What’s happening in Edubuntu for Oneiric?

Edubuntu at UDS

Today we had a session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest covering the work in Edubuntu for the next release cycle. Not all of the items are assigned to someone yet (especially with the documentation), so if you’d like to get involved, please give us a ping on IRC or mailing list.

Fixes, improvements and some low hanging fruit

Translations:

  • Make LTSP Live translatable
  • Add ability  to set LTSP language from installer
  • Add Ubiquity page to add additional languages at install time
  • Edubuntu installer options itself should be translatable, main inclusion will probably be the easiest fix
  • Fix a translation bug in LDM
  • Investigate translation of Edubuntu.org, and whether we can migrate to Drupal 7 first before that to prevent future migration headaches

Installer /Upgrades specific:

  • Offer to create a new LTSP chroot on upgrades
  • Use the right wallpaper with the install-only environments (currently uses the Ubuntu default)
  • Add wubi support to DVD

Documentation:

  • Troubleshooting guide for common problems and questions found in schools and similar environments
    • Why can’t I access certain websites (who to install non-free flash, sun-java, etc)
  • Howtos:
    • How to configure smart boards and similar devices
    • How to install and maintain Moodle (yes, we’re giving up on packaging web stuff)
    • How to install and maintain Koha
    • How to install and maintain open-school.org
    • How to install common wine apps used in schools that work, list those that we know don’t and link to wineappdb

Ongoing work through this cycle:

  • Monitor the Gnome 3 transition, look at what’s broken in tools such as Pessulus, Sabayon and Nanny and get involved where possible
  • Improve Edubuntu Live Welcome slides for the Live USB and WebLive environments, make it more generic so that other derivatives could use the underlying scripts as well

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

If our goal is to bring the best of educational free software available together in one easy to install system then I think this release will get us there, but where to next? We want to grow the Edubuntu community but we can’t do that unless we add some new and exciting things to our to do list. One thing that has come up over and over again and that I bought up in the UDS session but we got no answer for is in which direction we should start going next. Should Edubuntu focus more on making system administration and management of computer labs in schools easier and simpler? Or should we focus on education and pedagogy and make the system better geared towards being a great teaching tool? We could even alternate between a focus on each of those for each release cycle, but it would be nice to get some big dream ideal world goals down that we could chase in Edubuntu. I think that we’re past the point where we should ‘take it safe’ when planning new Edubuntu  features, I think we’re in the position now to take some big decisions and grow our community to make it happen.

Any thoughts or ideas?

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3 Responses

  1. Laserjock says:

    Awesome stuff Edupeople!

    Looks like a lot of great work is paying off. Keep having fun with it!

  2. Great work and program.

    Is there any plan to integrate educators (teachers, pedagogical consultants) ?

    Also, I know that Edubuntu is very intresting for Special Need students : do you think it would be possible to have a selection of software useful for special need students ?

    Ben

  3. I’m sorry I missed the meeting, it sounds very useful.

    So, the thing about managing a set of desktops is that we don’t really have all of the tech sorted out (some, but not quite all). I guess Edubuntu server edition is out of the question? ;-) Keep it the same as Edubuntu (with desktop) but with some client management pieces?

    I guess it depends if the LTSP supports requires Edubuntu to already be a server, or if you do have a client separation somehow.

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