Linux Education - LinuxSearch.tk
Linux as a server
for schools
As a file server for schools, Linux is ready now. It can act as a native Appletalk,
SMB, NFS, or NetWare server. Files stored on a Linux system can be simultaneously
available for users of all four of those networking systems (and more, although
those are by far the most common in schools). Linux also enjoys an advantage
in price here over the alternatives, since its legendary efficiency and low
cost mean that computers considered obsolescent under other operating systems
can be put back into service as functional Linux servers.
When it comes to providing Internet services, Linux again easily beats the
more commonly used scholastic systems. Setting up Linux systems to provide
email accounts, an NNTP news server, a Web server, file and print services,
and firewalling, proxy, and IP masquerading is fairly easy, and certainly
rewards the effort. Given that Linux is free, and can run well on older hardware,
there is no reason why numerous severs couldn't be set up. For many high schools,
creating these systems could be part of the learning experience itself. The
benefits could be felt in many areas, including mailing lists for staff and
student organizations, for instance.
Administrative software
So far, we've talked mainly about network infrastructure. We all know that
Linux excels there. But what about the systems that students, teachers, and
staff actually work with directly? These systems have mostly been Macintosh
and more recently Microsoft Windows machines. How does Linux fare in that
niche?
Unfortunately, not too well at the moment. There are a number of projects
working on addressing deficiencies in application software for Linux, but
few of them have software currently ready for wide-spread deployment. However,
work is progressing rapidly on many of these programs and you can expect to
see useful Linux software for schools shortly.
On the administrative side, we've heard teachers say that if there isn't a
good Linux gradebook program, Linux will never get onto teachers' desks. Period.
Luckily, some of these teachers are also Linux fans and are working on programs
that have the features they want rather than those that software companies
think will sell. There's K12Admin, an account administration program written
and currently in use at the Coast Mountain School District in British Columbia,
Grader, a GNOME gradebook program being written by several teachers and students,
KTeacher, a KDE gradebook being written by another teacher, and Roster, an
account administration program written and used at Laney College. In addition,
OpenClassroom, the Authenticated User Community (AUC), LearnLoop, and Zschool
all intend to provide Web-based educational "environments" with
integrated administrative and collaborative capabilities. Work is also beginning
on a general testing and quizzing application that can be run by itself or
integrated with some or all of the environments mentioned above.
Financial and peer-review
benefits of Linux
There are two major features of Linux and open source software in general
that will never be matched by commercial software: free availability and openness.
We'll examine both of these features as they pertain to education.
Linux and Open Source software have a big advantage over anything else when
comparing the cost of implementing comparable systems. Everything else in
general use in education is sold with either site licenses or per-seat licensing.
Either of these licensing options quickly becomes quite expensive for any
school that wants to have more than a few computers in a computer lab that
students can only use occasionally. Since Linux has no licensing fees based
on the number of users or systems on which it's installed, a school can set
up as many Linux systems as it wants from just one set of CD-ROMs. Indeed,
if a school is really strapped for funds, it can download Linux from the Internet
for only the cost of the connection, or buy CD-ROMs without paper documentation
for US$2-7. And since Linux is comfortable and usable on systems on which
Windows would be unforgivably slow, it can extend the lifetime of current
systems, saving yet more money. A number of teachers have run cost analyses
on using Linux versus something else (typically Microsoft Windows), and the
differences are compelling. Here's one by David Culp: Getting Linux Into The
School.
There are, of course, hardware limits for Linux, too. In schools this is probably
seen most often in the size of the hard drives older systems have. It would
be difficult to shoehorn a usable Linux distribution and application software
onto a drive of 500 MB or less, but many systems in schools fit that criterion.
Fortunately, the X Window System gives us another way to extend the usable
life of these older systems.
The X Window System separates where a program displays from where the program
actually runs. A large program, such as a Web browser or some other graphically
intensive software, may be unbearably slow on an older machine, but it might
run very nicely on more modern hardware. The X Window System allows the large
program to actually run on a single, shared machine so that it can take advantage
of the processing power and memory of this machine, and display very responsively
on the many older machines, turned into XTerminals, that the students can
use. All of this happens transparently, so the students do not know that the
software is running elsewhere, they just know that the program runs well on
their machines.
Another benefit of the XTerminal-based approach to classroom computing is
the simplicity of the individual workstations. Instead of having to manage
a large number of individual workstations, a single setup can be created for
the simpler hardware. This reduces the amount of technician time spent maintaining
the workstations, as well as reducing the number of technical problems that
require the technician's intervention during class time. In addition, it's
harder for a user to intentionally or unintentionally mess up the XTerminal's
configuration and easier for a technician to restore a generic XTerminal setup.
This can be a major advantage in the constant struggle to keep all the systems
in a school computer lab working and available for student use.
A further benefit of XTerminals is that they can be created from very different
computers and still provide the same user experience to the students. A student
lab of XTerminals could be made up of older 486 PCs and 680x0 Macintoshes;
as long as they were all running as XTerminals with their programs running
on the same application server, the students would see exactly the same screens.
The other advantage Linux and open source software in general has over the
commercial alternatives is that of openness. All of the commands that make
up the programs are completely visible, so these programs are uniquely available
for students to study to understand how such software works. In addition,
the complete openness of the software makes it possible for individual students
or schools to modify it to suit their needs, or to suggest changes to the
creators and maintainers of the software. This capability is the major reason
for one of the best features of open source software -- the extremely quick
discovery and repair of bugs. In many ways, this openness is analogous to
the academic concept of peer review. When everyone can see and critique the
work people do, flaws tend to be discovered quickly and remedied equally quickly.
