School districts serve up lessons in Linux

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What the Linux Eee PC will do for the district is allow kids to access the Web, write essays and stories, collect and graph data, and prepare and deliver presentations.

"My own kids, ages 6 and 8, really like Tux Paint. They say it's as good as or better than the commercial Kid Pix program."

But Schinker doesn't think it matters what OS kids use, as long as it is tailored to their educational needs.

"Certainly the user interface on the Eee PC is intuitive...but there are plenty of Windows front-ends that will do the same thing and are just as easy to use.

"I think the older kids will have concerns that aren't focused on the OS per se; they'll be more easily frustrated by the screen resolution and keyboard size than the younger kids, but I don't think the OS is a concern for them," he said.

With the education sector typically under funded, the low entry cost to open source has its appeal, Schinker said.

"On the server side, almost everything we use is open source. We run Linux servers with Apache, MySQL, PHP, WordPress, Moodle, Samba, Xmail, Dovecot, SquirrelMail, etc. In almost every case, we've been able to implement better technology for less money because of the availability of open source and open standards technologies."

But the cost savings aren't always worth the migration efforts.

On the desktop the district tends to use more proprietary software, such as MS Office which costs around US$60 per copy. While OpenOffice would be more economical, Schinker said it is not worth the compatibility issues a migration would result in.

"I do think we focus too much in education on the tools. There's the argument that we should be using what the 'real world' uses to better prepare our students. I argue that we need to focus on teaching concepts rather than specific software applications. Those skills can then be applied to whatever software package they end up using," he said.

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