LEARN MORE WITH LINUX

shows you how FOSS can ease the journey back to the ivory towers of academia. ✓ Fidget spinner ✓ Refurb laptop ✓ Install Linux ✓ Raspberry Pi ✓ Learn Python ✓ Linux Format

The sun is setting earlier and parents can almost taste the 6.5 hours of freedom that go with their progeny returning to school. Those with offspring heading to university have even more free time to look forward to. But spare a thought for those students who face social pressures, a gruelling curriculum and an environment that can unnecessarily coerce them into proprietary ecosystems.

The UK curriculum revamp in 2014 replaced the mickey mouse, MicrosoftOfficecentric Information and Communications Technology (ICT) syllabus with a more solid Computing one. In some schools, pupils as young as five are learning the beginnings of coding. This presents challenges not just for students, but for parents, too, who may find questions about Python even more terrifying than those about Pythagoras. We’ve got some great Pi projects so parents and kids can learn together. Scratch is an ideal intro to jargonfree programming, and when you’re ready to level up, we’ve got some great Python tips.

There’s a number of great open source tools that can do as good a job as, and in many cases better than, their proprietary counterparts. The Gnome and KDE application suites both have a whole category dedicated to educational tools, but most distributions don’t include all of these by default – otherwise, most distributions would be a whole lot bigger. Whether you want to practice your Kanji or Kana, improve your geometry or learn to type like a demon (don’t demons have secretaries for that ?– Ed ),

you’ll find something in these bundles. And, of course, there’s a wealth of open source tools outside of desktop environments’ offerings. Beyond that, there’s a number of online services that can help teachers and students alike.

“Parents may find questions about Python more terrifying than those about Pythagoras”