KDE@School (using FreeNX) aKademy 2007 3 rd of July Mario Fux The - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

KDE@School (using FreeNX) aKademy 2007 3 rd of July Mario Fux

The Overview The Demo ● The Me ● The School ● The Problem ● The Proposal ● The Present ● The Future ● The Evaluation ● The Statistics ● The End KDE@School - akademy 2007 2

The Me ● 28 years old student ● Education as a primary school teacher ● Education, CS and CL at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) ● Doing Free Software work since 1998 ● Mostly in the context of education and teaching ● Grown up in Ried-Brig in the Middel of the Alpes KDE@School - akademy 2007 3

The School ● Primary school Ried-Brig in the South of Switzerland ● Population: approx. 1800 human beings ● School: 8 classes and some more teachers ● A rather conservative region of Switzerland ● But the school used PCs for quite some time KDE@School - akademy 2007 4

The Problem ● At the beginning of 2005 ● Old computers (3-5 years old) with MS Windows 98 ● The kids liked it to reconfigure the system ● They don't have to much money ● Finally the teachers PCs crashed for a last time in his life KDE@School - akademy 2007 5

The Proposal (1 of 2) ● An application server thin-client solution with FreeNX on GNU/Linux ● The Server: a 1000 € PC with 2 GB RAM ● The Clients: old computers of the school ● The Software: – Debian GNU/Linux Sarge – KDE 3.3.2 or something – FreeNX and NXClient from nomachine.com KDE@School - akademy 2007 6

The Conditions (2 of 2) ● Their conditions: – The (proprietary) windows education software has to work on the new system – Internet, text processing, printing, etc. ● My conditions: – First: All the teachers must agree with the change to a new system (and feedback) – A possible participation in a research project or evaluation of me KDE@School - akademy 2007 7

The Present ● The system is in use since 2 years... ● Last year they bought 2 new servers because they wanted more clients ● There is a computer room and 2 or 3 clients in every classroom ● The pupils power the clients just off (no shutdown) ● The original school administrator changed KDE@School - akademy 2007 8

The Future ● NX session from at home ● An update to Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 Etch and therewith KDE 3.5.5 ● A Windows terminal server as an addition (see what I can do with WINE nowadays) ● Remote future: – Change to KDE 4.x – Exchange some proprietary education software with free alternatives KDE@School - akademy 2007 9

The Evaluation ● Done in the last week of this term ● 3 classes ● 3 teachers ● Done with questionnarys KDE@School - akademy 2007 10

The Statistics (1 of 7) ● 2 nd and 3 rd class: – 32 kids (14 male, 18 female) ● 4 th class: – 21 kids (11 male, 10 female) ● 6 th class: – 20 kids (unknown) ● Teachers from the 2 nd /3 rd , 4 th and 6 th class KDE@School - akademy 2007 11

The Statistics (2 of 7) Class 2+3 (absolute values) 30 27.5 25 good (all) 22.5 neutral (all) 20 bad (all) good (f) 17.5 neutral (f) 15 bad (f) 12.5 good (m) neutral (m) 10 bad (m) 7.5 5 2.5 0 PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC KDE@School - akademy 2007 12

The Statistics (3 of 7) Class 2+3 (mean and sd) 2 1.75 1.5 PC room 1.25 PC Programs 1 PC@home Same PC 0.75 More@PC 0.5 0.25 0 mean sd (all) mean (f) sd (f) mean sd (m) (all) (m) KDE@School - akademy 2007 13

The Statistics (4 of 7) Class 4 (absolute values) 22.5 20 17.5 good (all) neutral (all) 15 bad (all) good (f) 12.5 neutral (f) bad (f) 10 good (m) neutral (m) 7.5 bad (m) 5 2.5 0 PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC KDE@School - akademy 2007 14

The Statistics (5 of 7) Class 4 (mean and sd) 2 1.75 1.5 PC room 1.25 PC Programs 1 PC@home Same PC 0.75 More@PC 0.5 0.25 0 mean sd (all) mean (f) sd (f) mean sd (m) (all) (m) KDE@School - akademy 2007 15

The Statistics (6 of 7) Class 6 18 16 14 12 good (all) neutral (all) 10 bad (all) 8 mean (all) 6 4 1.8 1.7 2 1.4 1 0.95 0.3 0 PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC KDE@School - akademy 2007 16

The Statistics (7 of 7) Be happy, this was the last chart ;-). KDE@School - akademy 2007 17

The End Any further questions or remarks...? KDE@School - akademy 2007 18