I’ve been searching for examples of Edubuntu being used in schools. I’m interested in lessons and best practices from real world deployments. Unfortunately, I’m only seeing references to Edubuntu as a distro positioned for schools not as a distro being used in schools.
Does anyone have an example they can point me to?
Hello @z1ness,
Edubuntu could be use in schools in the computer labs with many programs related to education preinstalled and teaching about offimatic to students with LibreOffice, Science, Math, Literature and many topics with software and games packaged in the repositories. I think that could be an example of its usage as GNU/Linux distro in schools.
Hello @z1ness,
I’ve been working with a non-profit group up in Canada that distributes Ubuntu powered devices to schools all across North America. We have a few thousand in active use daily in K-12 classrooms. There is a similar group out of North Carolina, US that are doing something very similar.
Is there something in particular that you’re looking for? I can certainly help provide you with some deployment and classroom integration practices.
Thank you @aaronprisk. I’m looking quite broadly at this point.
I am interested in lessons from the whole journey (school deciding to use Linux, selecting deployment config, integrating into existing school systems, onboarding teachers/students/admin) as well as real world use cases in a school setting.
I’m especially interested in integration to support the delivery of lessons for both student and teacher roles. There are tools like Moodle that provide a full learning management system and I wonder if anyone has bundled it all together.
Finally, I am interested to learn about specific lesson plans that use Linux and opensource apps, ideally lesson plans targeted to elementary/primary school classes.
Thank you @jathangl, I have seen general references like you provide. However, I am looking for specific real world examples.
I don’ t have any links, but the major reason we pushed for a Raspberry Pi release was because there is an entire school computer lab in Mexico using Raspberry Pi computers and was running the last LTS of Ubuntu. This seemed like an excellent use case for Edubuntu.
As far as I know, they now use Edubuntu 24.04 LTS on those computers, and could be upgrading them to the Raspberry Pi 5 in the future.
As it stands, Edubuntu is, from certain points-of-view, relatively new (there was a 9-year gap between its release for 14.04 LTS and 23.04), so adoption is somewhat slow in the educational sector as mindshare increases. A great majority of people out there don’t know it exists, and those that do think it’s still dead or don’t know it was resurrected.
@z1ness I wrote this article for the Ubuntu Blog last year that may be of interest. I delve a bit into the deployment that I oversaw. At the bottom of that article, we also have a link to a webinar where we spoke a bit more in depth about Ubuntu in education use cases.
I would love for @mrdobbie to share his perspective as a teacher who actively deploys and educates using Ubuntu and other open source technologies.
I’ll add a caveat that I didn’t explicitly use Edubuntu at the time as it was abandoned. Erich and his wife Amy, who serves as the new project lead, have done a really stellar job bringing it back to life and reinvigorating that project.
I have been working with Aaron Prisk for the past 6+ years implementing a student-tailored Xubuntu image in classrooms at our school, Centennial Sr PS in Brampton, Ontario Canada.
We use a Xubuntu FOG server to deploy both student-tailored & at-home images for students to use in classrooms (or at home).
Currently, our school has 200+ Linux computers deployed to support student learning.
The devices are supported by our student Tech Stewards who service the devices throughout the year.
We receive donated computers and install our Linux image onto them.
We have also expanded our support to a local charity, letsgettogether.ca who uses our at-home (free) image on their donated computers for those in need throughout the greater Toronto area.
Currently, our Tech Stewardship group is an integrated course as part of our school’s regional science and technology program. Students choose Tech Stewardship as a course option, and learn about Linux design and implementation as part of our course. Students are assigned 5 different modules within the course related to: Computer Hardware, Linux Server Use, Creating a Linux Boot Disk, Making a Student-Tailored Linux Image, Making a Linux FOG Server.
I’m happy to answer any questions you have regarding our work.
Take care,
Andy Dobbie
@aaronprisk, that article covers alot of what I was looking for. It’s encouraging to hear about what you and @mrdobbie have done.
I note that you both mention student images specifically. Do you know if there has been work putting together a teacher focused config, something that supports lesson planning and delivery?
I’m working towards a picture of turnkey, repeatable deployments, so I’ll have more focused questions in the future.
Thanks for your insights.
This is something @amypenguin definitely wants to do, but right now nothing exists in the Linux world for that. If someone were to write something for this, we would be including it in a heartbeat.
As far as deployments go, you’re free to customize Edubuntu as you need internally using something like cubic, or even make cloned machine deployments using clonezilla. Those are just two thoughts off the top of my head.
Thank you @mrdobbie, the work you and @aaronprisk have done is impressive. Integrating the students into the lifecycle support is a brilliant way to get the students involved in their school and give them valuable skills for their future.
Same question I asked Aaron, do you know if any teacher focused config has been created to support lesson plan creation, delivery, student progress tracking, and other teaching related roles?
Thanks again for sharing your experience.
@eeickmeyer , thanks for the quick reply. I mentioned Moodle above but haven’t looked into it deeply yet. I’ll share anything I find.
As far as Moodle goes, it looks like something that would have to be snapped due to the web server requirements. I mean, on cursory glance, it couild probably be packaged, but simply installing it wouldn’t do the trick without a proper web server.
I point to the Nextcloud Snap as something that can be deployed as it contains all of the web server components all-in-one. I can imagine this would be similar.
That’s only upon cursory glance, but it would be much more complicated to package than a simple desktop application.