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Linux should be a part of School Education

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Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#81

Post by Zigurd »

simonh wrote: post #4

What 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…

Android is a Linux-based OS. You can use an AOSP-derived distribution as a hackable Linux. Nearly every hosting service provides Linux. Linux is in your TV, STB, and car (maybe in the form of Android).

How many YC ventures' server software are running on a hosted Linux system? How many of their endpoints are running on Android? Was the toolchain Linux-based?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#82

Post by ygra »

rbanffy wrote: post #68
ygra wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Linux is somehow immune against people ritualising how they interact with a computer? They will have a problem one day, google for a solution and remember that solution. Few will actively try understanding the solution and how and why it works. Operating systems don't have magical powers for making users interested in their internals.

It's not immune, but chances are that, during the time you are googling solutions for your problem, you'll have to learn something about how computers actually work. If the solution points you to a series of "click here, then here" screens, you won't get any useful insights on how it's done under the hood because you spent the whole time above it.

Suggestions to solve a problem on Linux often are written on a similar level, it's just that »click here, then here« gets replaced by »edit this part of that config file and then run this series of arcane invocations«. Oftentimes you can just copy/paste from some forum and won't learn anything from it.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#83

Post by daliusd »

Zigurd wrote: post #81
simonh wrote: post #4

What 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…

Android is a Linux-based OS. You can use an AOSP-derived distribution as a hackable Linux. Nearly every hosting service provides Linux. Linux is in your TV, STB, and car (maybe in the form of Android). How many YC ventures' server software are running on a hosted Linux system? How many of their endpoints are running on Android? Was the toolchain Linux-based?

Joke on you. I don't have smartphone, car, STB and TV. Maybe I do but there are 7 billion people in the world.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#84

Post by Fuxy »

rbanffy wrote: post #69
Fuxy wrote: post #28

If someone were using Linux to teach I as a student would think their using some crap computers. Like it or not students don't see the potential of Linux like we do and truth is Windows is still more user friendly then Linux when it comes to doing some moderately advanced things. Probably the closest you can get is KDE since for most users if the setting isn't in the GUI it doesn't exist. It would be cool if schools…

> I as a student would think their using some crap computers. When was the last time you saw a machine running Linux in person? > unlikely to run into driver issues when connecting new devices. I am not a grandma and the last device that didn't play nice with my Linux machines was a prototype Blackberry phone. I somehow don't think it was the computer's fault.

Actually my main OS is Arch Linux and i only use windows at work.

While now I rarely run into driver issues that are very serious i still needed to replace my Wifi card on my laptop to be able to run it in monitor mode about 1 year ago.

So no Linux still has driver issues with certain hardware. Granted this is a bad example since it's quite a technical requirement and it's not Linux's fault but the manufacturers however Linux driver coverage is not as vast as windows nor do products come with a CD containing drivers for Linux so if it doesn't work regular users aren't going to care why.

Their going to blame the OS.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#86

Post by derrzzaa »

I don't think it's a bad idea. Generally, I'd say skills learnt using Linux would be fairly transferable to other computer based tasks, regardless of OS.

The article however; utter shite. It's bad journalism.

'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers', well yes. The company does profit from this, so? That's not valid argument to not use it in a schools? It should be approached from a 'look what we can learn from free tools' angle.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#87

Post by gmuslera »

At least in Uruguay, and by some definition, Linux is part of the school education. All public schools students have an XO, running Linux, Sugar as desktop environment, mesh networking, and a bunch of educational apps, including Scratch (not very explored in class unfortunately) and Turtle Art, that is also used to explore robotics in schools with the project Butia. But linux per se is not the central target. But i would trade that for what they are actually learning, specially at their age. It leaves the door open to exploration, and so far 2 students from here already won the google code-in for activities related with Sugar.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#88

Post by Tmmrn »

f_salmon wrote: post #23

> Linux should be a part of School Education The concept of "open source" should be part of school education. We don't need thousands of proprietary version of the same thing. That's a HUGE waste of resources on literally every level. All we need is 1 version that is accessible, clone-able, and modifiable for everybody. Imagine where humanity could be today if we had used that approach right from the start and for ev…

You surely meant the concept of "free software", right? RIGHT?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#89

Post by michaelbuddy »

csmithuk wrote: post #6
simonh wrote: post #4

What 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…

"Jump through funny shaped hoops"

sounds like it fits perfectly into education then. It's much like a lot of the working world as well. A lesson in grit perhaps? A lesson in our tenuous grasp in technology. At least it's something that can be held in your hands and not a group's invented agreement about how something should be (grammar) or subjective watered down recounts of reality (social studies).

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#90

Post by michaelbuddy »

1stop wrote: post #7
simonh wrote: post #4

What 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…

My normal day involves dissecting frogs, working out quickly equations like 13x12 in my head and calculating when two trains heading in opposite directions are going to pass each other. Just last week, I was held at gunpoint and told to find the integral of an equation, then - you won't believe this - my boss said I was fired unless I could write 1000 words on Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" by the following day.…

thank you for that.
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