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Linux activities in the classroom


Bham
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I teach in a secondary school and I have the option to use some computers for four weeks before they get windows put on them (not my decision). I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the class to linux.

Each computer has a 700 mhz Intel II coppermine processor, CD-rom, at least 128 mb of memory and 8Gb or greater hard drive. The school has broadband.

I use Mandriva 2006 at home and have used other distros and live CD's.

What I would like is advice / suggestions on projects or activities you think a class of 13-14 years old would find fun or a bit different from windows ? I want them to have a good first impression of linux.

 

cheers

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B)

 

Put two partitions on the drives: a big one for winbloat and a smaller one for linux. Make sure the winbloat partition is first. Load linux and a boot loader. When the time comes, simply remove the boot loader. Unless they look for it, the IT guys installing winbloat will not notice the partition (because winbloat doesn't) and winbloat will load onto the first partition. You can reinstall the boot loader later, and have dual boot machines!! That way when the kids complain about no linux, you can appease them with a choice, something the school may have the instestinal fortitude to offer! Mandriva, Mepis, or Ubuntu would make favorable experiences. Better yet, load different ones on different machines. And then watch them be overwhelmed with choices in their lives. What an education!!! ;)

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I really like the bootloader idea, I never thought of doing that even though I dual boot at home, I could put it on floppies. (I missed seeing the wood because the trees got in the way). If I was to do that then the IT guys said they would have no objection to me putting Mandriva on a handful of the schools higher spec machines with 2.4Ghz and DVD-rom. That has now opened up a range of possibilities.

Thanks for the tip.

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What I would like is advice / suggestions on projects or activities you think a class of 13-14 years old would find fun or a bit different from windows ? I want them to have a good first impression of linux.

 

Show them Amarok:

- ripping CDs (those they own, of course :) )

- listening to radios over the internet

- listening to podcasts (amarok is nice because it does not donwload the whole shebang, you can listen to what you want.

- if you have an ipod, you can maybe try to interface amarok with it. In case of success, you could demo that to them.

- interface with last.fm:

I would also install the lastfm player (lastfm-player, a Mdv rpm), so that they can listen and discover new music at CD quality rates.

 

I think this will be enough to get them hooked :)

 

Continuing with the audio stuff, you could let them record sounds, remix samples, etc. It could be a lot of fun to let them produce a kind of radio show, that could even be stream or podcasted by the school.

 

Otherwise, you can show them all the graphical/video possibilities (Gimp, Krita, ImageMagick, Inkscape, Scribus, Cinelerra, ImageJ, etc).

You could give them a project of making a small school newspaper/brochure with lots of pictures, drawings and (even) some text.

 

Other possibilities include manipulating video to make small sketches, reports, etc. If your pupils have access to cameras, you could group them into teams of four people in charge of making a little sequence (comical, about the school, neighborhood, town, etc). It would be short, so that they have time to do some video editing. In the end you could make a show out of it and it would be fun and a good souvenir for all of them.

 

Otherwise you can ask them to make websites, write texts, make presentations with OpenOffice or KOffice tools. These applications have some nifty interfaces to web data that could open their horizons on how to research a subject (dictionaries, thesaurus, wikipeda, etc, etc). Actually, you could make them write something about your town/local geographical, historical, industrial, cultural oddity in wikipedia.

 

Another possibility is to show them Celestia, Stellarium and other such educative applications (together with a little project for eache team of two or three people, to give them some goal: find info on planets, stars, pics, etc).

 

And finally, there are the game part: I don't think you should center any time on them, since it's not a strong point of Linux, but you can let them have access to Frozen-Bubble (this is always a hit), PySol (solitaire, freecell), Pathological, Wesnoth, FreeCiv. A simple FPS is Cube, but if you want to impress serious gamers (and your machines can take it) install Enemy-Territory.

 

Also don't forget to show them gnome-meeting (now ekiga) and gaim (you could also get them jabber accounts so that they start communicating with each other with an open protocol).

 

I think with this you should cover the interests of 13-16 old pupils.

 

Good luck and let us know how you fared

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Remember that even when you have Windblows you still can present Linux using a LIVE cd.

I suggest trying out Kanotix, it's ideal for such purposes.

 

p.s. Dual boot is a good idea, but won't Mandriva be too resource hungry, it's not great processor speed and quite little ram.

I think it's too little for KDE or Gnome, try another WM.