Linux on the desktop
So far we've talked about Linux's utility for running servers and administrative
systems. We haven't addressed its usefulness on the desktop, the place where
Linux perhaps lags behind other OSs. However, there are many efforts to bring
Linux up to and past the others in the educational field. In addition, many
of the perceived shortcomings disappear when examined more closely.
As in many other areas, in education you may hear that there's no standard
office software for Linux. This is usually code for "Microsoft Office
isn't available on Linux." However, there are many alternatives that
will work just as well. We all know them, so there's little point in listing
them. The hard part is persuading teachers and administrators that they shouldn't
be teaching students how to use Microsoft Office (or any specific product),
but rather should be teaching the concepts behind word processing and spreadsheet
calculations, etc., in general.
One of the biggest shortcomings for Linux in the educational field is pedagogical
programs, the sort of educational programs often called "courseware."
Courseware is almost always produced by small companies that have few resources
to use in porting their programs to OSs for which they don't see any market.
There are a few ways we can address this. First, we can develop Open Source
courseware that runs on Linux. There are some efforts being made in that area
already. Second, we can identify Linux software that would be usable as courseware
with proper lesson plans, and develop such lesson plans. We've started to
identify such programs, but we haven't yet started work on lesson plans. There
are organizations that develop lesson plans and post them on the Internet
for any interested educator to use, and we hope to collaborate with them on
this. Third, we can advocate Linux ports of existing courseware. In many cases,
tools exist which can greatly facilitate the porting of existing software;
we describe this in a commercial port advocacy mini-HOWTO that should help
anyone interested in making such an effort. It's available from the LDP or
from SEUL.
Yet another way to address this lack is to provide authoring tools that teachers
can use to create their own courseware. Examples of this sort of software
are Apple's HyperCard, HyperStudio, and [shudder] Microsoft's Visual Basic.
These all provide occasional users with the ability to create courseware with
personalized content.
One feature of all of those programs is the visual nature of the program development.
This kind of interface is much less imposing than the traditional IDE we're
used to. Because its primary users are comfortable with the more traditional
interface, Linux is a bit short on the visual sort of tools. We know of two
that are arguably ready right now, and one for which we have great hope.
MetaCard is a commercial program that was designed for corporations to use
in creating computer-based training. It runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS,
and can read HyperCard stacks and convert them into its own format. MetaCard
makes a limited version of the program available for free download, and has
very favorable educational licensing terms for K-12 (non-collegiate) educational
institutions. In addition, the MetaCard interface is written in MetaCard,
so it could be modified to be even more appealing to the educational community.
Visual TCL is a similar program for creating Tcl/Tk programs. It's available
for free download and could also be modified to fit the educational community's
needs. It of course requires that Tcl/Tk be installed on the system.
Squeak is an effort to create a new SmallTalk programming environment. The
Squeak development team is working on their user interface, Morphic, with
the intent of making it usable for everyone from students in the lower grades
to professional software developers.
Future directions
and resources
So far we've talked about what things are currently available that can help
Linux make inroads in the educational community. What should we be working
on in the future to make Linux the OS of choice for education, and what can
we do now to promote its use?
One thing that we'd like to see is window managers and program interfaces
that can be modified to be appropriate for people from kindergarteners to
college students. Ideally, these would be very simple and easy to use (if
limited) for the younger students, but could be gradually made more complex
and powerful as the students' abilities increased. We'd like to see first
and second graders working with simple versions of programs like AbiWord or
the GIMP, and slowly moving into using the full versions.
There are a number of Web sites and mailing lists that discuss one or another
aspect of using Linux in education. We can't list them all here (and would
surely miss some if we tried); take a look at the worldwide links page at
SEUL/edu for connections to a number of them. Some of these groups work on
advocating Linux to schools or on developing software and documentation for
scholastic use, while others focus on implementing Linux or various applications
in specific schools or areas. Whatever your interest, there's probably a discussion
group that addresses it.
A well-recognized problem for using Linux in education is the paucity of documentation
on installing, configuring, and using Linux and most applications. We're working
on defining a template for such documentation that will make it easier to
create such documents and provide them in a variety of formats, along the
lines of the Linux Documentation Project. You can take a look at a draft proposal.
Once we get everything worked out, we hope to see many people contributing
quality documentation that will help teachers and students use Linux.
One major need for Linux to be a viable option in most schools is quality
local support. In the Linux community we're used to on-line support via mailing
lists, newsgroups, and Web forums. While some schools may feel comfortable
with only this, many will want to see a warm body they can feel is concerned
with their local interests. The lucky schools will have a Linux fan and user
on their staff already, but for the others that can be convinced to try Linux,
outside support will be needed. There are commercial organizations that support
Linux for a fee, but their prices will most likely be beyond what perpetually
cash-starved schools can afford. What does that leave? LUGs (Linux User Groups).
One of our big dreams is that LUGs around the world will create educational
outreach programs where they adopt local schools or school districts and provide
the maintenance and support the schools will need. This would be beneficial
to the LUGs too, of course, since they'd be creating enthusiastic new users
by making Linux work smoothly for the schools. A local LUG/school relationship
could make for both
stronger LUGs and stronger schools, besides making Linux advocacy easier.
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