Education category

I have not heard of a single university computer store that carries _any_ type of Linux preloads.

Exposure to Ubuntu is a great educational experience due to the lack of artificial barriers to learning about the underlying system (source is available). The fact that preloaded machies are not commonly available runs counter to a university's central mission.

The popularity of MacOS on university campuses in the 1990's was largely due to aggressive educational discounts and dealmaking.

What would it take to change this??

Would be really nice if Canonical make offers and proposals programs to governments of informatic education in general, on public schools, not only that, but included in that programs, along with the good Edubuntu, trained professionals to assist teachers on the informatic laboratories on the first months, and these Canonical trainers could teach and prepare some teachers and students to replace the Canonical trainers on the basic daily informatic issues. I think it would be a good thing on under development countries, and why not, super developed countries too.
And not only in base education, improve some features on Edubuntu to attend some university needs, and offer similar programs to these public universities too.

It would be nice to have a one stop place to look for the many available education books available. I think lack of awareness that free books exist is slowing their advance and it would nice for Ubuntu too.

At the moment it's not easy for schools to make the decision to migrate to Ubuntu because of the lack of support and knowledge. I think Canonical should come up with a package deal where they provide all services for a migration to our favourite OS, with a focus on schools and administrations (which are quite different from business clients).

This would surely provide a boost in popularity with kids and they would naturally be more enclined to use it on their own computers afterwards.

If we're serious about getting schools to switch to Edubuntu, I think we need to move it along a little more. The website still says Happy new year. o-o; We needs some strong features in it to make schools WANT to switch from Windows.

In a time when everything is going more and more digital the schools slowly start to follow. I think Ubuntu should be a frontrunner in digitalising school, let them realize that in order to get every kid a laptop with Windows they need to pay an awful lot of money for the licenses.
I suggest this: Create a program for Edubuntu that can be used to make homework. It synchronises with the server when a pupil is at school so it's automatically checked if he has done the homework. Needed information can be offered by Avahi.

The main reason why 90% of world's population is using windows is that they are afraid of Linux.
Increasing market share is possible by explaining people that Ubuntu is not only for geeks.
Therefor on Ubuntu website should be:
-e books
-tutorials and even video tutorials explaining how to work in different programs.

The calculator has a limit. For example, it cannot give an approximation to 175! while it is only 174 multiplications. I remember that Windows XP's calculator could do any calculation (but warned when a long calculation time was expected).

I am a university student, and I run a dual-boot machine solely because some university software will only run on windows or mac (mostly just windows). I'm not just talking about an office suite, there are other things, like lab paper submission software, special software used in engineering, math, and other classes.

Find out from universities what type of software their students need for classes. Work with these companies for real native Linux versions. I don't care if I pay a license fee for it, I just want to be able to do my homework without booting to windows.

The ONE big complaints that I get from my Windows IT friends is that have tried Ubuntu/Linux but they don't know how to do basics.

I would love to see a help document that is geared more towards the competent IT crowd.

The doc would cut to the more technical oriented solutions.

Adding Ubuntu to Active Directory
How the sound system works with basics
How the Video works
How to restart a service
How to add a driver (modprobe)
How to access safemode (single user mode)
How to remotely connect
How to renew my IP address
How to spot system errors (logs, dmesg, ect)

Put Geogebra in the repositories

Description

GeoGebra is a free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for schools that joins geometry, algebra and calculus. It received several international awards including the European and German educational software awards.

http://www.geogebra.org

Update-manager is a great system but it's not very informative to non-geeks. I can see a simple fix which includes the number of bugs fixed in the information about each package, which could be displayed in a column in the list of package updates available. This would give basic users an appreciation for the fact that package updates are constantly improving Ubuntu through each update.

Any alternate suggestions which could give everyday users a more personable experience with the update manager than the current "Description of Update" field which says things like "login.c: ignore SIGPIPE when creating an error email..."?

In gcalctool (the Calculator that comes with GNOME), there are no color on the buttons, all buttons are same.
On Windows calculator, they have red and blue colors on button, to make them look different, so its easier to use.
Example numerical buttons 0-9 have one color, while function buttons such as */+- have another color.

