kids back in to that mentality,   all schools will care
about is getting people through exams,  so it will end up here is what
you will use, here is what you will teach,  and you could end up with
people leaving school confident in say visual basic, but lacking in
confidence to use other programming languages , as people have said
here,  some office users panic if their place of work changes the
version of word to something else, 

Paul

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