[K12OSN] Life after LTSP

[Steven Santos]

The issue of students having access to software could be solved easily
enough by issuing a VM image to each student.  Need and update? DL a new
image from the server. 

---
Steven Santos
Director, Simply Circus, Inc.
 Email: Steven at SimplyCircus.com
   Gym: 86 Los Angeles Street
        Newton, MA 02458
  Mail: 14 Pierrepont Road
        Newton, MA 02462
 Phone: 617-527-0667
   Fax: 617-934-1870
   Web: www.SimplyCircus.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On
> Behalf Of Robert Arkiletian
> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 2:25 PM
> To: Support list for open source software in schools.
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Life after LTSP
> 
> Sorry to those of you who are on the Edubuntu list but I'm
> copy/pasting a message from that list to this one as I think it's an
> interesting topic.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)
> <jonathan at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> ...
> >
> > Either way, cheap devices are certainly going to change things
> > eventually. Everyone's walking with more and more powerful computers
> in
> > their pockets. All that they might need is a bigger keyboard and
> screen
> > to connect to in their classrooms.
> >
> > I think it will cause a whole bunch of new challenges for schools and
> > software companies. How are commercial educational products going to
> be
> > licensed? Per school? Will students have to buy it theirselves? How
> will
> > software be managed and deployed? I know that I certainly wouldn't
> want
> > to give my school (if I had one) root access to my device to do stuff
> on
> > it without me knowing about it. My guess is that in a few years from
> > now, students will do most of their work on web enabled devices that
> > connect to their school's web services. I'm probably stating the
> obvious
> > with that, since it's already happening in many schools, but even
> then I
> > think there'll be some use for some desktops running in a diskless
> > environment.
> 
> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> I think you hit the nail on the head. Things are changing. I've been
> a high school teacher for 14 years. Recently, I've been seeing more
> and more students coming to school with their own laptops. This
> transition to students having their own mobile devices has already
> happened in colleges/universities.
> 
> Currently, the big push at the secondary level is getting wireless
> access to the entire school. Focus is slowly shifting away from
> traditional computer lab infrastructure to one where kids bring their
> own mobile device (or maybe the school provides one). It brings up the
> question: what about kids that can't afford their own laptops? Also,
> who manages these systems? They don't belong to the school. We can't
> touch them. About the only thing we can do is have a terms of use
> agreement pop up when they connect and ask them to agree (maybe
> register their name with their mac address) but that's about it.
> 
> Right now if an english teacher wants his/her students to access the
> web they need to book a computer lab to use for that period. I don't
> think that's going to be the case in the future.  I remember when no
> students had cell phones, now almost all do.
> 
> This also brings up the possibility of introducing ebooks. Publishers
> of textbooks are already seeing this demand from post secondary
> institutions. No more giant backpacks full of textbooks.  In addition,
> imagine instead of photocopying a handout for all students a teacher
> just posts the handout to a website which all students access
> instantly. Photocopying costs at my school are huge.
> 
> 
> --
> Robert Arkiletian
> Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
> 
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