Free software in schools. Download this from here http://www.divshare.com/download/4053521-61e

From Farida Umrani mailtofarida@gmail.com

I am working with Prof. Sridhar Iyer at Dept of Computer Science, IIT Bombay on content development for school computer science based on Edubuntu . We will have the content for elementary class ready in 2008. I am sending you a draft of a textbook for class I (the file is bulky; hence split and send in two mails). [DOWNLOAD FROM URL ABOVE] At present, I am implementing this curriculum in one of the pilot schools. We have included Scratch as a programming language for students in Grade 3 & 4. Currently we are focusing on elementary classes and plan to scale it up in the next academic year.

We are facing difficulties in getting the teachers familiar with open source. Most schools do not have a system administrator or even a regular Internet connection to get the regular updates and prefer an installable CD that gives them everything. But to a windows user, this does not appear intuitive and hence they are put off by it. I wanted to know about your experience with Goa schools? I have read that GCSP trained engineering students and teachers. Did these students help the local schools? We announced a training program for school teachers, but got poor response and therefore deferred it. Did you face similar problems? How did you deal with them?

I myself have a Psychology background... and it has taken me several hours of work and reading up the forums to understand the installation and getting all the dependencies right. However, what is encouraging is that students have received the open source applications very well. I hope to learn from your experience at Goa. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Ym/Gmailtalk: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org | fred@bytesforall.org Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9970157402 ----------------------------------------------------------