On Aug 24, 10:18 pm, Moshe Goldfarb <moshegoldf...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:29:00 -0700 (PDT), CitizenJimserac
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 23, 7:28 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
>
> >> Anthony Doesburg: Students open to new source of knowledge
>
> >> ,----[ Quote ]
> >>| All of it is open-source - and free - saving an estimated $200,000 over the
> >>| equivalent proprietary software from the likes of Microsoft. Yet, says Mark
> >>| Osborne, Albany Senior High's deputy principal and IT co-ordinator, the
> >>| money's only part of it.
> >>|
> >>| "The financial benefits of open-source are quite secondary to our overall
> >>| goal, which is to be an open, collaborative community where nobody is shut
> >>| out of the learning process; nobody is beyond our community."
> >> `----
>
> >>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=1...
>
> > This is quite good and hopefully will lead to new directions in
> > education which seems, somehow, to get stuck in the consequences of
> > institutionalized congealment because of funding restrictions and
> > control.
>
> > How many math teachers, for example, even know about the wonderful
> > MAXIMA symbolic math program, which we would have given anything for
> > in my student days. Derived from the MIT Macsyma symbolic math effort
> > of the 1970's and early 80's, this remarkable program even has 3d
> > graphing capabilities and would be extraordinary as a teaching tool,
> > if only more people knew of it.
>
> > CitizenJimserac
>
> That looks like a real nice program!
>
> I have nothing against oss software in education and in fact
> attempted to support Linux when the school district where I live
> was revamping their entire system.
>
> It was a losing battle.
> They had a professional consulting firm that presented the case
> for Linux, I had nothing to do with this other than expressing
> my position at the various board meetings.
>
> The other side was Windows and additionally they had a
> consultant present Apple solutions.
>
> The problem was the board and the parents wanted what they know
> and that was Windows.
> Also, the Windows solution had a lot more "gadgetry" like live
> "whiteboards" linked to student laptops, full multimedia, tie in
> with the cable company for educational programs, satellite
> uplinks and a whole pile of other state of the art technology.
>
> The interesting thing is, when it was all installed and
> debugged, the teachers hate the white boards, the kids hate
> carrying around laptops all day long and the parents hate being
> responsible for them should they get stolen. They are insured by
> the school and have GPS chips in them but the parents have to
> fill out a mound of paperwork.
> Side note: some idiot kid stole a couple of them and the police
> tracked them to his house....
>
> My conclusion, and I'm old school so take that into account, is
> that the technology is turning our kids minds into jelly.
>
> For every kid that effectively takes advantage of it, there are
> 10 who use it to make life easier so they can sit in front of
> Nintendo the rest of the day.
>
> If anything, the kids are graduating with a total lack of
> discipline.
>
> Back to the topic though if Linux can save tax dollars for the
> people paying the school taxes and can do the job effectively,
> it should be considered.
> The biggest problem is like of programs like SAT prep, Rosetta
> Stone like programs, Magic Schoolbus type programs etc.
> I believe some of these type programs might have Linux versions.
>
> The parents know these programs and they want to use what they
> are familiar with.
>
> The Linux guy put on a solid presentation and in fact more than
> a few people were puzzled at how this software could be any good
> if it's free.
> I found that interesting.
>
> Windows won BTW and it's been a rough road....
Good points.
For years I wondered what exactly could be deteriorating the minds of
our students
(example, I walk into a discount store and the "manager", a young
person not long out of high school, has no idea how to computer a
discount. I grab a piece of paper and show him on the spot.)
to the point of almost total conceptual passivity, obliterated
intellectual curiosity and almost total lack of concern about
anything. It was almost as though the school system had been taken
over by Moorlocks dedicated to the consistent production of Eloi a la
H.G. Wells "The Time Machine".
The epiphany when I came across John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground
History of American Education" one day, the entire book is online.
Gatto, a New York city school teacher for 30 years got fed up at the
system's built in automatic obstructions which seemed to kick in every
time he tried to meaningfully teach a subject, in one case forcing him
to purchase his own textbooks to avoid the "dumbed down" version
provided him, and he did his research to find out why and came up
with a brilliant historical, sociological and pedagogical analysis of
how things came to be this way. The culprits, hidden away in various
foundations and organizations, had a very definite agenda, or series
of them, and the results and the agenda remain intact to this day.
Need I mention as an afterthought that it has little or NOTHING to do
with education?
Citizen Jimserac
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