teaching in NYC DOE --urge for edubuntu

[Charles Profitt]

On 06/01/11 20:40, Adam Schwartz wrote:
> howdy ubunteurs
>
> I'm an educator (hope I got the right list!)
> I'm a teacher in the NYC dept of education, where I have ended up as 
> the go to tech guy as well.

That is a very normal pattern. I am in a larger school district and am a
dedicated system administrator that manages all of the servers, Active
Directory, etc. When I first started working in the district 12 years
ago there were teacher-technicians in every building.

> I use ubuntu 10.4 at home on a dell desktop, and just got a 10.4 acer
> aspire one netbook--just installed edubuntu suite on that. anyway, I
> am writing because., I want to start using it at school.

I have some suggestions:

      * What programs is the school currently using that depend on
        Windows? (Microsoft Office, etc)
      * How does your school currently authenticate students? Are they
        using a directory service (NDS, AD, OD, etc)
      * How do you currently manage labs?

Depending on the answers you give to these questions you will have a
better idea of how to approach the idea of using Ubuntu/Edubuntu. I
would also be willing to work through these and other questions with
you.

> My school is lucky enough to have been chosen at an IZONE
> <http://schools.nyc.gov/community/innovation/izone/default.htm> school
> for next year, and we are actually hiring a tech guy!

Can you have any input to the hiring of the tech guy? If possible try to
make sure that you are not hiring a 'fanboy' of a particular solution
(even a Linux fanboy). Also, try to include experience with
Ubuntu/Edubuntu as one of the desired skills.

> but I hate the idea of having 100's of WinX or even Macs running in
> our classrooms--just more targets for malware and game software. 
> that's why I want to go for edubuntu

The problems with malware and games can be virtually eliminated on both
OSes, but the freedom of Open Source which provides a depth of choice
can not.

> Any NYCDOE teachers out there? anyone have any advice for adopting
> edubuntu for a serverless school environment--(using google docs and
> online storage systems)

Let me know how else I can help.

Charles Profitt

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