Hello,

I'm not a genuine KDE user, but I do use Linux and am a firm supporter of open source and standards.

I recently came into contact with some people running different primary schools. When I talked with these people I found out that a lot of schools these days (at least here in the Netherlands) are using outdated software (including software written for windows 3.0). Talking to these people I came to the conclusion that at the very least a fair percentage is willing to look into what other (opener) software has to offer, but aren't able to find a decent replacements or are stuck but contracts with the book-suppliers.

Through these talks I came to the KDE edu suite. Since I can't afford to look deeply into the entire documentation to find these answers and also because I want to get some insight from and to get some discussion with the people directly related to this project I post my questions here:

• How scalable is the project?
- How is the central maintenance of progress and grades for students?
- How easily can the content (and possibly the front-end) be altered to suit the specific needs of a teaching methodology?
- How closely is the (client side) back-end integrated into the kde/Qt project?

• How closely is the project related to publishers of schoolbooks?
• How actively are school approached about the existence of this project

I hope someone can give me some information concerning these questions and hopefully get some discussion going about how to make open source and open standards more common on schools.

Sincerely,

Martijn van Duren

I would recommend you ask the KDE Education people about this directly, on their mailing list: kde-edu@kde.org

Thanks for your responds, I will do so.

Here in British Columbia we have separate school boards for every little area of the province. I wish there was only one school board that had someone studing the areas raised in this post. Too many people makeing 6 figure incomes reinventing the wheel.

wretched_dutchman wrote:- How is the central maintenance of progress and grades for students?[/*]

For this purpose you may find Moodle better suits your needs.

The openSUSE Education project http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Education-Li-f-e supplies Moodle as well as a significant number of KDE Education programs.

I think a lot of schools would benefit. My cousin teaches in baltimore and the focus is definitely not on the kids learning, just about scoring on the test. We have a long way to come in terms of primary education.

kde would definitely help.