I got an email today about Sun Student Courses ( http://www.sunstudentcourses.com/ ). It's a Moodle courseware thing which gives you PDF certificates if you complete a course (which consist of PDFs to read and quizzes for assessment - it doesn't even require that you even use OpenSolaris).

I figure Ubuntu could do a similar thing, with a basic end-user introduction course, a basic server administration course, maybe word processing/spreadsheets (with OOo), introduction to programming in [language], and things along those lines. This probably won't appeal most advanced users, but it's a nice little achievement so people can say more than "I can use Ubuntu", but maybe put "passed Introduction to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop course" on their CV/resume.

If there's some kind of quality control before the content is uploaded to the main courseware site then we can have a small amount of well-made courses officially backed by Ubuntu. Some of the courses could be based on Ubuntu Training, and would provide a method of self-assessment for people who can't find anywhere that teaches Ubuntu.

Some courses could be based on the Ubuntu Training project. If we can have a few very well-made courses officially backed by Ubuntu then it could be good.

Preliminary Note: this brainstorm idea is complimentary to another: "idea #7359: applet that visually shows keyboard shortcuts used (useful in screencasts)": http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7359/
So if you vote for this idea, consider voting for the other one also!

I would like a Gnome applet that allows me to see visually whenever mouse buttons are pressed. For instance, a left-click could produce a semi-transparent, slowly-fading red "aura" around the mouse, which is known to represent a left-click. And a right-click could produce a blue aura. And a middle-click could produce a green aura. And rolling the mousewheel down could make a purple streaking arrow moving down, and rolling the mouse wheel up could produce an orange streaking arrow upwards. (In a preference menu, other colours could be selected instead).

This would be an indispensable teaching aid (say, in a Screencast, or when a teacher is teaching a classroom full of kids how to use Gnome, showing the Gnome Desktop on a data video projector).

Most of us use the mouse (plus additional keystrokes sometimes, like adding "Shift" to a click) instantly and automatically. Most of us would not pause to think that perhaps the people we are explaining things to might not know that way of using the mouse (+ optionally keyboard) yet. When we "bust a move" with more advanced mouse usage, without our audience/student knowing the trick we pulled, it can disorient and confuse them ("what the hell did he just do?"). And many of our audience and students have egos too large to pause us for clarification, thereby admitting they don't know that shortcut, thereby exposing themselves as being ignorant of something that is obvious to us.

So there's a lot of human nature and sociology wrapped up in this idea: this applet eases the sociological divide between the uber-linux-geeks who know all the mouse shortcuts, and those who are still learning, but aren't quite ready to openly admit it. Just think of all the hoardes of computer novices out there who would love to know about these shortcuts, and can only learn about them one at time over the years through slow, painful osmosis from their more-skilled peers. Especially think of all the newcomers to Linux (or Ubuntu) who are hungry for such new skills, and could learn much faster if a tool like this existed. There are tons of users (ie. almost all Baby Boomers I know personally, no offence to them) who don't even know what right-clicking is useful for, nor that it is even *possible* to middle-click the mouse by pressing the mousewheel down carefully, and not rotating it. Don't laugh, it's all too common.

[....]

UBUNTU can reach millions of schools and children by developing innovative methods which makes math learning a fun.

Wikipedia is a great reference. However, when travelling it's not always possible to have Internet connectivity.

Therefore, It would be nice to have Wikipedia for Schools packaged for local installation.

http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/wikipedia-for-schools.htm

It would be possible to just package the HTML.

However, it would probably be better to convert it to the GNOME-Help format, so the database can be searched properly.

The edubuntu-desktop-kde metapackage should refer to kolourpaint instead of gpaint. Gpaint is a GNOME application, while kolourpaint is KDE-based. Why include a GNOME-based program with the KDE version? It's not even in the GNOME version!

In order to get the trust of the users (which MS is lacking totally) I think we should clearly highlight was is currently not working perfectly. A link to the related launchpad.net page highlighting the bugs would really help...

StarDict are famous modular dictionaries, the best free dictionaries at all. (also with Qt GUI) In repositories, there are just few packages, at project's pages are many of them. Pleas, implement those packages to the main repository.