Promoting Open Source in Schools

[phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org]

> On 12/17/05, phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org <phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> There is also the issue that teachers are often totally occupied by
>> teaching. They don't have time to deal with *any* glitches or
>> idiosyncracies in the operating system. So for it to be accepted, it has
>> to be a completely turnkey, foolproof operation.
>
> That _feels_ contradictory...  Windows is anything but "foolproof"
> unless it is being managed in some pretty spectacularly draconian
> manner.  It's so easy for it to be totally destabilized as soon as you
> have the ability to (say) access the Internet by virtue of the
> all-too-common virus-deployment mechanisms like IE/OE...

Yeah, I agree. I heard of one educational environment which operated Linux
and made Windows available in a separate partition. The system was
scheduled to wipe that partition clean at midnight and re-install Windows.
So students were advised not to try to store anything in that partition. I
guess that's what you describe as 'draconian management'...

And that particular strategy must have taken a few years off the life of
the hard drive.

Linux has nice tools to make it a very simple environment to use. But it's
*really* important to test these user interfaces. One of the profs at
Ryerson recruited me for a useability test, and one minute into the test I
 had unintentionally navigated the thing into a black hole.

P.

-- 
Peter Hiscocks
Professor Emeritus,
Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Ryerson University
416-465-3007
www.ee.ryerson.ca/~phiscock

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