Again, XP is a big no no. It's a potential security risk now AND the license issue needs to be considered as well...

They would be good for educating in pure command line Linux, for setting up and controlling linux as a server.
For any educational desktop computing. I would recommend at least P4 and 4gig of ram.

Linux of choice. I would go for a pure Debian standard.
Or maby go for one of those free BSD UNIX systems instead of Linux.

I ended up using Ubermix, since the userspace is completely separate from the OS partition. One of the kids hoses up his userspace, an quick repair using his own thumbdrive resolves it.

The only issue I ran across was having to install the bash vulnerability patch. The kids love all the preinstalled apps (like LibreOffice, Gimp, the programming tools, etc...) so it's a win-win for all concerned. It took more time to run data cable under the house and install wall jacks (too many walls/distance between the AP and the PC, so 1Mbps was the best signal they could get), than it did setting up the machine, and teaching the kids how to use it. They like how the UI looked similar to a smartphones.

My school district is using all Core2Duo stuff right now. DC7900's and xw4600's mostly. A few older ones like DC5700's thrown in the mix here and there with some Core2Quad machines for secretaries and such. I graduated the year of the P4 scourge. There is a storeroom in our school with over 300 Pentium 4 machines awaiting death. Around 100 of them are Dells ALL with bad caps and the rest are a mix of HP's and Compaq Evos. O and around 30 IBM Thinkcenteres from Hades. Talking 15 minute boot ups, and we used those for graphics design work!!!

Recap those old machines and let it class create a linux cluster server or just teach some fine linux samba/lamp setup.

brostenen wrote:

Recap those old machines and let it class create a linux cluster server or just teach some fine linux samba/lamp setup.

They issues with that is that the teachers would have to go attend courses to learn how it all works.

Back when I was an instructor, I had to teach K-12 teachers how to administer Netware 4.11 servers and NWadmin32, since the school district axed the experienced IT staff. Those ladies could barely type, let alone wrap their head around all the concepts, like NDS trees, replication servsers, Leaf/container objects, rights inheritence, using Xen, etc... I would routinely stay after midnight helping them, just hoping for that "light bulb over their head" because I felt horrible that they were forced into that position because some bean counter decided to save money.

I literally had to come up with the most easily understandable examples, because I didn't want a single student to fail, because their jobs were riding on it.

If you want to repurpose the machines as Linux clusters, you better hire someone who knows EXACTLY what they are doing, regardless of how much pay they want.

Our IT consists of one system administrator and a part time assistant, to much hassle to recap ol p4 machines. Unfortunately there are lots of rules and procedures involved with disposal of old electronics so they will all end up going to the recyclers. Besides even in our small town everybody has a smartphone and tablets, no one is interested in old equipment.

Well... I just thought that the machines could be used for teaching some basic soldering technology and some basic understanding of both clustering and fileserver/webserver-setup. Nothing fancy that would require teachers to attend one or more courses.
How old are the children, that these computers are aimed for? And do teachers in you'r country teach themself new stuff in their sparetime?
As an example. When I graduated in web programming. All my teacher were learning new stuff all the time.

The kids are 6-18 years old, so for the older (highschool) aged kids that would be a fantastic idea. Unfortunately our educational system is under funded and under staffed. Enrollment is low and they keep passing laws to restrict the amount of children in a classroom which results in a lot of logistical issues. Teachers also just had their prep time reduced by an hour every day with a new class schedule. I could see an electronics club forming and meeting after school hours with the supervision of a volunteering teacher or two. I know our teachers are constantly learning new things in regards to the subjects that they teach at least, but usually not anything in other areas.

ODwilly wrote:

The kids are 6-18 years old, so for the older (highschool) aged kids that would be a fantastic idea. Unfortunately our educational system is under funded and under staffed. Enrollment is low and they keep passing laws to restrict the amount of children in a classroom which results in a lot of logistical issues. Teachers also just had their prep time reduced by an hour every day with a new class schedule. I could see an electronics club forming and meeting after school hours with the supervision of a volunteering teacher or two. I know our teachers are constantly learning new things in regards to the subjects that they teach at least, but usually not anything in other areas.

Could be worse. we were stuck using Apple 2s. When we weren't playing oregon trail, or those educational games (like the one where you were a dolphin president), we learned how to use Apple Basic.

Neatest trick I learned was how to access the floppy drive, make the drive head spin and make noise, and the light on the drive flash. The teacher put in his grade disk, and I called the program Electric Monks disk format utility. No matter what key you pressed, it equaled "yes". It didn't mess with the floppy disk at all, but it scared the pants off the teacher, until I explained how I did it. He was so impressed, I got an A+ for the course. 😁

ODwilly wrote:

The kids are 6-18 years old, so for the older (highschool) aged kids that would be a fantastic idea. Unfortunately our educational system is under funded and under staffed. Enrollment is low and they keep passing laws to restrict the amount of children in a classroom which results in a lot of logistical issues. Teachers also just had their prep time reduced by an hour every day with a new class schedule. I could see an electronics club forming and meeting after school hours with the supervision of a volunteering teacher or two. I know our teachers are constantly learning new things in regards to the subjects that they teach at least, but usually not anything in other areas.

Wow..... That is really bad.
And yes, a club could be formed in the sparetime. I remember that our school had this type of "youth-school" were you could learn just about anything hobby related (paper-photo's, music, computer's, cooking etc.), and the teachers were all doing the stuff for free. The term nightschool, were just, that it was all in the school-building's. I attended at the computer club, and model building. And to times a year, there were a complete weekend devoted to computing.
We had a real blast. Only costed us all, what we had to eat. You know, fresh cooked meals 3 times a day.

ElectricMonk:

We had computers from the National Danish School IT-Department (Regnecentralen, translated into: The Calculating Central), that was some sort of Z80 based pre-basic computers, up until I was 14 or 16 year's old. (EDIT: It was an 80186 CPU, and CP/M-86)
The computers were called "Piccoline", and ran Comal-80 only. Actually, they were quited robust build. Heavy as f***. 😁 We joked about how well you could kill a man with the keyboard, just because it was all metal.

It was these computers here....

And yes. They were propriatary systems. All Danish designed and build. In other word's. They were shit compared to C64 Apple-II and even 8088 computers. Yet, they had charme in their own little quirky way's. Heavy, "bullitproof", useless and slow machines. That just worked every time.

There is a complete website, just for this machine if anyone have an interrest in this sort of thing...
http://rc700.dk/index.php