[07:28] good morning [17:09] 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 :) [17:30] highvoltage: nice blog post [17:30] thanks, LaserJock [17:31] 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] I was thinking about the classic "computer lab admin" vs "pedagogical tools" thing [17:31] yeah [17:31] :-) [17:31] (brb) [17:32] I wonder if it just has to be the kind of thing were you respond to where users are at [17:32] I always wanted to push for actual teaching tools and trying to figure out how to make teaching more effective [17:33] the problem is, I don't know that open-source and Edubuntu users were really there [17:33] a great many of them just wanted an easy way to set up and maintain an LTSP lab [17:43] LaserJock: I don't think they are there yet, but I don't think it will take too much for people to get there [17:44] well, I guess it makes me wonder how teachers are using this stuff [17:44] and how much of a disconnect there is between the people setting up the tech and the teachers trying to use it [17:44] that's something I never quite got a good handle on [17:44] I always wanted to push [17:45] but, well, I don't think that strategy worked all that well ;-) [17:45] one thing though, that I think would probably help transition would be documentation [17:46] I think once the big picture stuff (LTSP and basic services) are more-or-less stable and workable [17:46] LaserJock: in my experience teachers care very little about technology [17:47] it seems like people might start exploring what they can do with stuff [17:47] right [17:47] and I guess my feeling has been that maybe if we gave them the right tools they might care more [17:47] 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] but that could be just because I'm a (higher level) teacher type who loves technology :-) [17:48] 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] perhaps so [17:48] I sort of always envisioned they kind of thing [17:48] where the school IT guy comes in to a beginning-of-the year meeting with the teaching staff [17:49] and he goes "look at what I have for you guys this year!" [17:49] he flips on an Edubuntu system and not only does it work, but there's stuff there that makes the teachers excited [17:50] Like what stuff? [17:50] whether that be better educational apps, or better student management, or easier ways of doing mundane tasks [17:50] I envisioned just making the teachers job a bit more enjoyable and easier when it came to tech [17:51] 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] Better educational apps => not enough resources. Better students management / doing mundane tasks => nice, I hope we see those. [17:51] 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] alkisg: I agree, we never had the resources for edu apps [17:52] at first I wanted to focus on the edu apps themselves [17:52] giving teachers better apps [17:52] more student-focused [17:52] 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] but then you run into the huge problem with different standards all over the place [17:53] and a lack of resources to really make a significant number of really cutting-edge apps [17:53] so then I started thinking more about the teacher [17:53] 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] and thinking, if we make the teachers job easier, make them not waste time on non-teaching tasks [17:53] then maybe that frees them up to do the real educational part [17:53] * alkisg agrees on that [17:54] I developed an app called "sch-scripts" exactly for that purpose [17:54] my problem of course is that I'm not a K-12 educator [17:54] so I can guess at things that would make teacher's lives easier, but it's only a guess [17:54] It's the main reason ubuntu/ltsp got install in about 250 schools here. Ease of installation + classroom administration tool. [17:55] The problem is that a good open source tool for classroom administration doesn't exist [17:55] iTalc unfortunately doesn't fit the bill [17:56] I hope we'll fill that part in a few years [17:57] yeah, I think it has to be a pretty long term strategy [17:57] there's a reason this stuff generally doesn't exist :-) [17:57] The good part is that we're teachers developing the tool that we'll use in our classroom [17:57] So we have very good chances on maintaining that on the long term [17:58] I just hope we get just a bit of upstream support on the tools we use [17:58] yeah, it's hard pulling it all together [17:58] (e.g. vinagre for student monitoring, x11vnc etc) [17:58] I think it's hard on the teachers who are also writing their tools [17:59] it's hard to keep up with changing technologies [17:59] 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] I don't know what's going to happen with gnome 3 [18:00] I think external tools like vinagre, vlc for video streaming etc will continue to work there [18:01] We just might need to modify the "glue" a bit [18:02] I wonder how gnome-shell is going to work for educators [18:03] with sbayon, etc. and just in general if it will be the sort of thing that educators will be happy with [18:03] or if everybody will end up using something else [18:04] they might just have to end up using openbox [18:04] Sabayon has proved to be difficult to maintain, it's more frequently broken than working [18:04] but I'm a big fan of openbox :-) [18:04] yep [18:05] these are the fundamental issues that I see as a trapping point [18:05] you can have the most easy to install, rock stable, LTSP (or other) systems [18:06] but I still think if you can't lock it down or manage users effectively you end up shooting yourself in the foot [18:07] Yup, even the most common tasks like having a shared folder between teacher and students are non-trivial currently [18:13] alkisg: yeah, that's the kind of stuff that puts teachers off [18:13] We've done good progress with that here [18:14] E.g. mass user creation with GUI, creating shared folders, sending files to students etc [18:15] I hope we can refine it so that it gets into the debian/ubuntu archives in a couple of years [18:47] alkisg? [23:31] goodnight edubuntu