Re: [Sheflug] Schools, patents and the future of Linux

[(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 18-Oct-04 Brett Royles wrote:
> I work in a school , but the teaching side of the it dept does not
> want linux in the classroom.... they say its not supported , no
> software , hardware issues.
> Yes some of that is true... but I have been trying to push linux&O/S
> software for a couple of years.. and i feel at the moment the best
> place is on the servers....
> 
> But
> 
> I would like to see schools offering the chance to use a non m/s
> solution

I fear (but would welcome evidence to the contrary) that where
teaching is concerned the issue is "the teachers won't know how
to use it and we [IT dept] don't have the resources to train
them". (That is presuming a symathetic IT dept in the first
place, which may not be true of course).

The supporting argument from the teaching side is that "the students
will need to know how to use MS software in the workplace so that's
what we have to teach". (That is presuming a teaching side that has
at least heard of alternatives to MS software, which may not be true
of course).

It boils down to the issue that what "ICT" really means is learning
how to use certain devices by pressing buttons on the device, i.e.
learning what actions result from pressing such-and-such buttons.

And "device" means "A PC running Windows".

Up to a point, this can be sufficiently educational in itself.
Although a spreadsheet is far from an ideal numerical programming
environment, it is a useful and interactionally direct medium for
getting students used to what is involved in structured calculations
and it adds spice to their project work (e.g. in Psychology or
Physics where they can analyse their experimental or observational
data). And, when it comes to what spreadsheet to use, you find
that there is not a lot of difference between the MS Excel interface
and say the Open Office interface (indeed, the design of OS office
type software is quite deliberately converging onto the MS norms,
in order to win acceptability, despite all the vices of the MS
implementations). And, at the end pf the day, there is always the
"workplace" argument.

Similar considerations apply to using a word processor (e.g. Word)
for writing your essays, and a database program (e.g. Access) for
getting into the basics of settign up and accessing a database.

You can argue from the opposite side that, having got a sufficient
grounding in these IT activities from *any* decent software suite
(e.g. Open Source) you can adapt your skills to different, but
functionally similar, software once you get to the workplace (or
wherever). Indeed "Transferrable Skills" is one of the categories
of learning which are supposed to be promoted in an educational
programme.

But I doubt many employers would be more than very slightly
sympathetic to a new employee who took 2 weeks to adapt to the
quirks of MS Word/Excel/Access having learned their way around
on something else, and kept getting it wrong in their early days.

I don't know definitely where my electricity supply comes from,
but I suspect that little or none of it is from wind-farms or
the like. No matter how strongly I felt about wanting to use only
such electricity, I am in no position to arrange it. I'm stuck with
the existing infrastructure.

And perhaps that is the underlying issue. At present, the general
"consumer" (including business) IT infrastructure is MS-based.
This may (and I hope will) slowly evolve as OS provision slowly
encroaches on it, just as wind energy and other "renewable"
resources may slowly encroach on the power supply industry.

So, to those like Bob Holland, Brett Royles, and also people
in Manchester, who are already working in the educational sector
and can directly make efforts to demonstrate the functionality
of OS software to their colleagues in schools, I would send
every encouragement to keep up the good work. They face the
issue of educating their teaching colleagues, and at the same
time of understanding the issues these collagues face themselves.
Not an easy task.

There's more of an open arena in universities. When a student
goes to Uni to study "IT" it should be an integral part of their
course to expose them to Unix-like systems, if only in a course
on "Operating Systems". The intelligent and perceptive should
see the point! As time passes, these graduates can transport
their perceptions and insights into the outer world.

Of course, one must not discount that MS can also converge on OS.
The original design concept of Windows NT, back in around 1990,
was not that far off the ideas underlying Unux. Indeed, it was
something I felt attracted by in those days, before Linux hit
the world, simply to escape from the constrictions and problems
of MS-DOS. But a working NT did not exist in those days: it was
more a concept than an implementation. Nowadays NT (despite
much ugliness) is a practical proposition, and while Win-98,
XP etc. still sat on clunky old DOS recent versions of Windows
are much more NT-like (and if your filesystem is NTFS you can
get a lot more out of your Windows PC than you used to be able to).

We live in interesting times!

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


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Date: 18-Oct-04                                       Time: 14:09:16
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