Ostrich Lessons In Oregon? 255
dalslad writes "Oregon Schools Prove Linux Saves Money, says the headline but this article says "One has to wonder if Northwest school districts took ostrich lessons; they must represent the biggest secret in the Linux community. If their successes occurred in New York, Microsoft would be fighting for 5% of the PC desktop share". Maybe so? I've seen a lot of sites with Linux success stories, but the K12 Linux projects show progress I never knew existed." Yeah, I don't think that the schools are going to prove to be the sole factor in Linux on the desktop, but it's a good step. More importantly, I think the success of the system depends on projects like the K12 Linux project and its like, especially for broader individual usage.
Linux in Public Schools. (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem becomes one of kids thinking that Linux is a "training" computer environment, and that when they "grow up" they get to use a real environment.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why shouldn't they be hooked early? Do you think that businesses are just going to magically stop using MS Office in the near future?
So we are going to have these kids learn Linux and OpenOffice or maybe StarOffice or maybe KOffice and they are going to go about their daily duties with those applications...
They get to an interview... "Do you have experience with MS Excel, MS Word, and MS Access?" "No sir, but I have used Kblah, OOBlah, and StarBlah."
I would LOVE to see interviewers more tech. savvy and understand what those applications are. I doubt that day will come anytime soon. They are just too entrenched.
I think using Linux in schools is a great idea. I also think that MS offering hardware/software to schools is also great. Whereever they can save the money that I end up paying in the end is good for me.
Just my
Education = diversity of experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's well-agreed that most MS users are that way because of simple familiarity. Your run-of-the-mill user wouldn't port to Linux or another platform (even apple, as easy as it is to use) because they all seem foreign and counter-intuitive (this because intuition is based on repeated experience).
Because of this, it seems critical to catch kids early, before they become pigeon-holed into one particular OS (or any software package). Rather than using Linux exclusively, perhaps a revolving curriculum would be most helpful --Linux, MS, Apple, etc. Provide the variety of experiences that helps kids to learn the similarities among systems that makes for general intuition rather than intuition that is product-specific.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been doing that as long as they've owned the market. It's not working any more, i.e., it's getting hard for Microsoft even to give Windows away. For educators, Windows just isn't nearly as good a value proposition[1] as Linux.
[1] Yes, I know that's PHBspeak. It's also intensely ironic.
Re:Linux isn't feasible for education (Score:2, Insightful)
It is better for them to learn some math,
or more important their language.
I am setting this up for a school next week (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the workforce knows an alternative to MS Office, prefers an alternative to MS Office and can get the same job done just as well using an alternative to MS Office, businesses are going to magically use an alternative to MS Office.
Seen WordStar lately?
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Many firms use Windows and Office because a large number of persons, not to mention the owners of the firms, are familiar with the software. This familiarity provides a significant comfort level. This is a great change from 20 years ago where most were not familiar with any microcomputer technology, and so it was truly a wide open game.
Which leads to how we teach our students? Do we teach them commands and processes by rote, explaining that such and such mouse movements are magic incantations that cause the Lord MS to bless us with text, figures, and presentation, or do we teach them critically that the computer is a tool, just like a microwave oven, and not every one will work the exact same way but there are fundamental similarities.
I hear the people back in the peanut gallery saying that students are too stupid to learn critical thinking and that may be true. But let me ask you this? Who is the more likely to have a lifetime of employment. A person who believes that the only OS is MS Windows or MacOS, or *nix, or the person who understands that all of these do similar things and is comfortable enough to go into an read a book the week before an interview and then go in a proudly claim they know the system and are willing to work on whatever tool the employer has.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideally I think schools should have a variety of platforms for students to learn on, including Windows, Linux and OS X. Flexibility means being able to work on a variety of platforms, not just being able to work on a non-MS platform, after all.
Re:Has anyone tried reading the article? (Score:2, Insightful)
More important than that (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always said that Linux on the desktop is not harder, it's only different. It's just different, so they complain. Linux is different so it's too hard. Mac is different so it's too dumbed down. It's just lame excuses from people unwilling to change. If kids grow up learning Linux they'll stick with it their entire lives. Just as youngsters in the 80's loved UNIX and when they grew up and got IT jobs they brought it into business. Truth is, people are sheep. They'll follow and do pretty much whatever they're told. The best progress into the world of home and business can be made in schools. If children grow up riding on a penguin they'll stick with it.
Re:Personally involved in Oregon (portland) linux. (Score:3, Insightful)
You installed software (on "network cores", no less) behind the systems administrators' backs, and you were expecting something different to happen?
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
>knows MS Office 2k, and gets hysterical when
>you give them Office 97 or Office XP. Or
>someone who has a good grounding in something a
>little different. "Have you ever used
>Word?" "No, but I've used Writer, Abiword,
>Islandwrite, and Emacs."
Two comments - one you'll sort of like, and one you won't.
