Beyond the sales pitch

Linux is something that has been talked about time and again. Many slogans have come about. Many articles have talked about Linux as well. So what then?

It’s time to educate people. That’s what the article on Raiden’s Realm is pointing out to us. We have to be there to educate people not only about what Linux is but whatever aspects there are to using Linux. First one has to get the attention of other people to whom Linux is being advocated to.

There is the issue of having to break the ice to them and there’s also the issue of how to educate them.

What I really liked about the article on Raiden’s Realm is that there’s a challenge for us to go beyond our favorite distro when it comes to educating other people about Linux. Why? Because we have to educate people on how to make choices that are relevant to them. The mere fact that there are lots of Linux distros to choose from is evidence of how different our priorities are from one another. Fans of particular distros do not need to advocate that particular distro. Instead, the needs of the potential users must be taken into consideration first and foremost.

At Raiden’t Realm, they are starting a Linux training course project. If you have ideas you want to pitch in, join the discussion. There’s a need for passionate people to spread the Linux love the best way possible.

Post from: New Linux User

Let the Training Room Come into Order with iTalc

Today, I’ve learned about iTalc. It is an application that lets you manage your training room’s computers by ensuring that your students will not be distracted. If you are the trainer, then you can do the following:

• View snapshots of each unit – just so you could check if they’re still doing their exercises or if they’re goofing off already. Better yet, you could use this monitor if they’re just passing messages to each other.
• Lock all the computers so that they will listen to what you are trying to explain. This will be very handy when you are explaining the instructions of an exercise.
• Remote control of computers. In case one of your learners needs some assistance, you could access it without a hitch and you could help him/her.
• Allow access to the network even if the learner is remote. As long as your learner has the iTalc client, then he/she can join via VPN-connections. He/She doesn’t need to be left behind by her peers.

The developers have made this software available for Linux and Windows users but especially those with Debian and Ubuntu Linux, as well as Windows XP. The minimum hardware requirements are listed here. Ubuntu LTSP users of iTalc have a specific guide too.

Moodle Gets the Distance Education Classes Going

Managing a group of learners not interacting with you face to face might not be easy. It’s not the same as guiding someone personally. Some people don’t really do well with just emails and forums. As a teacher, you’d need to announce deadlines, etc. With Moodle you could do that too.

Other things you could do with Moodle:

• Manage a student profiles. People can enlist in your class and you would be able to view their profiles and let your students manage their profiles too.
• Have a place for your reading lists, course outline, etc. Whatever is relevant for your course, it’s possible to put them all on Moodle.
• You could also manage your Moodle setup so that you could make the students more comfortable in their native language since it supports 70+ languages. If ever, students can select the language of their choice too. This is especially for those with a students from everywhere.
• Moodle supports various media and file formats. This would hopefully enhance the courses so that students will have a variety of material to choose from and learn from.

If you’re thinking about how to make learning better for your trainees or those who are interested in having their training with you but they are so far away, Moodle seems to be a good choice.

Post from: New Linux User

How does one prepare for a talk on Linux? There are so many things you could say about Linux. Let’s see what could be some things to consider.

• Know what the audience will be expecting. They will most likely want a specific topic so it’s better if you need to have an idea as to what they want to know. In a lot of schools or seminars, they usually would ask you to prepare for something. But if it’s a general talk about things, you could ask for their theme. You could find some ways to relate Linux with their theme.
• Who are the ones to listen to you? Are they totally clueless or they already have some idea about Linux? How fuzzy is their idea of Linux? Having an idea of what they know could help you figure out how to relate with them during your talk. Developing rapport with the audience is an important thing to do. Sometimes people are shy and they do not always express themselves so it’s also good to prepare by remembering your own experiences and your friend’s experiences with Linux so you could establish common ground with them.
• Have a quick show and tell presentation. If your talk is too long they will get bored. And with technology it’s generally easier for people to follow if it’s a show and tell kind of thing. It will make technology something that they could relate with. This is especially nifty for those who will give an introduction to a particular technology. If you will demonstrate what you could do with specific applications, you should probably prepare a quick demo by making a short list of the common tasks that could be achieved with the application and then certain special features. It’s good if you could make the presentation fun and lively.

