Promoting Open Source in Schools

[Marc Lijour]

On Friday 16 December 2005 23:09, Igor Denisov wrote:
> > BTW, there is a Toronto School Board trustee that has
> > some interest in the Squeak/Etoys work. I can dig up
> > his/her name if anyone is interested.
>
> Interesting, it seems there is some progress...
> (actually, I _would_ like to know the trustee's name)
>
> About a year ago, I've talked to the head of IT at the TDSB regarding
> Linux.
>
> The board's view is approximately this: the OS is just a place to run
> programs.
>
> Many of these programs, like Geometer's Sketchpad, VB 6.0, etc. are
> tightly integrated into the curriculum.
> Some textbooks assume Sketchpad will be used and have tutorials for it.

Is it really the curriculum or an option taken by book authors?

> As far as I know, there are no Linux-native versions of ~90-95% of the
> software the board wants to be available in classrooms.

I observed this. Teachers know about programs (specially in primary), they 
want them and these usually have to run on Win$ (exclusively).


> This is why Linux is mostly left to the occasional knolwdgeable comp
> sci. teacher to tinker with in the labs.
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml