Computer Science Teachers Association annual conference presentation.

[nplotnick]

I will be presenting at the annual Computer Science Teachers Association conference being held in Grapevine Texas this coming July. The topic is centered on how my students (I teach computer science at Everett HS in Everett MA) use WattOS to bring new life to old hardware.

For several years I have been using WattOS on all the old and donated hardware that I get. I have it running on everything from a 10 year old desktop with a Pentium D processor to HP laptops with AMD chips.

It's been a great experience for my students. In a shared computer lab where I have no ability to install or modify Windows XP systems, my students use WattOS bootable USB memory sticks to run the systems. They are really stunned to see just how fast some of the old Dells run compared to their Windows operating systems.

My next step is to develop some lessons that discuss how networks running LINUX work. So far I have my students using SSH connections to the Ubuntu server we installed earlier this year.

[blaze]

Great work nplotnick. Good luck with your presentation, and please let us know of how the conference went, if it is ok for you of course. 

[biffster]

That is very cool.......I am happy to help you in any way you like. That makes me feel very good.

If you would like me help, sponsor, talk to your students, etc. please let me know. I travel all of the US almost weekly. So who knows I might be in your part of the country sometime.

Regards,
biff

[nplotnick]

Biff,

I teach in Everett MA, just a few miles north of Boston and YES you are very welcome to visit. I am working with MassCAN, CODE.ORG and other groups that support Computer Science teaching both here in MA and elsewhere. There are a variety of schools that are teaching the Exploring Computer Science curriculum in the area.

Since I have an IT background, I decided I want to allow my students to know more than just making webpages. I had them install a LAMP server on a donated system. My experience in servers was heavily on Novell Netware, OS/2, Windows NT, Mac and just a little bit of Redhat. I was the IT specialist for PC Week for about 10 years.

In my classroom, I have to depend on a bunch of old Dell systems still running Windows XP. To get around the security limitations (I cannot change or install anything on these computers) I made USB boot disks with WattOS. The students reboot and run live. So far this is working fairly well. I have not worked much with LDAP but I think that it will be the next step. I want to replicate the Active Directory type environment for several reasons. If I can prove it works well, maybe I can get the district to migrate to LINUX on all of our old boxes. Most of our students just need a browser and Google Docs for most tasks. My WattOS sticks run so much faster than the XP on the hard drives.

I'll certainly need to ask some more questions as I get more deeply into LINUX based networking. Thanks to all for the support!

[nplotnick]

I will be attending and presenting at the  100 “superstar” teachers conference in Washington DC next week. The meeting is being sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). I will have the opportunity to speak to leading Computer Science teachers about how my students use WattOS. It will be a nice opportunity to get ready for the large national convention being held in July,

[biffster]

Very nice Neal...Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[nplotnick]

Fantastic response from the teachers. I was the ONLY presentation focused on operating systems. Many of the teachers were anxious to try LINUX and WattOS for the first time. I said that learning to code without learning about the hardware and operating systems is limiting our students.

I'll keep everyone informed on what happens.

Neil