These are just some things you could do when preparing for a talk.

Post from: New Linux User

Available dictionaries:
English – Japanese dictionary
Kanji dictionary
Names dictionary
Radicals

All of these are from Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC. By default, you could install them if you want. Otherwise you might need to tell gWaei where else to get the dictionaries.

Searching for words is easy because below the toolbar is the search box. If you’re looking for words, you could type it in romaji or kanji. If you want to search for kanji, you must use the kanji pad. It lets you draw the kanji and the closest matches will be on the right side of the kanji pad. Just select the matching character then it will search for the various instances of that character in kanji. Even its presence as a radical will be shown to you too.

If you are looking for a word and you type it in english or romaji you could see the meaning of the Japanese word and what kind of verb it is. Other uses will also show up in the results so if you’re wondering about it then at least you get a better idea. So if you only know a part of the word such as “tabe” there will be a lot of relevant results, trying to match it with your query.

This application looks nifty. I might recommend it to some of my friends who read manga a lot.

Post from: New Linux User

Perspectives could be as anti-Linux as the following:

• Nothing I use will work on Linux.
• There’s nothing on Linux. It’s boring.
• It’s all command-line and you expect me to use that?
• Using Linux is like going into a new religion or cult.

With the first one, it could be true for someone who uses highly-specialized software. If all the software he/she needs is all on Windows or Mac and he/she is fine with paying for the software, etc. then trying to convince this person to switch to Linux will be quite difficult because of the productivity issues he/she will encounter. However, there could be free and open source software counterparts of the specialized software needed by this user. But you have to take a look at the counterparts well if all the needs are met. If so, maybe you could give your friend or colleague some help in trying out the software you found.

If the person tells you that there’s nothing on Linux and that it’s boring, maybe the person only encountered it briefly and did not give it a try. Also, it could be that the desktop environment or window manager and package manager on the distro he/she tried seemed to restrict him/her from exploring the software available. Some window managers might not feel as intuitive as using Windows, Mac OSX, or another distro with KDE, GNOME or XFCE. Why? In most desktop managers, there’s a menu for the user to select an application. It also has the menu where in the user could check out the package manager. These things may not be as obvious to users who are encountering a Linux distro with Openbox for the first time. In most desktop environments I’ve encountered, a package manager could be seen in the menu as “Add/remove software” or something with a similar wording. Even if you don’t know what a package manager is, at least you still know what you’re going to do and that’s something new users would probably be looking for.

For the command line argument, yes, you could still encounter Linux in a totally command-line kind of environment but a lot of distros give you the option to choose anyway. Most distros have a window manager or a desktop environment that could help users navigate throughout the system. You could counter this by showing your Linux setup and letting your friend use it. There’s nothing like an actual demonstration of what it’s like to use Linux. At least you could answer your friend’s questions by showing actual applications and tools to use. It would be educational and it could convince your friend more. On the spot you could look for the kinds of apps your friend needs/is looking for.

For the last one: Being a Linux user is not like getting into a religion or cult. It might feel like it to some who hear so many talks about the philosophy of Linux and free and open source software. Maybe it’s time to balance it out by showing how the community interacts. If you’re active in the Linux community maybe you could introduce your friend/colleague to other Linux users locally just so your friend knows who else are using Linux and what they think about it personally. It’s not just all about the intellectual stuff, after all.

Post from: New Linux User

Their setup is basically:
Ubuntu LTSP + thin clients + servers

Their applications:
OpenOffice.org
Firefox
Typing Tutor
Virtual Machines for Windows-based classroom learning applications

Not all of their software are already free/open source but still, I think that this is awesome anyway. At least they are starting with something within their school district. The schools’ needs are being overseen by Logical Networking Solutions so that they could have a transition that’s as smooth as possible.

I hope that this project will become very successful and that their transition will become smoother as the months go by. Aside from that I hope that projects like this would encourage others to write learning software that students can benefit from. It would take the cooperation between educators and software developers and I hope to see more learning software that is free and open source in the years to come.

