Instructifeature: Reviving dead school computers, one operating system at a time
August 30, 2010
BY AARON FOWLES
This article also appears on LEARN NC.
If you’re a teacher, you’re probably familiar with the life cycle of a computer in a typical classroom. The first two weeks are magnificent. The computer works wonderfully and performs all its tasks very quickly. Shortly after the honeymoon, though, things go sour. Internet Explorer won’t load a website. The computer begins crashing frequently. A student managed to get a virus on the computer. The icons on the desktop are all messed up. The computer then spends a few years in this semi-usable state: It won’t run the newest applications or even load a YouTube video. Eventually, it won’t turn on at all. The computer ends up either unplugged in the back of the room or sitting in a closet.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way to invigorate those old computers and turn them back into machines that power teaching and learning. This method is totally free, relatively painless, community-supported, very stable, constantly updated, and secure. What could this magic solution be? The Linux operating system.
