I believe all government institutions should be using open source software virtually everywhere (if something doesn't exist yet, they can build it). That way the things we build with taxpayer money will be much longer lasting, and interoperability with future technologies should be a much easier task, rather than relying on the whim of a private company and its profit incentives.
Linux should be a part of School Education
51–60 of 113 posts
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#52The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs. The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we teach flower germination? or…
> have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs. The simplest possible programs are still very simple and short. Even with verbose languages. One drawback here is that even a simple game by modern standards is light-years ahead of my best efforts on the Apple II. And those best efforts would be considered rather mundane or sub-standard today. A modern-looking program involves interacting with a GUI library a…
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Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#53My school used Windows for everything. I remember when in year 7 (6th grade) I was complaining about the computers to my IT teacher, as many do. His response was "there is another way!".
A few days later, he found me and gave me a Linux live CD with Knoppix on it. I remember it claimed to have 2GB of software, compressed into the 700MB a CD could hold. I could put it in my family computer at home, and without installing anything, changing settings, messing up the computer my parents used in any way, I could use an entirely different OS, it was amazing!
This was the point at which I realised how software and hardware were truly separated. A computer was no longer an 'appliance'. The "start button" wasn't part of the computer, it was just some software that I could replace.
I believe, and have told many people in the years since, that this was the turning point in my computer education, that has lead to me studying computer science, and becoming a software developer.
Linux should be a part of school education, because teaching kids that computers aren't appliances, that hardware and software have a split, and you can change both, is crucial to developing a real understanding of how they work.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? > Many children [...] will run Android Care to reconsider your argument?
Why would he. Android is a consumer operating system that has many differences from linux on the server or desktop. Namely, it conceals the inner workings. Forcing people to use Linux sounds antagonizing and like it'd hurt the reputation of Linux. The same way feminists / marketers think they should be CTO's and top developers with nothing but twitter followers - and how it could potentially hurt females who no axe t…
What's with the feminism non-sequitur?
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#55The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs. The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we teach flower germination? or…
It's not all that bad now and wasn't when I was at school (in the UK). During my time, we had the Acorn BBC Micro to start with, then the Archimedes. These were both programmers dream machines and code we did, usually plugged into large Lego machines. After that it diverged into "office studies" as RM dumped millions of PC clones but there was still Quick Basic and Turbo Pascal available that was taught at a lot of schools either as a mainstream subject or through "computer clubs".
Now there was a gap for me but I have children now and they are learning how to write HTML and basic JavaScript. They are using software to produce video productions and stop-frame animations, they are even getting instruction from parents on how to write python. They have Windows desktops, iPads and a few Linux netbooks. They have it pretty good.
And this is a London primary school with an Ofsted "needs improvement" rating.
It's not all that bad.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a place called the internet. It has information for you. edit: there's volatile memory and non-volatile memory. Or hundreds of different types for every place they're used, every purpose, and every brand name they're sold under, for trolls who miss the forest for the trees.
I wasn't trolling, hence the account name. Its hard to learn about how computers work because I don't even know where to start. When I typed "types of computer memory", there are a bunch of different resources. Its difficult and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know. But thanks anyways for the answer.
I apologize: downvotes and 5 minute old accounts make me think troll.
Volatile memory, like RAM, needs a constant source of power to hold information, but is very fast, so computers use it for calculation, or information that it will come back to immediately. Non-volatile memory, like a hard drive, holds information even when the power is turned off.
cache: means a temporary place to hold stuff, and isn't a particular type of memory.
system RAM: is volatile memory used by the system.
virtual memory: is stuff that was in system RAM but hasn't been used in a while, so was stored on a hard drive for a moment. Or rather, the place on a hard drive that you've reserved for that stuff.
hard drive: non-volatile, spinning platters written on with magnetism, like a cassette tape. It's better than a cassette tape because you don't have to rewind or fast-forward the entire thing to get to what you want.
RAM: is volatile memory
ROM: is non-volatile memory that is written once, and usually never erased and rewritten. Many forms of ROM actually can be rewritten, but to the extent that it's easy to rewrite ROM, the less it counts as ROM.
Primary: another word for system RAM.
Secondary: another word for non-volatile memory, like hard drives.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#57One should teach children using the best tools for the job; cost should not be an issue here in the consideration. What is the quality of educational software in the Linux world compared to Windows? What about compared to OS X? What about usability? Accessibility? A rather vapid statement about "cost" isn't going to cut it as an argument as to why Linux should be used. Even amongst Free operating systems, why Linux?…
Which one is the best tool, when you want to teach how a computer actually works? or you want to teach them programming?
How a computer actually works, probably something microkernel-based, like Minix. Stripped down, show just what needs to be shown for the lesson at hand, and much easier to get inside and play with the gears.
Programming? I'd say the OS doesn't really matter. Simple, easy to see initial result environments like MIT's Scratch, or Logo run on pretty much everything.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#58What a complete load of tosh. Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives. How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? The cost argument doesn't really stand up either, books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author. It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either. If Linux is going to find a place…
I don't wish to hijack this thread but tying the Raspberry Pi to education is terrible if you ask me. I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it. The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get something working rather than anyt…
I won a grant to build, donate, and maintain Raspberry Pi computers to rural schools in South Africa (about 7). It was a large project. Absolute nightmare. In the end I just started buying second hand computers and installing XUbuntu (much higher performance, much lower cost). I donated the Raspberry Pis to a university engineering department and managed to buy double the expected number in second hand computers for rural schools, feel much better about it. Raspberry Pi is simply a gimmick for those that love that kind of thing (which is fine), but it should NOT be marketed as a way to get kids to learn programming, or as a replacement for a computer. It's simply too expensive, and does not cater to the educational needs of those struggling to learn programming/IT.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#59The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs. The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we teach flower germination? or…
It's not all that bad now and wasn't when I was at school (in the UK). During my time, we had the Acorn BBC Micro to start with, then the Archimedes. These were both programmers dream machines and code we did, usually plugged into large Lego machines. After that it diverged into "office studies" as RM dumped millions of PC clones but there was still Quick Basic and Turbo Pascal available that was taught at a lot of s…
At school I had much the same type of machines which I could program on, though in my final year as they moved to windows, pretty much any possibility of programming was taken away due to the system.
I visited a school the other day, all they seemed to have were windows machines, which presumably are pretty locked down. Fortunately we brought Raspberry Pis to the school and kids seem to love it and learnt a bit of python on them.
Re: Linux should be a part of School Education
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which one is the best tool, when you want to teach how a computer actually works? or you want to teach them programming?
How a computer actually works, probably something microkernel-based, like Minix. Stripped down, show just what needs to be shown for the lesson at hand, and much easier to get inside and play with the gears. Programming? I'd say the OS doesn't really matter. Simple, easy to see initial result environments like MIT's Scratch, or Logo run on pretty much everything.
Scratch is ok at first, but really they need to come out of schoool knowing something more than that (python/ruby/java etc.)