February 11, 2010 at 16:51The introduction of free software in schools
Hello.
For quite some time now, our state has been trying to introduce free software into education in order to replace it with proprietary Windows. Various worthy reasons are called - from the economic component to the developing one. But as it happens in Russia, any good idea always comes down to poor implementation.
The implementation began remarkably: distributions that were sent to schools along with the First Aid package simply refused to be installed. The distribution company has tried. Full-time and distance courses on installing and administering Linux were organized in order to encourage teachers to switch to Linux. From this moment the most interesting begins.
The training was organized remotely on the basis of a special portal . Several courses were offered for selection, in which lectures, assignments and tests were compiled. We will not deal specifically with the content of the courses, although what is the definition of “Bind is a complex program (the total amount of documentation in the bind-doc package is more than 1.5 Mb)” . For everything, everything was given for several months, after which full-time testing was conducted.
Testing was conducted in a special audience. Of course, another day from the “unspecified sources” questions of the test were known. By the way, one could also go through them separately - there were practically no questions about the Linux system itself, about the console or the administration programs. There were questions from the series “Linus Torvalds is ***”, “To change the appearance of the desktop, where you need to go” with answers like “KDE-> Settings / ***”. I especially remember the question about KDevelop. It was necessary to note what KDevelop knows how to do: syntax highlighting, compilation of a project, acceleration of development time, and something else. There was only one correct answer, as the curators explained after a call to Moscow. But this is also not particularly important, since the atmosphere was quite “working” - of all those present, they independently answered human questions that way 3. Used phones, training manuals, ready-made tests with affixed answers, neighbors. Despite the fact that I did not read the course, as it turned out, I passed the test. Although my neighbor, who wrote me off one-on-one (checked 2 times), in the end the test failed. In general, the next "filkin letter" turned out.
And now, armed with knowledge, we could start installing Linux in schools. But here, the Ministry of Education was ahead of everyone. According to a letter from the ministry (and two annexes: first , second), each computer on which free software is installed must send statistics to special servers on the Internet. To do this, it is proposed to download the rpm or deb package and install it on the system. This package, according to developers, will only collect system information. What he will do in reality is unknown, since the developers refused my request to provide source codes. And if the computer is not connected to the Internet, then it is proposed to do it by hand to the person who installed the software. Well, at the end of the education committee came another order to monitor the Internet resources that students attend.
If you want to install regular Linux at school, you need to:
The question arises: who needs such kindness? Who, under such conditions, will voluntarily install in their open source software class when there is an old, good, Windows operating system that does not require such complexities?
Thanks.
For quite some time now, our state has been trying to introduce free software into education in order to replace it with proprietary Windows. Various worthy reasons are called - from the economic component to the developing one. But as it happens in Russia, any good idea always comes down to poor implementation.
The implementation began remarkably: distributions that were sent to schools along with the First Aid package simply refused to be installed. The distribution company has tried. Full-time and distance courses on installing and administering Linux were organized in order to encourage teachers to switch to Linux. From this moment the most interesting begins.
Training and testing
The training was organized remotely on the basis of a special portal . Several courses were offered for selection, in which lectures, assignments and tests were compiled. We will not deal specifically with the content of the courses, although what is the definition of “Bind is a complex program (the total amount of documentation in the bind-doc package is more than 1.5 Mb)” . For everything, everything was given for several months, after which full-time testing was conducted.
Testing was conducted in a special audience. Of course, another day from the “unspecified sources” questions of the test were known. By the way, one could also go through them separately - there were practically no questions about the Linux system itself, about the console or the administration programs. There were questions from the series “Linus Torvalds is ***”, “To change the appearance of the desktop, where you need to go” with answers like “KDE-> Settings / ***”. I especially remember the question about KDevelop. It was necessary to note what KDevelop knows how to do: syntax highlighting, compilation of a project, acceleration of development time, and something else. There was only one correct answer, as the curators explained after a call to Moscow. But this is also not particularly important, since the atmosphere was quite “working” - of all those present, they independently answered human questions that way 3. Used phones, training manuals, ready-made tests with affixed answers, neighbors. Despite the fact that I did not read the course, as it turned out, I passed the test. Although my neighbor, who wrote me off one-on-one (checked 2 times), in the end the test failed. In general, the next "filkin letter" turned out.
Installing software in schools
And now, armed with knowledge, we could start installing Linux in schools. But here, the Ministry of Education was ahead of everyone. According to a letter from the ministry (and two annexes: first , second), each computer on which free software is installed must send statistics to special servers on the Internet. To do this, it is proposed to download the rpm or deb package and install it on the system. This package, according to developers, will only collect system information. What he will do in reality is unknown, since the developers refused my request to provide source codes. And if the computer is not connected to the Internet, then it is proposed to do it by hand to the person who installed the software. Well, at the end of the education committee came another order to monitor the Internet resources that students attend.
Total
If you want to install regular Linux at school, you need to:
- Take courses both remotely and in person
- Install software on computers yourself
- Connect all computers to the Internet
- Install third-party monitoring software with unknown functionality
- To send reports on implementation with an unspecified yet periodicity somewhere there
- Provide each user with a separate login and keep track of their Internet visits
- Before you browse the Internet, write data to the barn book
- Set a content filter to block bad resources
The question arises: who needs such kindness? Who, under such conditions, will voluntarily install in their open source software class when there is an old, good, Windows operating system that does not require such complexities?
Thanks.