Ubuntu in Education resources from Canonical
Veli-Matti Lintu
veli-matti.lintu at opinsys.fi
Mon Sep 6 10:13:50 BST 2010
Hi,
It has been really interesting to read all the stories posted here, so I
thought to share my (and my colleagues) experiences. The message got a
bit long, so I posted it also in blog for easier reading here:
http://www.opinsys.fi/en/ubuntu-in-education-in-finland
---------------------------------------------------------
As I'm working for Opinsys, a solution provider in Finland, that builds
systems for schools using Ubuntu, I first thought that this was an easy
task - just write down a bunch of things and fire it away. But when I
read the other responses around the world, I realised how little I know
about Ubuntu usage in schools outside Finland. As that probably holds
true for others about Finland, here's some background information in
form of links:
* http://www.opinsys.fi/en/mista-on-hyvat-koulu-tehty
* http://www.osor.eu/news/fi-over-a-hundred-schools-using-open-source
* http://flosse.blogging.fi/2010/07/28/state-of-open-source-software-in-finnish-schools-some-good-news-something-crucial-still-missing
* http://bit.ly/amFiOO (map of schools using FOSS in Finland)
Every country has its own history and traditions, so many of the little
things we do to get things working here are probably not needed
elsewhere. Still many of the general computing trends apply also to
Finland. Here are some things that come in to my mind in random order:
* Finnish is a tiny language and there's a lot of local content
and legacy applications that are needed. Content in English
language doesn't really help here.
* There are a lot of video formats and flash content and at least
one big content provider still uses Macromedia Shockwave for
some of it.
* Many teachers expect content to match the national curriculum.
* The trend for new stuff is towards online content and web
applications
* Internet connection speeds in most areas are not a problem. ADSL
is available everywhere and more and more schools have fiber
connections. There are usually no backup connections, though, so
the systems must work for a few days or a week without internet
connection.
* Web applications like Moodle are deployed in a lot of places.
Some are hosting it themselves, some are buying it as a service.
* As a sparsely populated country we have long distances. As there
are a lot of little schools that don't have resources to offer a
lot of options, distance learning is used. This way also the
pupils in remote areas have the same options as in the bigger
city schools. Unfortunately there are not too many good tools
for this. E.g. Adobe ConnectPro is being used in some places,
but OpenMeetings is gaining interest.
* In addition to web applications, interactive whiteboards (e.g.
Smartboards) are being deployed in a lot of schools and many
schools have them installed in every classroom.
* Schools have a lot of old computers for which LTSP is a perfect
choice
* Laptops are getting more and more common, both personal and
shared ones: http://www.opinsys.fi/en/en-laptops-in-schools
* Even if wikis, blogs, Google Apps and other online tools are
getting more common, file based documents and printing are still
used a lot - easy file sharing and file transfer to/from home
are needed
* If computers are not reliable and consistent, they are not being
used at all
* Students' own mobile devices (= smart phones, etc) are being
used in schools. Their utilization as tools to e-learning
systems grows. There will be a need to get access to the same
information as from computers
* Teachers show high resolution videos to students. This should
always work.
* Teaching methods encourage co-operation between schools. Ad hoc
information sharing is needed as well as formal interface
between the systems. Security issues and privacy laws are most
often neglegted but they should be seriously considered at
design phase. Teachers want to "just make it work" and do not
pay attention to legal issues.
* Computer labs are gradually being dismantled. Instead computers
are placed in classrooms, hallways, etc. They are often used as
a quick tool to communicate or gather information.
What do these mean for people building their systems with Ubuntu? Here
are some critical issues that are not always working out-of-the-box:
* Interactive whiteboards need drivers and features that match
Windows/Mac versions
* Every laptop model needs to be tested in person before one can
say how well they work - no online resource tells enough
information about the models available in warehouses.
Backporting drivers is needed quite often to get the newest
models working with older Ubuntu versions.
* Web applications require central user database and
authentication services (LDAP/kerberos/CAS/etc.)
* Firefox+plugins need to support all newest web applications in
addition to the oldest sites there are
* Printing needs to work every time, everywhere
* Transferring/sharing files within and outside of the school's
environment needs easy to use solutions
* Cloud based applications are not suitable for everything (e.g.
differing privacy laws make it difficult to use some cloud based
services outside EU)
* A lot of applications are in universe repository and getting
fixes and updates for them means usually backporting and
patching
* Applications and the whole system needs to be updated and there
needs to be good support system in place for end-users in their
own language. Training is necessary to get people confident with
a new system and also when there are changes or new features.
