Placeholder page for various education-related efforts as initially mentioned in our meeting; more detail to follow, as we will likely devote an entire meeting in the near future to expanding on this topic. Please add things here as a scratchpad to prepare for that meeting.

Introduction

Why hasn't Ubuntu been adopted whole scale by school districts? And, why especially haven't thin-client setups been wildly propagating throughout cash-strapped education circles? Of course there are multitudes of reason--it's not simple--and might not be too worthwhile debating them too much, nonetheless, by examining them a bit we might be able to grow Edubuntu's use here in Minnesota.

Some reasons may include:

• It's relative newness: how long has the GUI been so easy to use for the TechLiterateTeacher?

• It's different: we all know there's enough stress in life without abandoning familiar territory and MakingTheTransition into a new country, especially when you are the captain of 30 squirming, inquisitive, diverse human beings in a small room for 58 minutes, and the "No Child Left Behind (sic)" bureaucracy on your back...

• Overly scattered, incomplete, outdated information The information may be out there, but... there are thousands of pages on Edubuntu, (millions?) but it seems difficult to find all of the details, up-to-date, needed to make a classroom ComputerLab work. We need to think of teaching systemically and organize around that, not organize around the tool (Edubuntu etc.) and create a concise wiki system organized by TeachingSubSystems. This can be the single, current, scaffold to facilitate the TechLiterateTeacher's leap to Edubuntu. This is not to ignore the incredible resources out there, it is instead to update and consolidate and organize the best of the best and create what is missing.

• PoliticalChallenges: How are decisions made in your district? It is very reasonable that the person in the district who is held accountable for the technology infrastructure and more it's administrative and educational uses would be wary of jumping onto a new technology. Before political pressure is brought to bear on these people, we must provide them with all of the information necessary to make a wise decision. This wiki could perform this function.

One hears about various isolated experiments throughout our state and this would be a great place for Minnesota projects to huddle together, supporting each other. Please add your project to the list:

MinnesotaEducationProjects

CategoryEducation