Post from: New Linux User

Dell Latitude. Image credit: Dell's official Flickr account.

School’s starting in my country in two weeks’ time and now I read about Dell Latitude 2100s as K-12 friendly. Interestingly enough these nifty netbooks have rubberized casings so that it won’t easily slip from the hands of students. And the units are quite colorful too.

Dell - www.dell.com

Some nifty features:

• optional touchscreen
• webcam (say, “Hi, Teacher!”)
• labeling window – personalize your netbook so they know who owns which unit
• network activity light that warns teachers if their students are using the WiFi connection instead of focusing on their studies
• you could get it with Ubuntu, instead of Windows
• 3-cell or 6-cell battery
• option to choose between an SSD and a HDD – if you know your learners might be better off with an SSD, why not?

If you’ve been imagining a future with students all using laptops and netbooks, it would have to be designed specifically for them. Not just the software that they will use but the design of the unit itself. I think that Dell’s considerations in the design they have are well thought of.

Here I am crossing my fingers that more schools will embrace the Linux-powered units!

Post from: New Linux User

Things I liked about it:

• It’s in a comicbook format so it’s more like a story.
• It has a penguin character! And he’s explaining Linux to the user.
• The words are easy to understand.
• There are ’screenshots’ in the comic.
• Free Software concepts are being explained to users.

Things that need to be worked on:

• The illustrations’ lines aren’t as clean as I’d wish them to be.
• It gets a little too wordy in some frames.
• List of references could be added at the last page.
• List of terms could be added at the last page.

It’s a bit wordy in the first issue maybe because the contains a lot of introductory concepts like what Linux is, what GNU is, graphical user interfaces, etc. But at least it’s concise.

This is a good alternative material for beginners who feel intimidated by textbooks and online guides. Though I think this might be a good story to develop in animation. If this is animated, there’s a better way to show the flow of the instructions. It could also be used to focus on certain screenshots.

Post from: New Linux User

*sigh*

Reasons mentioned:

• Compatibility with Flash sites
• Compatibility with other software

And speculations seem to imply that the move by Intel to sell the Classmate PC for a low price was one of the triggers. Why? Because consumers would buy that. And it seems like this shift to Windows XP would help them sell them machines better.

Here’s the thing: Windows XP would make them change their hardware. They need more harddrive space for the operating system alone. Another: How much would those modified machines cost?

Here are some suggestions which I think could help the OLPC team:

• Why not team up with a group such as Asus? I’d rather see them do that than ditch Linux in favor of Windows. Then again, maybe the teaming up with a particular hardware manufacturer would tie them down further? And after what Intel did, they probably felt really bad already so maybe not this one.
• Prepare other educational materials which would cater to the target audience. There are groups out there who could be tapped as resources for materials if they’re worried about educational sites out there.
• Don’t give up yet! Rather than going with the Windows-way, find out if there are other groups who’d be supporting them in their endeavors. Their project could change the way of the world, so why not go through with the changes?

Maybe I sound idealistic but I don’t think that cheap laptops in the hands of children should be the end-all be-all. There are other benefits of having an open source operating system and applications in the hands of these students. We don’t just want them to have the tools. We want them to have the freedom and power in other aspects as well. I don’t know what else to say except that I am disappointed with today’s news.

Post from: New Linux User

I’ve just opened up The Linux Learning Station. What is it? Well, it’s like New Linux User but with videos. I figure I can write a thousand lines on how to use iwconfig or how to edit the /etc/fstab file, but a quick two-minute video will get the process and information out just as good (if not better) and also be more useful to the large percentage of non-English speaking Linux users.

I just received my Aiptek DV4500 video camera the other day and after learning the ropes I’ve managed to make the first video on The Linux Learning Station. It’s not as high quality as I had hoped, but it’s legible. Head on over and check out how to use iwconfig, ifconfig, and dhclient to configure and bring up a wifi network card in Kubuntu 5.10.

On the off chance that any of you have any tutorial-type videos that you’d like to contribute to the project under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license please let me know (email at top of middle sidebar) and we’ll get ‘em in there.

Help spread the word – learning Linux just became easier (I hope).

Post from: New Linux User