Promo/Schools/StudentTasks

This page contains the most important tasks students are using their computers for and show possible ways to solve those tasks with KDE software.It was created during a Google Code-In Project.

Main tasks that students are doing with their computer

Students are doing plenty tasks with their computer.

Some of the tasks that students are doing with their computers (and unfortunately by using proprietary software most times) could be :

• They like to surf on the internet and do plenty of things. When students surf the internet, they are visiting various well known sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube etc.
• Students are burning CDs/DVDs by using known CD/DVD Burning Suites. These can be sometimes free but other times students are forced to purchase them.
• Office Productivity Suites are widely used by students in order to complete several tasks for school and/or to make presentations
• Students like to use applications to communicate with their friends/relatives/classmates etc. These applications can be instant messengers or email clients
• Students are usually using special applications that help them in their school
• Listening to music and watching videos are and always will be one of the students' main entertainments in their free time
• Not to forget, students like to take pictures with their camera or mobile phone, then edit them with an image editor and finally upload them in the internet
• Large files are downloaded by students, usually bu using a torrent client. Students are widely using the peer to peer network.

A deeper look on the above tasks as well as the possible software that students may be using

We can now have a deeper look at the students' main activities and examine some possible software they may be using. Such software is sometimes proprietary; others they can be trial versions. Many students are unfortunately not familiar with KDE and FOSS as well as the possibilities these two can provide.

• Surfing the Internet

Students are using a web browser like Internet Explorer, Opera or Mozilla Firefox to surf the net. Since many sites include flash content, they have to install a flash player in order to be able to view them. Social Networking Sites (like Facebook, Twitter), Search Engines (like Google), Video-Sharing Sites (like YouTube,Dailymotion) are some well-known websites that students visit and spend their time on.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• CD/DVD Burning

Students burn files or other things directly to optical discs. They like to share them with their friends. DC/DVD burning suites (either free or non-free) are being used for this purpose.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Office Productivity

A variety of office productivity suites are being used by students to write texts, make presentations and other things for school. These programs can be Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, as students know them better.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Communication (Instant Messaging or Emails)

Students spend a lot of their time communicating with their friends by using an instant messenger. Moreover, they read and write emails through an email client like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Educational Applications

Students are always looking for special applications that can help them at school or with their homework. They use calculators, encyclopedias and other programs that might help them

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Listening to Music and Watching Videos

Students like listening to music and watching videos a lot. They can do that offline, by using sometimes a media (or audio) player like Windows Media Player,VLC Media Player, Winamp etc.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Taking pictures and editing them on the computer

It is a hobby of many students to take pictures with a camera or mobile phone,then transfer them in the computer,edit them with a program and finally upload them on the net. Image editing software are being used by students for this purpose (like Paint, GIMP, Photoshop, TuxPaint etc).

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

• Downloading large files through P2P network

By using a torrent client (like uTorrent,Transmission,BitComet and others) students like to download large files throught he P2P network.

Can KDE provide a solution to this? YES

Solutions provided for the tasks mentioned above

Here are solutions to the students' task that are previously mentioned above. By installing KDE software, students will have the power to live in a free, easier and better environment without the need of other (and mainly proprietary) software. Take a look at the applications that are included :

• Surfing the internet

With Konqueror as their main web browser, students will love to surf the internet and visit their favorite websites. Since Konqueror can use embedded applications, students' web browsing will be easy and pleasant.

• CD/DVD Burning

k3b is one of the best burning programs out there! As being well-known to the GNU/Linux community, it is obvious that k3b can do everything for you, just as an expensive proprietary program will do. k3b can be used to directly burn files to discs,rip dvds,create audio cds, burn or create disc images and many more! The power of this amazing application will be on students' hands!

• Office Productivity

With Kword,Kspread and Kpresenter students will be able to use such powerful office productivity applications. They are easy to use and do not require any previous experience at all! They are used to instantly create documents,spreadsheets and presentations without spending too much time!

• Communication (Instant Messaging or Emails)

With Konversation students have the ability to connect to irc channels. And with Kopete as their main instant messenger, students gain the ability to talk with their friends around the globe. Finally, with Kmail as their email client, students will easily send, receive and organize their emails.

• Listening to Music and Watching Videos

Amarok is a free, versatile and powerful music player. Students may use it to listen to their favourite music, make and edit playlists and connect their music devices to it. Also, with the use of Kaffeine, KDE's media player with a user-friendly interface, even first time students can start immediately playing their movies.What makes it different from the others is its excellent support of digital TV. Alternatively,they can choose Kmplayer or Kplayer as a media player

• Taking pictures and editing them on the computer

digiKam offers students an easy way to organize their photos on their PCs. Krita can be used for a range of image creation ranging from natural media painting, sketching and photo editing. Finally, KolourPaint is a simple painting program to quickly create raster images. With all these programs, all students would love photography!

• Downloading large files through P2P network

Students will now be able to download all their files with Kget as their primary download manager. In case they are used to download from P2P networks, Ktorrent will do the job for them! Last but not least, in case a student is working on FTP, he can use KFTPGrabber as his FTP client.

Conclusion

It is obvious that almost all of students tasks with the computer can be done with KDE software. KDE has the solution; it is now up to us, on how we promote such software to students. Most students unfortunately are not aware of the existence of such great software that can help them with their everyday needs. We can work even better together to promote them and make students love KDE applications; they deserve it!

Source Work

You can find the work (on which this page is based) here. It was created by Giannis Konstantinidis during a task in Google Code-In and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to use it,or even modify it!