[Technical] Linux at a Sydney school

[Donna Benjamin]

I wonder if this will become yet another difference between the public
and private systems, with students at independent schools having the
advantage over those in state systems still locked into windows.


On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 11:10 +1100, Con Zymaris wrote:
> Seems to me that only independent schools have the free hand necessary to
> move beyond the Microsoft lock-in. If you're a state school, the Education 
> department calls the shots, and those shots are almost always proprietary.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Con Zymaris
> 
> - CEO, Cybersource Pty. Ltd.
> - Director, Open Source Industry Australia, Limited.
> - Convenor, Open Source Victoria (A Government-funded industry cluster.)
> 
> - - - 
> 
> http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=407925021&eid=-255
> 
> Linux may be struggling to gain a foothold in the primary and secondary 
> education market but one Sydney school is setting itself higher grades - 
> all without Microsoft. 
> 
> At the Lorien Novalis School in the suburb of Glenhaven, 350 students from 
> kindergarten through to year 12 and 38 staff have been learning with the 
> penguin for the past four years. 
> 
> Stuart Rushton, the school's ICT manager, told Computerworld that senior 
> students first suggested the move to Linux.
> 
> ...
> 
> "School education should be about cooperation and sharing knowledge, which 
> is exactly what open source is about - that's why I can't understand why 
> schools don't embrace it on that level," he said, adding there is a "big 
> black hole" when it comes to Linux in education. 
> 
> "People are talking about it but are still way behind," he said. 
> "Everyone's interested in teaching a word processor, but not interested in 
> a political statement. The deep technology literacy issue is not even 
> discussed." 
> 
> Students using Linux at school is also having a flow-on effect outside 
> campus with at least 12 using the operating system at home. 
> 
> "The kids love their lab and have a lot of ownership. We take it seriously 
> how they feel about lab, and they enjoy that it works," Rushton said. "The 
> tinker value of Linux is brilliant and kids love to tinker so they 
> organize their desktop in a way most people couldn't understand it."
> 
> 
>  -- 
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
> Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
> Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477
> 
> 
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-- 
donna benjamin - executive director
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