[Fsf Education] Free Software in education.

[S.C.Phatak]

Hi,

>From what  I see from these emails, there are two aspects, one is the
details of the stuff to be put in computers and the other is what stuff to
include in the course. The details on the first will depend on what you
have in second.

Since the target group is students upto 10th, the aim should be to make
the students familiar with the computers and tell them what different
things one can do with them. I think following things should be included
in the course.

	1. games. children love them and they do remove the fear of
computers.

	2. document preparation. most will be using the computers for this
purpose in future so this should be introduced. One can have interesting
projects for them ( Tendulkar's records ) for motivation

	3. simple programming for arithmetic calculations. Not everybody
will be expected to excel in it but that is one of the uses. I don't think
a particular language should be emphasized. 

	4. some graphics applications. Visual impression is better than
looking at numbers. One can introduce bar, pie charts etc, plotting of
simple curves etc. 

	5. If one can have mupad or some similar package, one can
introduce doing algebra with computers. Mupad is free for educational
purposes. I am not aware of any such package in free domain.

I think generally the course should be designed as a number of small
projects, each introducing the above mentioned aspects ( and more
). 

Shashikant Phatak

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	S. C. Phatak			

	Institute of Physics			ph.(H)	( 0674 ) 301444

	Bhubaneswar 751 005  			email-	phatak@iopb.res.in