[OSGeo-Discuss] The importance of having Open Principles in Education for our future generations

[Randal Hale]

If a bootable USB version could be developed for schools/kids with 
suggestions of "buy this USB drive" and here's how you load everything - 
that would help in a lot of cases. BUT....

  * I underestimate the kids abilities - some are very sharp - some look
    for the anykey.
  * In general many of the teachers work at their tech limit - so if you
    came up with a scenario of "booting a computer into another
    operating system" you will scare a lot of them. This is a flip phone
    crowd we're dealing with. Tech isn't their friend - it should be but
    it isn't.

I think that's where we can play a role - the ESRI rollout was botched 
in my opinion because it only targeted schools with resources. The 
schools I like don't have that - but they have good kids and good 
teachers. ESRI begged beyond the photo ops with their employees for 
GISP's to help get their software working. Internet is a luxury at the 
school - they have problems if too many kids click on youtube at once. 
So I think OSGEO provides a rollout for the rest of the kids that can't 
afford the tech and the time with the "cloud".

Maybe my fantasy is:

  * Bootable USB for easy upgrades to software (beyond the OSGEO Live
    Disk - to many options will flip people out)
  * USB has QGIS, DATA, and a lesson plan. A lesson plan that might
    tackle a very believable scenario kids can relate to....maybe it's a
    neighborhood and school where you answer questions about
    transportation, where students live, where they go to the grocery
    store, etc...the second half will be what their school and
    neighborhood looks like. Maybe they map their school and surrounding
    area.
  * Lesson plan has to be easy for teachers to digest - some don't know
    what GSI is (that was intentional because it's a very foreign
    concept to them).
  * Rainforests and counting coffee shops isn't something they will care
    about. How their neighborhood looks and how they live - that will
    get some attention from the US kids. I assume all kids. BUT - I'm
    not a teacher.


Randy



On 06/27/2015 07:28 PM, Vaclav Petras wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 5:59 PM, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com 
> <mailto:Tom_Roche at pobox.com>> wrote:
>
>     Randal Hale Fri, 26 Jun 2015 16:17:54 -0400[2]
>     > Ms Keith (on this list as of last night and cc'd) has a lab but it is quickly going out of date
>     with regards to proprietary software. My wish has been to replace
>     everything with QGIS - GIS is GIS.
>
>     And OS[3] are OS, so maximize the utility of the
>
>     > "older computers" at schools [being used] for learning
>
>     and slap a Linux on them. The OSGeo wiki points to some bundles,
>     including (e.g.) DebianGIS[4], Enterprise Linux GIS[5], and
>     UbuntuGIS[6] (of which, IIUC, the latter is the most active).
>
>
> And sure enough, there are Linux distributions designed to work well 
> on (very) low-end hardware, for example Lubuntu [1] and Xubuntu [2].
>
> [1] http://lubuntu.net/
> [2] http://xubuntu.org/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
-----------------
Randal Hale
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
423.653.3611 rjhale at northrivergeographic.com
twitter:rjhale     http://about.me/rjhale
http://www.northrivergeographic.com/introduction-to-quantum-gis
Southeast OSGEO: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Southeast_US

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