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On 19/01/12 22:29, bad apple wrote: > On 19/01/12 22:08, paul sutton wrote: >> 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 >> > > Well, it's hard to disagree with anything you're saying here - so I > won't. As a disclaimer, I have worked mostly in public sector stuff > myself including some school-related IT projects, although always as an > outside consultant/expert, certainly not as a teacher - additionally my > Dad currently works part time as an exam invigilator in schools around > the South West and he routinely tells me horror stories about computers > never being ready for exams in time, login packet storms taking down the > network halfway through, etc, etc: as you said, there's frequently a big > struggle to find someone qualified onsite to fix anything but the most > basic of problems. Certainly a lot of school based ICT staff seem to be > limited to firing up the AD tools and brutally resetting everything > until something miraculously works. And you're of course correct that > individual schools have very little say indeed about a lot of their IT > infrastructure, it normally being mandated from further up the chain > (complete with all those horrid and expensive microsoft licenses). > > I still vehemently contest that a teacher that is hosting a class on > programming on the Raspberry Pi better have done their homework and know > how to admin them to a certain extent: when the first kid trashes their > OS with some errant experimental code the teacher is really going to > have to know how to either reflash the SD card back to defaults or fix > it in a more sophisticated manner. It would be like me teaching high > level remote exploit coding to a class and then not being able to fix or > restore-to-snapshot the victim test VMs when they bluescreen! > > I'm totally behind the idea of these Raspberry Pis though - current IT > education in schools is a national joke/disgrace, computers are too > expensive and there is not enough cheap fun in IT in general. Let's hope > the bloody kids learn something instead of checking their damn facebook > status on their smartphones all lesson... > > Regards, > > Mat > > > > Yeah, I assume by what you said earlier prep an image this would say be download an Iso from a website and boot this using a flash or cd device and re-install. I would expect these things to come with some facility and or instructions to do this. Hey personally I hope teachers can't do this, as it means I may get a offered a job :D Having used Linux for quite a while may start to work in my favour. At least it shouldn't come with some stupid license that prevents you from having a master image that can be used on any device, (look what happened to currys making cds of windows etc) You never know it may swing the balance, if I was MS i would be rather worried esp as at last we will see a system that shows the world does NOT revolve around microsoft. Paul -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq