Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

It dawned on me last night as I was madly researching everything that there is to know about Ubuntu and Edbuntu that when a teacher has an idea that they share with me they have no idea the amount of energy and mind power I expend to get their goal accomplished.

Recently a teacher was inquiring about running the open source OS Edbuntu on donated computers in his class as he wanted to have more access to the internet to use and discover all the potential that Edmodo and other cloud based systems had to offer in his class on a daily basis. Long story short, any devices that are brought into the building that will use any sort of district resource, whether it be electricity, internet, software, time, technical assistance, etc has to be approved by the district tech coordinator ( and with good reason). So his request, though well thought out and shared, was denied.

Both the building principal and myself saw what the teacher was trying to accomplish and we conversed about other options that would be available, larger points that had to be addressed were addressed and we left it at that....sort of.  While at home, I had been tinkering with Ubuntu on an old computer we had and saw potential in resurrecting old laptops in our building, laptops that we already have that HAVE been approved by the district for use in the class room.  So I sent the teacher a DM letting him know that I was scheming up something which led him to my office this morning so I could share my idea.I am testing out Ubuntu on some of our older computers that we have in the building, which have various issues, which keep them out of the classroom and sitting around waiting to be parted out. If Ubuntu will run on these computers then they can be checked out to his classroom for him to use to further test what Edmodo can do for his class. He is comfortable enough to work with the OS and has used Edmodo on as close to regular basis with his teams shared laptops, but he is actively trying to pursue student use of laptops everyday, using Edmodo for classroom management and attempting to go paperless with a few other digital resources.

Now the testing begins. I've created a bootable CD and will try to isntall the OS on a laptop today and then we shall go from there.

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