| highvoltage | good morning | 07:28 |
|---|---|---|
| highvoltage | mhall119: every time I see you you're either going in an elevator or going away or sitting across the room in plenaries. I'd like to say hi sometime :) | 17:09 |
| LaserJock | highvoltage: nice blog post | 17:30 |
| highvoltage | thanks, LaserJock | 17:30 |
| highvoltage | I was thinking of you when I wrote it since you've often made the case that we should do more education-focus stuff, and that if we set some big goals we can attract more contributors | 17:31 |
| LaserJock | I was thinking about the classic "computer lab admin" vs "pedagogical tools" thing | 17:31 |
| LaserJock | yeah | 17:31 |
| LaserJock | :-) | 17:31 |
| highvoltage | (brb) | 17:31 |
| LaserJock | I wonder if it just has to be the kind of thing were you respond to where users are at | 17:32 |
| LaserJock | I always wanted to push for actual teaching tools and trying to figure out how to make teaching more effective | 17:32 |
| LaserJock | the problem is, I don't know that open-source and Edubuntu users were really there | 17:33 |
| LaserJock | a great many of them just wanted an easy way to set up and maintain an LTSP lab | 17:33 |
| highvoltage | LaserJock: I don't think they are there yet, but I don't think it will take too much for people to get there | 17:43 |
| LaserJock | well, I guess it makes me wonder how teachers are using this stuff | 17:44 |
| LaserJock | and how much of a disconnect there is between the people setting up the tech and the teachers trying to use it | 17:44 |
| LaserJock | that's something I never quite got a good handle on | 17:44 |
| LaserJock | I always wanted to push | 17:44 |
| LaserJock | but, well, I don't think that strategy worked all that well ;-) | 17:45 |
| LaserJock | one thing though, that I think would probably help transition would be documentation | 17:45 |
| LaserJock | I think once the big picture stuff (LTSP and basic services) are more-or-less stable and workable | 17:46 |
| highvoltage | LaserJock: in my experience teachers care very little about technology | 17:46 |
| LaserJock | it seems like people might start exploring what they can do with stuff | 17:47 |
| LaserJock | right | 17:47 |
| LaserJock | and I guess my feeling has been that maybe if we gave them the right tools they might care more | 17:47 |
| highvoltage | LaserJock: and I think we're at the point where that 'big picture stuff' is getting pretty solid and to the poing where we'll be getting bored with it | 17:47 |
| LaserJock | but that could be just because I'm a (higher level) teacher type who loves technology :-) | 17:47 |
| highvoltage | LaserJock: which suggests that we're at the point where we can try to attack even bigger and more complicated things... like making it better for teaching and learning :) | 17:48 |
| LaserJock | perhaps so | 17:48 |
| LaserJock | I sort of always envisioned they kind of thing | 17:48 |
| LaserJock | where the school IT guy comes in to a beginning-of-the year meeting with the teaching staff | 17:48 |
| LaserJock | and he goes "look at what I have for you guys this year!" | 17:49 |
| LaserJock | he flips on an Edubuntu system and not only does it work, but there's stuff there that makes the teachers excited | 17:49 |
| alkisg | Like what stuff? | 17:50 |
| LaserJock | whether that be better educational apps, or better student management, or easier ways of doing mundane tasks | 17:50 |
| LaserJock | I envisioned just making the teachers job a bit more enjoyable and easier when it came to tech | 17:50 |
| LaserJock | because my impression is that a big reason they don't care for tech so much is that it is a burden and a hassle | 17:51 |
| alkisg | Better educational apps => not enough resources. Better students management / doing mundane tasks => nice, I hope we see those. | 17:51 |
| highvoltage | LaserJock: yeah, that layer you're talking about there is kind of between education and sysadmin in my opinion. almost like an italc in a perfect world | 17:51 |
| LaserJock | alkisg: I agree, we never had the resources for edu apps | 17:51 |
| LaserJock | at first I wanted to focus on the edu apps themselves | 17:52 |
| LaserJock | giving teachers better apps | 17:52 |
