The American schools and American kids are not zooming ahead on these important fronts as others are. We have a chance to lead the world -- and we are still taking baby steps.
Korea brings homegrown open source to schools | CNET News.com: "The South Korean government is rolling out a homegrown open-source platform to 10,000 schools in the country.
The project, called the New Education Information System, is built on a Korean-developed version of Linux that already services 190 schools in the heart of capital city Seoul.
It would be easy for a mayor or even a state senator to make a dispatch and claim that Linux is a preferred platform. The open-source movement is strong in some sectors in this city -- like at CMU for one example.
A Korean, Chinese, and Japanese shell in an Asian version of Linux that could read any programis a great dream for many and various reasons.
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2 comments:
From another source:
I forwarded this to another parent who doesn't like the idea of his child's elementary school moving to Linux because "Microsoft Office is what they'll be using when they grow up". Along with the article, I noted that when I was in elementary school, we watched TV on US-made TVs and listened to vinyl records on US-made record players, neither of which exist anymore...
By the way, I set up a conference call yesterday with our four principals, who are either switching to Linux K12LTSP or considering it, and two other US principals who switched to Linux/K12LTSP for their schools, and as expected they only had good things to say about it. Some of the interesting comments that came out of the conversation:
1. One K12LTSP principal said a hidden benefit of Linux/OSS was that it provided for more 'inquiry-based' learning, since her high school
students could examine the code and even work with it if they chose. This resonated well with our principals since most of them are working on
international baccalaureate (IB) status for their elementary schools.
2. The other K12LTSP principal said he still had Windows 95/98 PCs at his school in order to run legacy Windows software, but that he would not let them be connected to the Internet as a measure to prevent viruses and other malware. The Linux thin clients are the only ones that can access the Internet.
3. Another important comment, since our principals have schools in fairly high income districts, was that one of the K12LTSP principals also had mostly students from higher income families, and could have put any system they wanted in place, cost was not really the issue, performance and reliability were, and that's why they chose Linux/thin clients.
Daniel
from another source:
Posted by Steve Outing 2:12:41 PM
Korea Sets the High-Tech Standard
Today's report from the University of Missouri's Clyde Bentley, who's
attending the Ohmynews International Citizen Reporter's Forum
(http://english.ohmynews.com/english/eng_section.asp?article_class=11) in
South Korea, will make many a geek worldwide envious. He reports on taking
a bus tour of Korea's technology centers.
As he notes, "The common wisdom among many Internet hands is that a glance
at Korea will give one a good idea of what technology will look like in
the United States in three to five years. ... If what I saw is in store
for use soon, prepare for technology that is both bigger and smaller,
simpler and more complex, outlandishly wild and fiendishly simple."
At the official Korea high-tech showcase, called the "Hall of Ubiquitous
Dreams," the idea is to "so thoroughly integrate technology into everyday
life that using it becomes like breathing or eating." Bentley says, "The
hall was spectacular. Room after room was littered with computer
screens -- but screens you would hardly recognize.
"My favorite gizmo was an ordinary-looking bulletin board in the kitchen.
Because mail and other documents in Korea are increasingly laced with RF
data chips, you could thumbtack a junk-mail letter to the board and it
would read it and even offer a response without ever breaking the envelope
seal."
You can read the rest of Bentley's observations about Korea's tech dreams
at his post on MyMissourian.com
(http://www.mymissourian.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&am
p;id=923&Itemid=109) .
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