I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
Fedora has an <a href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/edu/">Education spin</a>, though it seems to not be up to date since the download links point to a Fedora 12 version, but openSUSE has <a href="http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Education-Li-f-e">Education L-I-F-E</a> and the Ubuntu-based <a href="http://edubuntu.org/">Edubuntu</a> appear to be based on recent releases. Could these not have been somehow improved for targetted age group(s)?
I can understand to want to make it easy to install and use for the non-technical administrators, but a lot of work has gone into these existing distributions and their parent distributions to do just that. In addition, these distributions have accumulated a wealth of documentation over the years from people with varying technical skills.
If the interface is custom that may be good for the kids while they are in school, but shouldn't they learn some of the tools that they will run across outside of school? My daughter's school uses Google Apps for Education and while it isn't the best (Google lock-in), she is at least using tools that she can and will probably run across outside of school.
Wouldn't the effort be better spent improving the current selection of apps; maybe with specialized skins (interface) for different age groups, improving their functionality or developing applications that cover fields not currently being addressed?
At work I don't have much of a choice, I have to use Outlook. It isn't bad, and there are a number of features I do like about it when connected to an Exchange server. When not connected to an Exchange server (e.g. via IMAP), then those benefits are reduced.
For my personal emails, I use the web interface because it is consistent whether I am checking at work in the browser, at home or even on the Chromebook.
It also means that I am not tethered to a specific system or OS to feel like I have all of the benefits there is to offer. (e.g. if I like a particular view, I need to set that to all of the email clients on each of my systems to be consistant).
I also find the web interface to be faster and well integrated with calendars, contacts and more. At home I have a slow Internet connection and in the browser the emails are just links until I click on them. I do not have to wait for them to download before viewing them or their attachments.
What I wonder is when somebody will come out with a web-based interface which you can connect to multiple web-based email services and have the consistency of webmail with the possible additional features like a client.