Bitter pill first: Familiarity counts. Any application beyond Calculator or Solitaire requires a learning curve - regardless of platform. Even if you know Writer, Abiword, Islandwrite, Emacs, StarOffice, and MS Word, using mail-merge in WordPerfect will still be harder for you (the first few times) than for someone who's only used WordPerfect.
Now here's a helpful suggestion, though rarely-seen on Slashdot: It's most impressive to have as broad a background as possible.
Which of the following candidates would you choose for web admin:
1) The stodgy Microsoft guy who insists on using IIS because that's all he knows; or
2) The wild-haired Linux guy who launches into a tirade when you mention not using Apache; or
3) The guy who has solid experience with both, knows their relative strengths and weaknesses, can provide an expert opinion on which is better suited to your needs, and is comfortable developing for the platform that you choose?
David Stein, Esq.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong answer, Say "Yes".
If it's a technical job requiring you to have deep knowledge of VBA macros, of course you actually have to study it. Otherwise, using the K* and OO gives you almost exactly the same experience. If lying bothers you, (and this is trivial on the scale of job interview lying), spend an afernoon playing with someone's Windows PC and create and print a few documents, add up your shopping list, sort it alphabetically. You now have all the experience you need to do 99% of real world MSOffice work.
You don't have to "study" MS Office for six years to learn how to write a memo, or add up a column of figures. I worked it out, the closest I came to a computer at school was a pocket calculator.
On your resume, you write "experienced with MS Office and Linux office software". Or reverse the order if you think they'd prefer to hear that. You now have one more ability that may help you get the job.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I laugh at the fact that they actually have courses to teach people how to use word processors and the such, and then I wake up from geek world and take a good look at my parents. I've never had anyone "teach" me how to use word, excel, or anything else, but when I had to use it, I learned it on the go, and wasn't inneficient at it either. To any computer literate person, the skill to figure out a tremendouly easy gui is just intuitive. "hmm...I want a table of contents...hey, look...insert TOC...hmm...it filters through heading types...I guess all I need to do is set up my headings as I type, then click the right radio buttons for the ones that I want to show up in the toc"
If you hire an employee that has experience in a system that makes you be able to think (ie, linux, where you need to figure out how to get things to work--and thus learn how to figure things out), you'll not only get an employee who will be able to figure out word xp in no time flat, you'll get an employee who won't be complaining that he can't do his job because he doesn't know how to use the new, upgraded "word l337" or whatever mycrosoft thinks their new cool name should be.
Re:Maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)
This, of course, assumes that Linux is a good thing. And that these kids will get a chance to know it. Every Windows PC at a school needs to be locked down to prevent tampering and just general mis-use by curious do-it-yourself kids. What makes Linux any different than OSX or Windows if the kids are only allowed to launch certain applications, and never allowed to use the actual underlying OS tools? Basically, we're getting kids acclimated to various program launchers, which is by far the easiest part of an OS to learn. The OSX dock is anything but intuitive, but even that only takes like 2 minutes of messing around with it to figure it out.
And as far as Linux being a good thing, I'm tired of that being assumed. Linux is an OS with pros and cons, just like every other OS, and instead of immediately assuming that world + dog should be using it we should look specifically at the students and discuss what the positive and negative effects of a Linux shift are.
I will agree, though, that there is no excuse for running Windows for firewall and routing, and Linux would work well for their web and application servers. The low price tag is moot (as these schools already have licenses to MS products, you don't get your money back for switching), but the stability and speed is a huge advantage.
Re:Flexibility vs Practicality (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go as far as to say that if I was employing somebody to work in my 10 person company and they said they only had experience of a very small number of specific programs the interview would be over there and then.
This true in all industries, for example take a carpenters. If you have a hundred staff you can have one carpenter who specialised in door frames. If you have 5 carpenters you need them to be able to do more than the one specific task (unless of course your company only makes door frames!)
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So fucking what? Lie through your teeth, and tell them "oh, yeah, sure." You'll never be put into a situation where they're testing your prowess with the Word table wizard, and timing you. I never actually use Word or Excel, but I put them on my resume anyway because it's buzzword-compliant and because I'm confident that I can figure out how to do anything quickly enough that no one will notice I'm winging it. It's not like padding your resume with C++ or Fortran - I've seen this done.
If you're technically competent, you should be able to pick up any application like Word in seconds. The problem with the tech industry is that people learn an interface rather than concepts, sort of like Pavlovian training rather than actual learning. I've worked as a full-time programmer and as a senior tech-support goon, and I've seen many people who were fine as long as they didn't stray from what they knew. There's nothing more pathetic than a Windows support technician sitting down in front of a Macintosh (OS 9!) and looking helpless. I'd far rather have someone less knowledgeable but willing and able to learn anything.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They didnt hide it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It wasnt a secret by a long shot.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's no supprise! (Score:2, Insightful)
You have a limited shoe string budget to keep the school running.. To the left we have MS asking for a cool half mill a year to license ALL your PC's regardless of OS they really run. On the right we have OSS software.. You make the call.
