We all know that there have been massive budget cuts in our public education system here in the states. It's really disappointing, but it is something that we must all acknowledge. As I have grown up and witnessed the transformation of our classrooms, I have noticed some poor spending decisions that should not be made. I sincerely believe that if there was any time to watch the budget of our public education system, now would be the time.
I'm not going to bash the poor spending decisions of the past in this post; we can't change the past. Rather, I'm going to state what I believe we need to do in order to save money with the help of Linux.
The Proposition
There is quite a lot of old desktop hardware from the pre Chromebook days. I am in several Computer Science and programming classes that need software that cannot run on ChromeOS. These old desktops are running Windows 7, which Microsoft will stop supporting in 2020.
Buying new computer hardware can get really expensive very quickly. As I've stated above, schools don't have nearly as much funding as they had when they bought these computers. I recommend that we keep this old hardware; it still works just fine. Software is the main caveat.
I propose that we install a distribution of Linux on this old hardware. Even more, I propose that we let the students do this. Linux holds the most of the market share for servers, supercomputers, and has a strong desktop share. Knowing how to use the Linux operating system is going to be a vital skill. The role of schools is to prepare students for the future, is it not?
Running Linux on all computer hardware would save money and better prepare students for the future
The Difficult Decision
Here comes the really hard part. What is the Linux Distribution that is easy enough to use for teachers and non enthusiasts but at the same time difficult enough to where students are not handheld?
There are many excellent options to choose from such as Edubuntu and Uberstudent. You can check out a detailed breakdown here.
I personally believe that we should put Edubuntu on our school computers because it is based on a Linux distro that has excellent community support and it looks very pretty. Of course it has quite a bit of usability as well, but I have found that generally schools value looks over usability.
What do you think?
Do you agree that Linux should be in the classroom or do you think that we should stick with WIndows, or move to ChromeOS? Please let me know in the comments below.
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