[conspire] computers for Wilson Elementary

[George Pope]

Judy

You flatter me calling me the computer guy. My friends are indeed but 
I'm just a user.

What about the "ancient computers" that you do have? p11s, p111s? 
memory? hard drive size? There are nice small programs such as Puppy 
Linux that I'm sure will make your students happy, especially if we can 
get a real computer guy to network these and possible newer machines so 
that students can do cooperative work and have fun too.

Re: mega installafests how many pc's ideally for Wilson? Ed Cherlin may 
say go the one laptop per child route. I believe he is pointing to the 
time when pc's will be more fully incorporated in to class room activities.

So an old dusty pc in the corner will not get it. You might study 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Communication_channels#Forums
and passim to get an idea as to what is out there. Probably we will need 
larger scale presentations to get folks thinking about potentials.

george

George,

My schedule as a first year teacher does not allow me to go to any Linux
meetings. Leaving our computer lab aside for the moment, we have many
classrooms that could put computers to use. In my third grade pod, there are
5 classrooms. Three computers per class would be a good number. There are
two 4th grade classes and three fifth grade classes and they could all use 3
computers a piece. Lower grades are not as high a priority. *We could easily
utilize 50 computers at our school alone.*

Thanks,

Judy 


Just saw this message. Local installafest are usually on Saturdays, one maybe two a month. Cabal in Palo Alto 2nd and 3rd saturdays 4-11 pm. O'Reilly a major Linus-Unix software book publisher in Sebastopol has at least one a month. 

There are 2 sides to this coin. A couple of years ago math professor Mrs. Chow at Golden Gate Univerisity in SF won a $500000 Gates grant for improving education in poor W. China. She advised not to bother with pc's in Ghana, 'they will collect dust and be stolen' but to put money into teachers possessed of working world experience who could impart fool proof or at least better marketable skills to primary and secondary school students. She surveyed employers, made sure students learned what they wanted and got them to hire students from subject schools. 

Now I need to talk to her about OLPC etc. 

george





Judy Greenspan wrote:
> Dear George,
>
> Got your call yesterday or the day before but didn't read my email for 
> two days. Now I understand that you are the computer guy. Let me know 
> if anything surfaces for Wilson. We would love to have some newish 
> computers. We do have a computer lab. We also have ancient computers 
> in every classroom. I would love to dump mine for ones that the 
> children can use, learn on and have fun with. If you call again, now I 
> will know who you are. Sorry. Take care,
>
> Judy Greenspan
> (510) 813-4687
>
>
>