http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com guidelines and check if your idea has been posted already! ]]> en-us Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/4045/
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??


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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/4045/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/4894/
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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/4894/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/2889/ 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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/2889/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3865/
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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3865/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3645/
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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3645/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3338/ 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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3338/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3624/ 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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3624/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/11639/

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/11639/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/2622/
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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/2622/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/7908/
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)


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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/7908/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/5709/
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

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/5709/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12748/ Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab.

http://www.sagemath.org/

Regards

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Bug #120527 : [Information on this bug will be retrieved soon]
]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12748/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/7364/ 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.

For example, if the Teacher uses Shift-click, the kids may not know which mouse + shortcut key sequence the teacher used (unless the teacher states verbally "and now I'll just press Shift-click to resize this object, maintaining its aspect ratio"). Thanks to the hypothetical implementation of brainstorm idea #7359 http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7359/), the word "Shift" could appear on the Gnome panel in bold, white text with a vivid red background, then slowly fade away after a few seconds, plus a red aura appears around the mouse pointer, also slowly fading away.

In this way, students can see each shortcut the teacher knows and uses (but doesn't bother to slow down and explain, which is usually the case).

This feature would also be really useful for anyone who is making video documentation about how to use the Gnome desktop (like is seen at Ubuntu ScreenCasts: http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/). Any fancy mouse usage would be self-evident. The screencast could also be smaller in size because the speaker doesn't have to waste time explaining the mouse usage verbally. In fact, just by watching the mouse move around, and seeing the shortcuts used, that could be documentation enough, without even hearing the voice of the person giving the demonstration.

This is especially useful when your native language is NOT English, thereby making all screencasts far more self-explanatory to those who cannot speak English.

Just think of all these other really useful mouse + keyboard shortcuts that would ideally appear in the same way, and how super useful it would be to the novice user if they could learn these:

- Ctrl + Click (To make a copy of a file as you drag its copy to some new place)

- Alt + Click (to move a window by grabbing it in the center, not by the titlebar, which is indispensable when the titlebar goes off the top of the screen, which sometimes happens on a small display)

- Right click (to show context menus)

- Middle Click (say, when opening new tabs in Firefox)

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/7364/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/8194/
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..."?

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/8194/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/6840/
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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/6840/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12880/
Doesn't have to be crazy, something for college students like me (electrical engineering) who don't feel like jumping on the band wagon of pirating/hacking/stealing bloated MS software.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/12880/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/6309/
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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/6309/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15568/
It comes with virtual chemicals like water, ethanol, ammonia, butane, helium, kerosene, acetone, calcium sulfate, acids, etc.

Then the user can mix two or more chemicals into a bottle and observe the following chemical reaction.

This would be a quick, easy, safe, cheap, and fun way to experiment with chemistry.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15568/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/9345/
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.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/9345/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15622/
This is not the same as a PCB builder... there's already free software versions of those. This is more like croc clips (now called Yenka http://www.yenka.com/en/Yenka_Electronics/). I'm into amateur robotics, and have looked for an open source program like this for a long time, but have been unable to find one.

Very simply you have a raft of electronic components (battery, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, simple mass produced chips, etc.), and you can connect them together by clicking the mouse to create virtual wires.

You then "turn on" the simulation, and it displays what would happen in real life - you can check voltage and current at every connection, etc.

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No attachments. ]]> Tue, 06-Jan-2009 00:00:00 UTC http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15622/