[OS:N:] Open source home school

["Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart bmsi com>]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, "Gary Frederick" <gary frederick jsoft com> wrote:

> I'm interested.
> 
> I do not have a lot to say at the moment...  and We are active in the
> homeschool community so our mileage may vary. :-)
> 
> I would be interested in hearing what open source others have at their
> schools?

We home schooled for 15 years (now at a Classical private school for our
remaining little one).

For home school computing, I bought a $400 Dell server running Linux
(a Dell 500SC - decommissioned it last year, now have a Dell 440SC).
I installed LTSP (ltsp.org), which allows discarded low power PCs
to serve at thin clients.  Bulky CRT monitors were free/cheap, and are now free
since everyone is upgrading to LCD.  This provided 5 computer workstations
with a full complement of opensource educational software for $400.

Favorite apps: gcompris, openoffice, dosemu plus some old but excellent
DOS edutainment like Math Rescue and Word Rescue, tux typing.  (Note,
yes I purchased *Rescue - written by a homeschool mom.)

Now a days, our college age girls have their own laptops (running Fedora 9).
It is a real hassle making the retailer refund the Windows Tax when buying
a laptop.  (And kind of unfair since M$ sticks them with it.  But they need to
learn to stop signing contracts with the devil.)  You can avoid that by buying
one of the Ubuntu preinstalls - even if you don't run Ubuntu.  Unfortunately,
the pricing is the same as for a Windows preinstall for most vendors, but
it is the principle of the thing (and the vendor does have customization
costs if they do the OEM thing right and get all the right drivers loaded).

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart bmsi com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.