[K12OSN] Defending education usage for k12ltsp

[Joseph Bishay]

Hello,

Hope all is doing well.

So tomorrow I have to go into the school and meet with the new
principal, where I have to defend that the linux lab has some sort of
educational value. As the message that was left for me said, "All the
educational software on the market is for Windows."  This is
independent of the fact that the lab was running for the past year and
a half under the old administration, supporting their educational
needs with no problem.

Part of the problem is that she has a trusted advisor (not at the
school) who seems to have a lot of experience (years and years) with
computers is pushing this idea onto the principal. Seems they both
feel that only Windows can support the educational software that they
have heard of.

This seems to be an urgent issue, as they were about to go ahead with
the dismantling of the lab without even talking about it, so I only
have one chance before they decide to change all the machines to
Windows 98 (I have no idea how they will go about doing this, but the
machines cannot support anything more and that's what they have
suggested).

So what do you all think?  This is a small elementary school and I
know many other schools out there use k12ltsp - how do you deal with
this situation? I'm thinking 2 things - 1) many applications may
already exist for linux that I just need to show them or
download/install and show them and 2) maybe you know about windows
programs which could have previously required installation but now run
through a browser off a website and therefore no longer need Windows.

help!

Joseph