Massive number of devices is not enough if no-one wants to use
them.
Getting everything working right takes some work and it is certainly
doable, but as a perfectionist I believe that everything can be made
always better and easier.
Veli-Matti
la, 2010-09-04 kello 19:58 +0200, David Van Assche kirjoitti:
> Hi Caroline,
> There is indeed a list of edu software, which I believe is
> mentioned on their site: (http://www.guadalinexedu.org/)
> This is a pretty massive user group with about 100 support people,
> 1000s of servers, and indeed, they just bought 500,000 netbooks this
> year to increase their target market to be for students that can take
> these home at the end of the day, but which synch with the servers to
> have the same software as the people use in the classrooms. Further to
> that, there was a speciality piece of software built that would very
> easily and quickly identify the netbook being used on the network via
> name/mac address, etc. Something similar to telepathy, though they
> chose to use a xmlrpc lib that works well with avahi, rather than
> going through the complexity of the telepathy framework.
> If it was me, I would have bitten the bullet and chosen to work with
> telepathy to do what they chose to do (control all netbooks in a
> psuedo-central manner) but I undertsand and respect this is no easy
> territory to get involved in. What I do hope is that this is open
> source enough that it is available to other Spanish communities and
> other world locations, as the process was really worked out to death
> and they did indeed come up with something that would work for any
> network that contained wireless computers and servers doing the heavy
> lifting. The second question about account creation management is
> indeed part of the system they developed whereby avahi would pick up
> the computer and add it group X with various options turned off or on
> depending on the system
> I believe the system itself is open source and canbe downloaded
> somewhere... matter of looking, but while working for them, they
> mentioned several times that they wanted the ability to switch off/on
> services to be accesible/used by the netbooks in question depending on
> username...
> The guadalinex-edu installs are totally non-ltsp based, whereas the
> extremadura computers area ll LTSP based.
> Though I do love the simplicity of LTSP, I have to admit that for a
> netbook setup, what the guadalinex folks did, makes the most sense...
>
> kind regards,
> David Van Assche
>
> On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Caroline Meeks
> <caroline at meekshome.com> wrote:
> Thats very cool David!
>
> Is there a list of the educational software that Andalucia has
> choosen?
>
> Do they have any software for student management/account
> creation?
>
> Is it all LTSP or are there netbooks or other configurations
> too?
>
> Thanks!
> Caroline
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 10:06 AM, David Van Assche
> <dvanassche at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> You should probably be aware that almost all of Spain
> is using Linux in the educational sector with Ubuntu
> being the leading provider in that area. Every public
> school in Andalucia (Southern Spain) for example,
> which include about 5000 servers and 1 million+
> computers run Guadalinex-edu which is a direct distro
> copy of Ubuntu + educational apps chosen for this
> market sector.
> Further East, the region of Extremadura, the entire
> region uses LTSP based Debian for all their public
> schools. In Cataluña, opensuse-edu is being used for
> the entire school region, Madrid uses Ubuntu for its
> public school system, Castilla and Leon uses Ubuntu
> too.
> The entire country of Portugal uses Caixa Magica LTSP
> which is based on Mandriva.
>
> So for the Iberic peninsula (Spain + Portugal) I would
> estimate a good 6-7 million computers running
> Educational Linux (mostly ubuntu)
>
> kind regards,
> David Van Assche
>
> P.S. I manage a couple of private schools in Southern
> Spain running LTSP Edubuntu.
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Belinda Lopez
> <belinda.lopez at canonical.com> wrote:
>
>
> Wow - I've already been blown away by the work
> being done in the Education sector. Ubuntu in
> schools, just makes sense. Yesterday I was
> directed to this great map showing schools in
> Finland with Ubuntu deployments:
> http://bit.ly/amFiOO and more on what is
> happening around open source there:
> http://www.opinsys.fi/en/mista-on-hyvat-koulu-tehty
> http://www.osor.eu/news/fi-over-a-hundred-schools-using-open-source
>
> And next week I'm visiting a local school in
> Houston, TX that has migrated to Ubuntu/Moodle
> and lots of other open source offerings. The
> project leaders is also the Moodle Core
> Contrib coordinator so I will ask how we can
> get more folks interested in helping with the
> technical side of Ubuntu/Edubuntu.