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Thanks for the replies. Cymbaloum thats exactly what I am looking for. Coming from a slightly older generation I have never played music or listened to the radio on a computer before, its all openoffice and tux games, so I gave Amorok a go yesterday for the first time, very impressive. I will have to dig out a few tutorials, (likewise with Gimp) but I think Amorok will be the show stealer for any student. I have also got 75 DOS games. They work great under Dosbox, a bit dated but they have a certain character which I think they will find appealling. I might issue live CD for home use. Once again thanks for the replies.

Still on topic (I think) yesterday, here in the UK the BBC carried a report of a secondary school which has been encouaged to seek support from businesses. Microsoft have supplied all the IT equipment and software. I wonder what that would mean for anyone in a similar position to me of planning some non-microsoft based IT lessons?

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Providing them with CDs is a wonderful idea. That's actually how I started with Linux (thanks Mr. Knopper :) ). This would allow them to easily check that their computer works reasonably well with Linux without too much troubleshooting. One possibility is to go with knoppix (to have state of the art linux demo), or with a home cooked puppy linux live CD. Puppy is a nice simple distribution, and I heard it's very easy to add what you wanto to it.

 

If you have some computer addicts in your class room, you should mention geekbox to them (it even runs on Xboxes), a distribution made for gaming (never tried it myself, but I plan eventually to do that).

 

The Dos games are also a very good idea (I have been wanting to do the same, so I'm interested in how you do it), but make sure you can re-distribute the games you burn on the CD. One of the strong arguments of the Libre/OSS movement is that it allows people to do sophisticated computing at reasonable prices in a legal way. And letting them take home a system full of games is a sure way of getting them interested.

 

I think there are websites that can inform you if the games you are planning to demo can be legally distributed (use "abandonware" keywords in your search)

 

Another thing that I did not mention is the opportunity to teach them how to use firefox in an efficient way (and sometimes in ways that IE can't match :) )

- popup block

- tabbed browsing

- search box

- Extensions (Adblock, Flashgot, etc... see here)

- Bloglines, del.icio.us bookmarklets (an introduction to these services would also be nice)

- search box with yubnub*

 

* That's one of my latest discoveries: configure your firefox searchbox to use Yubnub. This turns the search box into a powerfull command line interface:

- Ctrl-K g whatever : searches for whatever in google (Ctrl-K is to access the search box from the keyboard)

- Ctrl-K gim whatever : gets you pics of whatever, from google

- Ctrl-K sudoku : gives you a sudoku to waste your time with (beware, very addictive!!)

- Ctrl-K wp whatever : gives you info on whatever from wikipedia (there are other wikipedia languages versions of this command)

- Ctrl-K imdb movie : gives you info on movie

 

You get the idea. Here is a nice introduction to what is possible with yubnub.

 

 

Still on topic (I think) yesterday, here in the UK the BBC carried a report of a secondary school which has been encouaged to seek support from businesses. Microsoft have supplied all the IT equipment and software. I wonder what that would mean for anyone in a similar position to me of planning some non-microsoft based IT lessons?
.

 

I heard that the UK is a MS Windows stronghold, but there are things that you can do to get support in your computer educational activities:

 

- look for LUGs (Linux User Groups) in your region (a quick search brought me this). People you meet there could provide you guidance and assistance with software and material. They might also point you to opportunities and sponsors in your region that you don't know about.

- contact Oxfam. I know they are pretty active in refurbishing old computers to provide computing and communication to disadvantged communities. They may have (or may set up with you) a school program, or otherwise tell you who is doing this in the UK

- once you have introduced your students to LibreOSS movement principles, you might ask them and their parents to donate unused computers to the school, so that you can set up a real Linux computer lab. One of the key points of Libre software is that you can do a lot with little, so I don't think getting lots of expensive material to demo Linux would be that impressive. I, for instance, have used my previous laptop for 5 years (and now offered it to my wife). Using Linux really extended the computer usefull lifetime, by allowing me to run modern but lean applications. I also used the laptop a lot as a thin client terminal, something you could also set up in the long term in your Linux lab.

- it would not hurt to convince some of your peers to help you on you activities, it's more fun to work together than to climb the mountain alone.

 

Finally I would like to tell you that I think it's really important that teachers like you take a more pro-active role in educating students to Libre software and the principles that underlie and power this movement. I am an enthousiastic Linux evangeliser, but I find extremelly difficult to sensibilise even very intelligent and open minded people. You need to start early to avoid having to uproot too many misconceptions about computers, software, privacy and civil rights.

 

Good luck!

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I've always been partial to Freeduc as an education live cd (though it doesn't have too many secondary education applications) and I've gotten it to run on the worst of computers. For the kids, another good live cd is games knoppix, though at present they are moving to dvds so that might not work as well as others.

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