KTouch at school
Samstag, 07 Februar 2009I just read Plágio Astrals frustrated post and felt like I have something to cheer him up a bit, and also everybody else that suffers from that type of frustration.
My story begins when I asked my son yesterday how school went that day and what homework he needs to do over the weekend. I was particularly nosy because he just started to attend a class on touch-typing, and I wanted to know what he thought about it. If I’d just asked him straight away he’d probably not said anything (like any kid I know), but this way I was steering him in the right direction.
To make a long story short, he finally mentioned a very interesting detail when he said that they use the same program that we have at home as a tipp-trainer at school. So I asked if they really work with KTouch since we are Linux only at home. “Oh, yes “, he said. There is only some sort of School-Linux, as he put it, running on every computer because teachers made so many bad experiences with Windows that it was not worth the effort and the money. Anyway, when they start to have informatics classes, he said, their teacher informs all the parents of that class that they ought to let their kids install Linux alongside their existing Windows installation, if they haven’t done so yet, so that they can do their homework properly.
If that’s not something really encouraging! And it shows us just how important e.g. KDE-Edu or Skolelinux are.
We just must not be too impatient. 
Tags: KDE, planet-kde
February 7th, 2009 at 22:55
Cool! When our eldest was in the first year of high school, the ICT teacher told her to get Windows in order to do her homework properly, and if she couldn’t, to stay behind after class and do it on the school computers. She, being a kid of ours, was stubborn and did as much of the work as possible on Linux and scraped a passing grade.
Two years later, this same teacher is asking this same kid to convert the assignments that he and another student have already converted to OpenOffice to Google Docs to see what can and can’t be done with that. There is some hope, it seems; though the school is still Windows-only.
February 8th, 2009 at 00:59
Actually that does help a little. ;D
and I`m certainly not impatient, I`m trying to install linux on those machines for about 2 years. hopefully my work as a kde-developer will boost linux adoption there. =)
And congrats on your achievements. happy to read. =)
February 9th, 2009 at 02:11
Are they giving the kids choices of decent layouts like colemak or dvorak or are they shoehorning them into the garbage that is qwerty? My touch typing classes were all completely worthless to me because when I actually came to care about typing, the first thing I did was unlearn qwerty.
February 9th, 2009 at 09:25
Well, I’m typing NEO here
But since all keyboards are usually qwertz in this part of the world them kids better start with that now, I’d say.
But at least my boy knows of the existenz of alternative layouts
October 23rd, 2009 at 21:58
Two years later, this same teacher is asking this same kid to convert the assignments that he and another student have already converted to OpenOffice to Google Docs to see what can and can’t be done with that. There is some hope, it seems; though the school is still Windows-only..Thank you for the information you have given