Re:Schools aren't the defining factor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, yeah, I remember those days. All the kids would say "c'mon Dad, buy a Mac" and Dad would say "What the hell's a Mac? I'm buying an IBM like we use a work".
You raise a crucial point. I think it's important to remember that kids don't have money. And, although Linux, OO, etc. are all free, the hardware they run on isn't. So long as you have parents buying the hardware, it's gonna come with all the usual MS crap pre-installed.
Re:MainBrain School (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure you think your software is worth $24,000.00 but the schools don't.. Sell it for $1000.00 max and you will get customers...
It's nice, I'll give you that... but from what I can see from the website... I know it's too damn expensive... no private school will ever be able to afford it... espically parochial schools.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I doubt insubordination is a quality any employer is looking for...
So what? Being patronising is not a quality I'm looking for in an employer. It goes both ways, there are some people you just don't want to work for...
If I asked someone to demonstrate a skill they listed on their resume and they acted as though this task was beneath them, I'd scratch them off my list immediately.
Depends what sort of job and what sort of skill, if I'm interviewing someone for a job that is primarily coding I'd never ask them to demonstrate their MS Office proficiency (listed on the resume or not). I'd be far more interested in figuring out if they knew how to code, and I wouldn't do this by asking they to write some C++, Java, Perl or whatever language we're looking for, I'd ask them to talk me through how they'd solve the problem. Perhaps I might ask if they had a free hand which lnaguage they'd attack the problem in...
Appropriate questions are the key, an employer asking in-appropriate questions, or demanding that you prove you know how to do something trivial or unrelated to the core of the skills you need for the job, suggests that you should run, not walk, towards the nearest exit.
Al.It's a good start... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Resistance in Leadership and Peers (Score:3, Insightful)
I had once helped a couple friends install Linux systems at a small extension high school, one of them was a teacher railroaded into the part-time IT Coordinator position. Even though we had successfully deployed a stable, secure, low-maintenance, low-cost Linux environment, his peers were committed to causing his eventual resignation.
Windows was the only "real" answer for his peers, even while staring into the eye of a year of success with Linux. A year of success. Sometimes you simply cannot win against the engrained "religious" beliefs of some computer users, especially those people who influence financial and policy decisions in your work place.
Re:Impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
No no no. You're missing the important keyword concurrent. Even for a high school with about 2,000 students, this should be enough with current computing needs. You'll hardly have more than that amount of students using the system at the same time.
Re:and if you act now.... (Score:2, Insightful)
School and learning is not supposed to be about very specific things. The goal is for you to be able to think for yourself and learn and use problem solving skills. Learning one very specific software package is NOT going to be an advantage to you later in life. Have you ever worked in an office that did not have at least 5 applications that were not "mainstream" or some oddball accounting package or invoicing system? How are people able to pick up on those? Trying different things and exploring are how people learn to learn.
When I fininshed HS in 1988 we still had typewriters and Apple IIe's. I doubt I am the only one from that time frame that has been successful in IT now.
I use more and more GNU instead of Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
In this context, may be it is the introduction of tools to youngsters is more important than the underlying OS. For instance, compare xemacs with wordpad or textpad or the latest $29 shareware text editor with obnoxious alerts about registering. May be show how it is better to write a "structured document" versus highlight and the standard way of selecting a font size and strength of some text in a document. May be show how tabbed browsing in mozilla or opera is good... Most of the die hard fans of systems such as emacs/mozilla/perl/latex are fans because these tools do things "better" in some way... If kids are shown that "there is more than one way to do it", they may really be ready to experiment with new software.
S
Re:More important than that (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all a disclaimer: I am not a Mac fanatic, indeed I haven't used one for about 15 years. Also I don't use Linux at either work (tho I would love a Kylix contract!) or play (hmm maybe NWN now?). But I think to claim Macs are too expensive (despite the fact that I can't afford one) is unfair.
Why? Well unless your mother is desperate to play the latest games or needs fast compilation/rendering/whatever, a Mac will last a bit longer. Browsing, word processing, e-mail etc. should run fine. The PC I had running in 1995 was as fast as anything since; I've probably bought 3 complete systems since. Now, as a nerd, that is fine, but it would have been cheaper in the long run to invest in a Mac if all I had wanted to do was surf etc.
In summary, my point is not against you, but our mothers who have been convinced they need to upgrade their PCs. They need a stable OS (and hardware) instead.
Re:Schools aren't the defining factor? (Score:2, Insightful)
This was brought up earlier in the comments. And it is about the only real negative point made and maybe the easiest to refute. You point out a comparison to Macs but say that parents are going to buy the systems and get what they have at work. Well, that's fine, because their *86 compatible computer is going to also run Linux. The kid can just pop in a CD for linux without even installing anything.
I agree in the point that this is why Mac vs. PC in schools went nowhere. However, the two are not very comparable because of that difference: that linux will run on dad's Windows box and will run even without a regular OS installation set up.