| LaserJock | more student-focused | 17:52 |
| alkisg | E.g. I'd love to see standalone lab installations with nfs, ldap etc becoming as easy as it LTSP installations are. Skolelinux has something on that, I hope we cooperate more. | 17:52 |
| LaserJock | but then you run into the huge problem with different standards all over the place | 17:52 |
| LaserJock | and a lack of resources to really make a significant number of really cutting-edge apps | 17:53 |
| LaserJock | so then I started thinking more about the teacher | 17:53 |
| alkisg | Most open source edu apps are also available for windows, so those apps don't provide a reason for the teachers to switch to linux | 17:53 |
| LaserJock | and thinking, if we make the teachers job easier, make them not waste time on non-teaching tasks | 17:53 |
| LaserJock | then maybe that frees them up to do the real educational part | 17:53 |
| * alkisg agrees on that | 17:53 | |
| alkisg | I developed an app called "sch-scripts" exactly for that purpose | 17:54 |
| LaserJock | my problem of course is that I'm not a K-12 educator | 17:54 |
| LaserJock | so I can guess at things that would make teacher's lives easier, but it's only a guess | 17:54 |
| alkisg | It's the main reason ubuntu/ltsp got install in about 250 schools here. Ease of installation + classroom administration tool. | 17:54 |
| alkisg | The problem is that a good open source tool for classroom administration doesn't exist | 17:55 |
| alkisg | iTalc unfortunately doesn't fit the bill | 17:55 |
| alkisg | I hope we'll fill that part in a few years | 17:56 |
| LaserJock | yeah, I think it has to be a pretty long term strategy | 17:57 |
| LaserJock | there's a reason this stuff generally doesn't exist :-) | 17:57 |
| alkisg | The good part is that we're teachers developing the tool that we'll use in our classroom | 17:57 |
| alkisg | So we have very good chances on maintaining that on the long term | 17:57 |
| alkisg | I just hope we get just a bit of upstream support on the tools we use | 17:58 |
| LaserJock | yeah, it's hard pulling it all together | 17:58 |
| alkisg | (e.g. vinagre for student monitoring, x11vnc etc) | 17:58 |
| LaserJock | I think it's hard on the teachers who are also writing their tools | 17:58 |
| LaserJock | it's hard to keep up with changing technologies | 17:59 |
| alkisg | Well, the only other option was to use italc, but it crashed on 2 secs on 3 out of 5 labs. So nope, no other option than to write our own :D | 17:59 |
| LaserJock | I don't know what's going to happen with gnome 3 | 17:59 |
| alkisg | I think external tools like vinagre, vlc for video streaming etc will continue to work there | 18:00 |
| alkisg | We just might need to modify the "glue" a bit | 18:01 |
| LaserJock | I wonder how gnome-shell is going to work for educators | 18:02 |
| LaserJock | with sbayon, etc. and just in general if it will be the sort of thing that educators will be happy with | 18:03 |
| LaserJock | or if everybody will end up using something else | 18:03 |
| LaserJock | they might just have to end up using openbox | 18:04 |
| alkisg | Sabayon has proved to be difficult to maintain, it's more frequently broken than working | 18:04 |
| LaserJock | but I'm a big fan of openbox :-) | 18:04 |
| LaserJock | yep | 18:04 |
| LaserJock | these are the fundamental issues that I see as a trapping point | 18:05 |
| LaserJock | you can have the most easy to install, rock stable, LTSP (or other) systems | 18:05 |
| LaserJock | but I still think if you can't lock it down or manage users effectively you end up shooting yourself in the foot | 18:06 |
| alkisg | Yup, even the most common tasks like having a shared folder between teacher and students are non-trivial currently | 18:07 |
| LaserJock | alkisg: yeah, that's the kind of stuff that puts teachers off | 18:13 |
| alkisg | We've done good progress with that here | 18:13 |
| alkisg | E.g. mass user creation with GUI, creating shared folders, sending files to students etc | 18:14 |
| alkisg | I hope we can refine it so that it gets into the debian/ubuntu archives in a couple of years | 18:15 |
| Zarrku | alkisg? | 18:47 |
| highvoltage | goodnight edubuntu | 23:31 |
Generated by irclog2html.py 2.7 by Marius Gedminas - find it at mg.pov.lt!