Trisquel for education
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Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum (at least as an active member) and being a teacher I'd like to know whether anyone here has already some experience regarding the use of Trisquel for any educational purpose. Thanks for sharing.
What do you want to achieve? "Any educational purpose" is vague.
In general, if something can be achieved on Ubuntu, which is broadly used in schools, it can be achieved in the exact same way with Trisquel, which is based on Ubuntu.
From a - let's call it developer's point of view - you're certainly right concerning Ubuntu. However, my question is (also) asked from a pedagogical point of view.
The next generation of free software promoters and developers includes students like mine which are typically 16-20 years old and have a keen interest in computer science. So as a teacher I wonder whether and how I can introduce them to free software concepts motivate them for participating in such projects. From this point of view, Trisquel is surely a much better choice than Ubuntu, I reckon.
I just want to know whether someone has already thought about this or taught lessons like these in practice (with Trisquel).
The free software concepts are philosophical and political. Introduce them! In my university, I give a 1:40-hour talk about free software every semester.
Then, you should indeed show the example and only use and make your students use free software. Trisquel is certainly the easier 100%-free GNU/Linux distribution to use and administrate. With a large number of packages readily available in the repository. That said, you may not be the only professor choosing the operating system(s) running in the school.
Finally, you can propose an activity that consist in contributing to an existing free software project (to the choice of the student). The contribution needs not be programming something. It can be documentation, translation, etc.
Hi Julius
I home schooling my daughter full time and my son until 10 AM, I am not
exactly a teacher but sort of.
I think Trisquel would be a great assist in a school setting. I have
stopped worrying about the "best" Linux distro and I have instead turned
my focus to the best "shepherd" to watch over me .
I just don't have time watch for security issues and even more so,
political issues that might be a problem later(non-free software,
privacy invading software etc).
I think this project is the best shepherd. I still have to watch what my
kids are doing on the internet but outside of this, I think it's a great
kid friendly distro and there isn't a whole lot to worry about and it of
course has tons of resources for teaching.
We have a tablet with Windows 8 loaded on it here as well. Microsoft
wants to push news feeds to the "tiles" by default. This could include
very violent content. I think this is a good example of not thinking
about kids first.
-Patrick
Hi Patrick,
thank you for your answer. Although I agree with the arguments, the home schooling case as such doesn't apply to me. I teach at a vocational secondary school and have convinced my headmaster to introduce a paper-free, free software class from grade 11 thru 13. As this is unprecedented at schools in my area, I'm searching for practical experiences, especially with Trisquel, right here amongst the Trisquel experts.
Btw, have you tried the SUGAR environment for your kids? Or what do you mean by "kid friendly distro"?
That sound like an interesting project. Just out of curiosity, where in the world do you work?
Thanks for your interest; I'm based in northern Germany.
Today I just set up a laptop with Flidas for an Operating Systems course (in a VM, but it's a start). I'm a fan of the "propaganda of the deed" and active promotion, so I try to make a start at my school where normally only proprietary software is taught using proprietary OS.
I'll collate and evaluate the results and hope we'll develop some ideas on how to introduce free software principles to my target audience (which is students and colleagues actually).
With regard to tablets, you may wish to look into Replicant running on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, either the 7 inch or 10 inch versions.
https://www.replicant.us/supported-devices.php
Unfortunately it looks like Techno ethical no longer sells those tablets with Replicant pre-installed, nor does it offer an installation service for them, but maybe you could ask
https://tehnoetic.com/index.php?route=information/contact
Or you may want to use their smartphones instead - the biggest one, with a 5.5 inch screen, could perhaps be called a "phablet" and has stylus support
> Unfortunately it looks like Techno ethical no longer sells those
> tablets with Replicant pre-installed, nor does it offer an
> installation service for them
I found the installation of Replicant on a Samsung Galaxy S2 to be nearly trivial. Unless it is harder to install Replicant on a tablet for some reason, the OP should be fine buying a Galaxy Tab running Android and installing Replicant themselves.
In Finland, they use DigabiOS, based on Debian, as a live operating system during Matriculation Examination.
I think Trisquel fits the same purpose.
Mason said:
"I found the installation of Replicant on a Samsung Galaxy S2 to be nearly trivial. Unless it is harder to install Replicant on a tablet for some reason, the OP should be fine buying a Galaxy Tab running Android and installing Replicant themselves."
If that's the case, then here's the page with installation information: https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki#Replicant-installation
I see from it that there's another supported tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0. I'm not sure why that tablet is not on the list of supported devices in the first link of my previous post. Also, caution that the Note 8.0 is not the same thing as the Note 8; the 8.0 is an older (2013) tablet with an 8 inch screen while the 8 is a current (introduced Sept 2017) smartphone or phablet with a 6.3 inch screen.
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