education technology and open source

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OpenSUSE 10.3 may not include LTSP support

In a recent post I reported that OpenSUSE would be adding LTSP support to compete with Edubuntu in their upcoming 10.3 release, along with several other educational tools in a "SLEDucator CD". I must admit that I was pretty excited. My experiences with Edubuntu and *buntu have been...

Tags: OpenSUSE and Ed Tech, Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-19

Quality products are to blame for Linux/Mac popularity

There have been a few posts on ZDNet in the last couple days relating to Vista rollouts and available alternatives. In particular, Marc Wagner wrote "Is Vista to blame for Mac, Linux popularity?". As he noted, In the end, the conscientious IT department will view the transition from...

Tags: Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-18

Any universities adopting Linux as their platform of choice?

The OpenSUSE Education Group has a question for you. Although I've talked a great deal about adoption of Linux in K-12 education, my expertise is not at the university level. As Marc Wagner has noted, the majority of universities still use Windows as their primary computing platform, regardless...

Tags: Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-16

Dual-booting Windows and Linux, courtesy of AKH

I've had a few requests for instructions on dual-booting Windows and Linux and will hopefully put together some SUSE-specific instructions in the not-so-distant future. However, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote a great Ubuntu-specific post explaining how it's done. Windows Vista doesn't always do so well with the partitioner software built...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-07-11

What if I get hit by a bus?

After reading Marc Wagner's post "Don’t be fooled, Linux is not free," I was struck by a few items. First and foremost, Marc is right. Linux is not a panacea. It doesn't take away the cost of doing business and it certainly requires a degree of expertise,...

Tags: Open Source, K-12, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-09

Don't be fooled, Linux is not free

I just finished reading Chris Dawson's most recent piece Linux definitely has a place in education and I couldn't agree more, until he said ..."If the choice is arbitrary, then would you rather pay hundreds of dollars or many thousands or millions at the enterprise level or would you rather...

Tags: Open Source, K-12, Higher Ed, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-08

Linux definitely has a place in education

But will the rest of the world follow?A few posters responding to my blog, SUSE vs. Ubuntu - first impressions, noted that they felt Linux was completely pointless in education. It wasn't so long ago that I shared their opinion. After all, 90% of the developed world uses...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source, OpenSUSE and Ed Tech

Blog posts 2007-07-06

As promised...installing SUSE image gallery

Better late than never, I guess. Here's an image gallery from my SUSE install. I've been pounding the heck out of my laptop the last few days working on scheduling and wrapping up classes and I have to say that my initial impressions have certainly been borne out...

Tags: OpenSUSE and Ed Tech, Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-05

Open source statistics? Anyone? Anyone?

On the last day of school, we had a math department meeting. The teacher who will be running our statistics courses next year was thrilled that we would have a small, dedicated math lab at our disposal. However, when she asked me what software we had for teaching...

Tags: Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-07-02

Installing Linux - The joy of live CDs

Yesterday I went through various distributions and architectures for a Linux installation, focusing in particular on OpenSUSE. Before we go through the actual installation of OpenSUSE and Linux in general, there is one type of distribution that I failed to mention in yesterday's post: the Live CD.Live CDs are...

Tags: Training for the masses, OpenSUSE and Ed Tech, Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-06-26

OpenSUSE update (also, just what is a distribution?)

So this weekend wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped in terms of my foray into testing and documentation for OpenSUSE. Between a wedding in New Hampshire and a shed that needed building (don't believe the salespeople - an afternoon project this is not, especially when your best helper...

Tags: Training for the masses, OpenSUSE and Ed Tech, Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-06-25

Goodbye Edubuntu, hello SUSE

Much to my children's chagrin, my basement Edubuntu setup is going away, only to be replaced by an alpha version of OpenSUSE 10.3. Oh yeah, they were thrilled.This is absolutely not because of any dissatisfaction with Edubuntu. It's been really outstanding and the kids have adapted to it...

Tags: Open Source, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-06-21

Making "hamburger of Microsoft's cash cow"

Ars technica featured an article last week (Microsoft funds questionable study attacking open source in education") focusing on a European study of user satisfaction with, and adoption of open source software versus Microsoft products in educational systems. Not surprisingly, the Microsoft-funded study concluded that Microsoft products were not only...

Tags: Open Source, Microsoft, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-06-18

Does Microsoft have a future in educational technology?

The short answer to that question is, of course - any company with that much cash, influence, and market share must have a place just about everywhere, ed tech included. A less pat answer is worthy of some discussion, though. I use a variety of platforms: Linux on...

Tags: Open Source, Microsoft, Education Technology

Blog posts 2007-06-04

openSUSE to compete with Edubuntu?

At first blush, the new offering, with a proposed release this fall, appears to have the makings of a serious competitor. Designed as an add-on "EDU-CD" to accompany the upcoming 10.3 release of openSUSE, the so-called "SLEducator" is designed to "[ease] the installation and configuration of an educational network...

Tags: Classroom Tech, Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-05-29

With a name like SeaMonkey, it's gotta be good

To paraphrase a certain jelly company...SeaMonkey is actually best described by its creators, a splinter group of the Mozilla Foundation: The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as "Mozilla Application Suite". Whereas the main focus of the Mozilla...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-05-28

So when can we get our hands on Ubuntu Dells? And do we want to?

With quite a bit of fanfare in the geek community, Dell began selling desktops and laptops to consumers today preloaded with Ubuntu 7.04. The fanfare was not so obvious on the Dell homepage - if you didn't know to go directly to www.dell.com/linux, you were out of luck. ...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-05-24

How cool is virtualization? If you said "Pretty cool," you're right!

I just finished installing Windows XP Pro on my laptop. Nothing to write home about, except that I just restarted it after an update while I continue to write this blog on the same computer. Yes, Ive just discovered the cool factor of virtualization. Im still running...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-05-14

When faculty say 'NO' to UNIX/Linux

Well, sooner or later, it was bound to happen. We are in the process of retiring our last two instructional UNIX/Linux labs. And guess what? Nobody seems to care! In fact, the faculty who have been using those labs for instruction have asked us to give...

Tags: Open Source, K-12, Higher Ed, Education Technology, Classroom Tech

Blog posts 2007-05-08

Ubuntu on Dells almost official

Desktoplinux.com is reporting on a number of potential models that may be coming preloaded with Ubuntu 7.04 by the end of May. While several of us at ZDNet have pointed to Michael Dells well-publicized use of Ubuntu on his own laptop, this is the first were hearing of hardware...

Tags: Education Technology, Open Source

Blog posts 2007-05-01