Whether the teacher knew what it was or not, she did the right thing. Take whatever is causing the disruption of class, tell them to shut up, and then deal with it after class.
Kind of like how some schools deal with atheism Obviously this teacher went to his pre-paid Microsoft sponsored anti-innovation luncheon.
She was way out of line in my opinion; 15 seconds on Google would have solved the issue. And whilst I don't know how classrooms are set up in the states, our schools have universal wireless with laptop computers in every classrom (one for each student, and one for each teacher). I'm thinking that these days this should pretty much be the case in just about every western country, and as such she could have had the whole thing sorted instantly.
its not that she knows feck all about Linux - but that She thinks she's an expert on Software economics Sad that I knew several teachers just like her
I can assure you that this is most definitely not the case for 99% of schools here in the US. Primary education in the US is woefully underfunded. Schools can't afford paper, let alone laptops for every child. A lot of schools have been able to get a single computer in each classroom, but most schools have a computer lab that everyone shares. Typically, each class is allowed an hour each week in which the instructor is supposed to teach fundamental computing skills, such as how to turn it on, how to open a document, and how to print. Don't forget, you're pretty tech savvy so it might very well take you 15 seconds in Google to find out all you need to know about an unfamiliar operating system. This teacher might not have such l33t Googling skillz. Besides, that completely ignores the basis for her actions. If a child is disrupting class, you identify and eliminate the cause of the disruption, then move on with the class. If she had stopped class to do a little impromptu research on the internet to find out some information about this Linux thing, she would have held up the class even longer. She did nothing wrong, in my opinion. -monkey
If you think people are stupid for not knowing what Linux is, don't ask about the number of people who incorrectly pronounce "Linux"!
I can back this up. Both my parents are teachers and I hear how hard it is to just get the basic teaching aides in the class room on a regular basis. Plus even if schools can afford such things there's always asshole kids who will not take care of the item, thus wasting the school's money. I agree the situation could have been handled differently, but what she did was right. Although, she could have handled it better maybe, she still needed to get rid of the distraction and thats exactly what she did.
As far as the classroom situation was concerned, I think she handled it well. As far as the email sent etc. she had a bit of a mare...
It's okay there are teachers in our school that think Mozilla Firefox is bad for the computer. -Sorry for the bad spelling i was typing from school, in IE with no spell checker, I'm know for my bad spelling.
That's interesting. Did you know there are geeks on technology forums that can't spell Mozilla Firefox? -monkey
not surprising (to an extent). some teachers do not even know what a ps/2 mouse is. most students in my IT class did not know what an operating system was (until the teacher told them a million times), or that internet explorer and mozilla firefox were not the only internet browser. a lot of adults are computer illiterate, relying more on the tech savvy IT staff that they work with. reading the follow up, what was not stated in the first article was the fact that the kid was being disruptive, she had done the right thing, by confiscating those disks.
No one with any sense is gonna disagree re last sentence, its her emailing the head honcho with her email showing such startling ignorance the furore is about imho. She should have confiscated discs to restore order then asap done some simple research to repudiate/confirm the students story. But her actions after confiscation were deserving of ridicule - its two seperate things really?
Yes! But as there are millions of people that cannae spell colour, maybe we can overlook the odd geek typo (obviouly not a teacher
Looking at the whole sentence, I'm inclined to think it wasn't an odd geek typo. If he can't be bothered doing a simple spell check to prevent misspelling the company and the product - never mind the lack of capitalization - then he has no place criticizing the teacher for her apparent ignorance of alternative operating systems. -monkey
The Americans have to be different, they don't drive on the other side of the road for nothing you know?