>
> I'll keep plugging away at coordinating all
> this great info and have also started updating
> some of the wiki pages. Great stuff folks!
> Let's keep the momentum going!
>
> Belinda
>
>
>
>
>
> On 09/01/2010 08:05 PM, David Groos wrote:
> > Nice! Cool things are happening...
> >
> > Belinda, I just got an e-mail from someone
> > who was looking to install LTSP on edubuntu
> > lucid and was asking what he needed beyond
> > the instructions on this page I had written.
> > I referred him to this page as well as the
> > basicsetup page. From my point of view, a
> > critical resource would be a complete set of
> > tutorials on setting up a LTSP lab in a
> > school with Lucid. It needs an
> > easily-updatable pathway to create a 10.10
> > BasicSetup page... With a good 'Hub' page
> > Edubuntu would be open to many more tech
> > inclined educators...
> >
> > Good luck
> > David
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Caroline
> > Meeks <caroline at meekshome.com> wrote:
> > Hi Belinda,
> >
> > You might want to talk to Maine Open
> > 1 to 1 (open1to1.org) they are a
> > Ubuntu netbook remix remix that is
> > being used by a couple thousand
> > students in Maine on netbooks.
> > There are also deployments in NH and
> > VT. They just started last year,
> > this year they are working on being
> > more involved in the Ubuntu
> > community. We are also working to
> > put Sugar, which is currently being
> > ported to Ubuntu (Ubuntu Sugar
> > Remix) into this remix also.
> >
> > I am working with the Boston area
> > Ubuntu community and folks from
> > Tufts and Harvard to do a stick
> > based deployment in Somerville where
> > we will give families in housing
> > projects refurbished computers and
> > each person in the family a bootable
> > USB sticks with Open 1 to 1 (or
> > maybe a different mix of software
> > for the parents). We will work with
> > community computer centers to give
> > classes and use these spaces to
> > provide internet access.
> >
> > Hope that helps!
> >
> > Thanks for doing this work.
> >
> > Caroline
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 4:19 PM,
> > Belinda Lopez
> > <belinda.lopez at canonical.com> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings all!
> > I'm working on a
> > short-term assignment to
> > review and update
> > Canonical's Ubuntu in
> > Education resources. This
> > includes making the
> > various websites easier to
> > use for end user like
> > students, parents,
> > educators as well as
> > solution providers and
> > others who want to do
> > business in the Education
> > market place using Ubuntu
> > and its
> > derivatives. The Education
> > sector is an important space
> > on many levels
> > to both Canonical and
> > Ubuntu. I can't make any
> > promises other than it
> > being a personal goal of
> > mine to help drive the
> > adoption of Ubuntu in
> > Education at every level so
> > for starters I'm opening up
> > the dialog with
> > the community on best to use
> > the limited resources
> > Canonical currently
> > has to develop some new
> > content for the following
> > audiences:
> >
> > End users: students,
> > parents, educators
> > School level adoptions:
> > decision makers
> > District/regional
> > deployments; policy makers
> > Solution Providers: those
> > delivering services and
> > hardware to the
> > Education sector.
> >
> > If you have any thoughts on
> > what each audience needs to
> > know please
> > voice your thoughts here or
> > email me privately. I've
> > also added this
> > item to the Edubuntu meeting
> > agenda to help further the
> > conversation.
> >
> > Also, does anyone have idea
> > of how many schools might be
> > using
> > Ubuntu/Edubuntu? or if there
> > is some place we can ask
> > people to let us
> > know about their schools?
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > Belinda/dinda
> >
> > Education
> > Canonical
> > belinda.lopez at canonical.com
> > dinda at ubuntu.com
> > IRC: dinda
> > Office: Galveston, Texas
> > --
> > Ubuntu - Linux for Human
> > Beings
> > http://www.ubuntu.com
> > http://www.edubuntu.org
> > http://www.canonical.com
> > ---------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> > Modify settings or
> > unsubscribe at:
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Caroline Meeks
> > Solution Grove
> > Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
> >
> > 617-500-3488 - Office
> > 505-213-3268 - Fax
> >
> > --
> > edubuntu-devel mailing list
> > edubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> > Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-devel
> >
> >
>
> Education
> Canonical
> belinda.lopez at canonical.com
> dinda at ubuntu.com
> IRC: dinda
> Office: Galveston, Texas
> --
> Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
> http://www.ubuntu.com
> http://www.edubuntu.org
> http://www.canonical.com
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>
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>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
>
>
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