Linux in the TDSB

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 11:54:32PM -0400, Anton Markov wrote:
> Here are some caveates to watch for: The Graphics Design and Photography
> classes teach Photoshop and Pagemaker, because they are the tools
> professionals use. Ideally, these tools should be used on a Mac (our
> school does video editing on Macs), but $$$ constraints means that PCs
> are used for this. It's and important area to think about.
> 
> Computer Science courses use that stupid language/program called
> "Turing" which has no equivalence anywhere (probably because it's so
> stupid). Never the less, it teaches the basics with a "visual" response
> (i.e. drawing circles, etc.). Perhaps a Perl library providing a
> simplified GDI and a GTK or QT output window would do well.

Hmm, when I was in highschool (in peel)we used watbasic and watpascal on
those dreadful Unisys Icons.

> Also, they teach some VB to introduce event-driven GUI programming,
> which may be a little hard to beat (the people who take those classes
> are the last people you expect to touch a computer; they know NOTHING).
> Disecting the Linux Kernel is way above the curriculum.

Hmm, python + gtk maybe?

> Another program is called Markbook as far as I know. It's designed to
> keep track of marks, and A LOT of teachers are attached to it. Perhaps
> Wine/Crossover Office would be of help here.

Hmm, that one could be tough.  Seems no one writes a decent marks
program.

> Also a good idea to have a program that can read Microsoft Publisher
> files. Some people at our school use that for making Zines and some
> other assignments, and I recall that the library has Microsoft Publisher
> installed.
> 
> A final very important point is ease of deployment. The system must be
> capable of installing itself, fully configured (minus DNS/computer name)
> unattended. From what I hear, only Slackware can do it, but I think an
> RPM or DEB based system can be installed using some custom scripts.
> Perhaps a system where the school can configure one computer, and then
> take a "snapshot" of its configuration to copy to other computers.

Should not be that hard.  Unlike XP linux doesn't kick and scream when
put in a different type of machine.  Updating to a better kernel for the
cpu type could be automated, as can most hardware detection.

> I've done Debian installes completely from the command line by using
> "dbootstrap" I believe (probably the wrong name).

Yeah that is the name, although it only works if you already have linux
booted on the machine.

There are plans for debian to allow fully automated installs once the
new version is released since it's much more modular and scriptable now.

> Good luck with that, and please inform us of how it goes. Perhaps you
> should create a seperate mailing list for this discussion; after all,
> the TDSB is important to the "education" aspect of the long-term Linux
> domination strategy :).
> 
> I will probably add some more ideas later. It's a very interesting
> project, and perhaps I'll be able to help somehow.

I wonder if the debian-edu project would have any application here.  Or
skolelinux (another debian based project I believe).

http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianEdu
http://www.skolelinux.org

Lennart Sorensen
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