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

KDE@School (using FreeNX)

aKademy 2007 3rd of July Mario Fux

KDE@School - akademy 2007 2

The Overview

• The Me
• The Problem
• The Present
• The Evaluation
• The End
• The School
• The Proposal
• The Future
• The Statistics

The Demo

KDE@School - akademy 2007 3

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 4

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 5

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

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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

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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

• r evaluation of me

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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 9

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

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The Evaluation

• Done in the last

week of this term

• 3 classes
• 3 teachers
• Done with

questionnarys

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The Statistics (1 of 7)

• 2nd and 3rd class:

– 32 kids (14 male, 18 female)

• 4th class:

– 21 kids (11 male, 10 female)

• 6th class:

– 20 kids (unknown)

• Teachers from the 2nd/3rd, 4th and 6th class

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The Statistics (2 of 7)

PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC 2.5 5 7.5 10 12.5 15 17.5 20 22.5 25 27.5 30

Class 2+3 (absolute values)

good (all) neutral (all) bad (all) good (f) neutral (f) bad (f) good (m) neutral (m) bad (m)

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The Statistics (3 of 7)

mean (all) sd (all) mean (f) sd (f) mean (m) sd (m) 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2

Class 2+3 (mean and sd)

PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC

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The Statistics (4 of 7)

PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC 2.5 5 7.5 10 12.5 15 17.5 20 22.5

Class 4 (absolute values)

good (all) neutral (all) bad (all) good (f) neutral (f) bad (f) good (m) neutral (m) bad (m)

KDE@School - akademy 2007 15

The Statistics (5 of 7)

mean (all) sd (all) mean (f) sd (f) mean (m) sd (m) 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2

Class 4 (mean and sd)

PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC

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The Statistics (6 of 7)

PC room PC Programs PC@home Same PC More@PC 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

1.4 0.95 1 1.7 0.3 1.8

Class 6

good (all) neutral (all) bad (all) mean (all)

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The Statistics (7 of 7)

Be happy, this was the last chart ;-).

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The End

Any further questions or remarks...?