I was thrilled with the comments that I read following yesterday’s posting about Linux distros in the classroom. I am in the process of trying a couple of them, and I wanted to put it out there for everyone else.
I downloaded and burned the ISO for FreeEduc-CD and ran it as a Live CD, albeit for just a few moments. Now, I am a Spanish and Latin teacher by trade, and speak wonderfully fluent Spanish. Troublingly, it didn’t help me too much when I realized that the ISO I had burned was in French. It is also worth noting that the ISO alone weighed in at just under 700 MB. That doesn’t sound too thin. I know it is geared towards primary schools, but I am not sure it has anything on Edubuntu, especially once you add Childsplay to the mix. That, along with GCompris provide lots of wonderful educational software. I have explored the apt-get repositories as well as the Synaptic Package Manager (the GUI for apt-get) and once you enable unsupported software, you find a plethura of quality educational tools. But I’ll save that for another post, detailing Edubuntu and all of the fun stuff available for fairly simple installs.
So last night I downloaded Puppy Linux at the suggestion of my wonderful commenters and booted it for just a second. I liked how quickly it booted and the nagging configuration questions did not bother me. Tragically I was interrupted by bicycle time, as my precious 4 year old calls it, so I went trotting off in my shorts and tennis shoes to get a little exercise. So here I sit in my classroom, waiting for Puppy to “woof” signaling that it has completed bootup.
I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for your readership!
