Fw: Ubuntu for School

Sat Oct 16 21:19:57 BST 2010

Wow, sounds like you have your work cut out for you, but don't give up.  As
with all the comments, I too would suggest not converting a whole school and
start with a computer lab. This is our situation and what we have learned.

I am the IT person/Computer Teacher for a small private school of 250 K-12
students and have about 30 faculty.  In July we decided to make the switch.
We use Windows 2003 Server for our file and printing server. Our SonicWall
handed out our DHCP. We use Google Apps for our Email.  We were running
Windows 2000 on the desktops but as of July Windows would no longer
supporting it, so Ubuntu sounded like an excellent alternative.  My husband
was familiar with it and was trying it out on his netbook for a couple of
months prior.  (he was also a programmer and was familiar with trouble
shooting issues).  We were also blessed to have received a donation of over
60 laptops shortly after we made the decision.  Before we made the switch, i
tried to test as much software  I could in Ubuntu/Wine.  (curriculum
software for Science, Student/Administration Management, Math ExamView, and
Typing).  Installing was a breeze, and training the teachers and office
staff went very well.  Ubuntu ran extremely fast.  Once school got started
then the true test came and for the most part went very well but we did run
into some issues:

Our student/administration software, RenWeb, worked great for the teachers
as it is web based, however for administration (which is a desktop version),
some of the features i couldn't get to work (email, chat support, printing,
Parent Alert), but we were able to work around most of the issues by using
the teachers version (web based) for emailing and printing.

We had purchased new HS Science Curriculum, by Pearson Prentice Hall also
over the summer and we are still trying to make all the features work.  It
is a pretty extensive software which includes a Lesson Planner, two types of
Presentations, ExamView, and some other features.  It has taken pretty much
the whole quarter working on it at night to get it to work.

We ran into an issue with the Dell D800 laptops not able to run a LCD
projector because of the video driver uses Nvidia.

In the Elementary computer lab, i have some computers that won't always go
into screen saver and does a hibernation, which i can't seem to wake up
without restarting the computer. It seems to only be affecting 6 out of the
22.

The Yearbook class uses Jostens Yearbook Avenue web site to create the
yearbook.  It is all web based so I didn't think we would have any issues,
however, once the students were creating pages, they were unable to change
the fonts, and font colors.  We tried Google Chrome, same thing, we tried
installing Firefox and Chrome in Wine, same problem.  We finally found the
fix, using Opera in Wine and the problem was solved.

In the Elementary computer lab, the students go to mostly web based
programs.  I have installed all the plugins for Adobe Flash, however there
are some sites that some features won't work.  IKnowThat.com has learning
games for all grades and subjects and most of them work, but some won't.
What is strange, is that a game will sometimes work on some computers in the
lab and not on others, so it is being flaky.  I ran into the same problem
with Wycliffe Kids Web site yesterday.  Some computers all the features
would work, some would not. I always try to test the site before the kids go
into the lab, but in this case I didn't catch it in time.

Having the teachers switch from MS Word/Excel/PPT 2000 to Open Office went
smooth.  I actually like Open Office better.  Although there is a learning
curve especially in the area of Word Drawing features and PowerPoint.

We kept our Windows Server, but would like to change to Linux to store files
and be the print server.  In our HS computer lab, it seems the students
aren't always able to connect to the server to get their files.

Having said all of this, I don't mean to discourage you, however, in a
school situation, a determining factor is whether all windows software
needed for administration and classes will completely run in Ubuntu.  I love
Ubuntu, and wouldn't go back to Windows, however, i could see how it may be
frustrating for other schools in different situations.  I also noticed that
most schools in the US were using dual boot which wasn't an option for us,
however i do have two computers in the school (mine) that i can dual boot to
use when we run into situations where a feature will only work in Windows.

If your schools IT person was willing to have you demo Ubuntu and be willing
to try Ubuntu at home or on a pc at school, that may help.  We were
fortunate enough that we are a small school and were able to pull this off
and work as well as it has.  I am the only IT person at the school, except
from the help from my husband, but a larger school would have a larger
support staff.

Best of Luck, Diane

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 5:17 PM, <epic93dude at gmail.com> wrote:

> Someone at ubuntu-marketing told me to send this to you all. I'm a 15 year
> old sophomore in a school in the US , going to try to get my school to adopt
> ubuntu. Perhaps you might have an idea what a teacher/principal's concerns
> might be about ubuntu or FOSS in general.
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
> ------------------------------
> *From: * Epic93dude at gmail.com
> *Date: *Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:53:16 +0000
> *To: *<ubuntu-marketing at lists.ubuntu.com>
> *Subject: *Ubuntu for School
>
> Hi Ubuntu-Marketing. I ama a student at a small high school in Southwest
> Missouri. Recently we had an assignment in a class where we had to give a
> presentation on a group/organization/movement. I chose to give my
> presentation on Ubuntu. I explained what an operating system was, then what
> open source software was. I explained how the open source community worked
> and why Open Source Software tends to be more secure, faster, and easier to
> use than Proprietary Software, and how these benefits were present in
> Ubuntu, in a way that the average computer user could understand. I also
> demonstrated some programs that come with Ubuntu and how they could do many
> of the tasks just as well or sometimes better than their Proprietary
> counterparts.
>
> The response was great. Several students were interested in learning more
> about Ubuntu and OSS after I gave the presentation. The school's principal,
> who also happened to be there during the presentation, was also interested
> in Ubuntu as well as the applications that I showed. I think that there is
> an opportunity of some kind here to get OSS in use at my school, because the
> students, teacher (of the class I gave the presentation in), and principal
> all seemed to be open towards the concept of free software.
>
> What I want to do is get my school to at least try Ubuntu out in one of the
> computer labs or something like that. I think if I could demonstrate that it
> is a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows + Office, which is what we
> currently use on all our computers, would save decent amounts of money, and
> would give access to some pretty amazing educational programs (The periodic
> table of elements program immediately comes to mind), they would be willing
> to try it.
>
> That being said, I need to be able to convince the IT staff that it would
> be easy to learn, easier to manage than Windows Server Edition (Which is
> what we use), and compatible with the current infrastructure that we have.
> If I can do that, plus convince the administration that we would save costs
> etc., I think they would consider trying it out, or even switching over
> entirely.
>
> Can you guys help me with this (especially the convincing the IT staff
> part) ?
> --
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> ubuntu-education at lists.ubuntu.com
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>
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