Autobiography
Renato Lukač was born in 1966 in Murska
Sobota, Slovenia. He graduated in physics, technical
science, at the University of Ljubljana, in 1992. Since
1991 he has been teaching physics and informatics in
grammar school Murska Sobota. He also continued with
studying and finished post-graduate study in Vienna in
January 2000 with a dissertation on computer simulations
of liquid crystals on molecular level.
Since 1990 he's been cooperating with Department F5 of
Josef Stefan Institute. Since 1993 he is also external
collaborator at the Physics Department of the Faculty
of Education in Maribor, where he started as an assistant
and at present working as senior lecturer. For the last
six years he has been a professional collaborator in
the field of noise measurement in the company V.E.P.T.,
Murska Sobota.
From 2000 till 2001 he was doing a post-doctoral practice
in the Chemistry Department of the University of Warwick
in Great Britain. In 2002 he was a co-founder of the
company Kapion d.o.o., where he was, among other, a head
of a research group for one year. In 2003 he founded
a Spark Institute for research and development in Beltinci,
where again he is in charge of a research group.
In the Grammar school Murska Sobota he is especially oriented towards implementing
operating system Linux and Open source into the learning process. He has been
using Linux since 1994, firstly for servers and for the last few years also for
workstation. He realised practical part of the teaching subject Informatics in
the year 2002/2003 exclusively with the use of free software. The quality of
lessons was at least on the same, if not higher level as in the former years
and the pleasure was reciprocal. As he says, they have proved the time has come
for radical changes in informatics of Slovene schools as well, since we could
save a lot by the use of open source solutions.
He is a member and vice-president of Astronomic association
Kmica, vice president of PAZU (academic union of Podravje
region) and a member of the following professional bodies:
DMFA (Association of mathematicians, physics and astronomers),
LUGOS (Slovene association of Linux users), EMLG (European
Molecular Liquid Group), CCP5 (Collaborative Computational
Project for Computer Simulation of Condensed Phases)
and EPS (European Physical Society).
Dr. Renato Lukač
Subject
Linux classroom
Operating system Linux had proved to be an ultimate solution
for servers. It appeared, with its wide spectrum of services,
exactly in times when the global network was in its full swing.
But concerning the workstations, it missed the right moment for
a bit. Therefore it is more difficult to break through in this
field, since a single producer has strongly rooted its presence.
In spite of that, the translation of Linux and its freely accessible
applications into Slovene represents an alternative model of
informatization of educational establishment to the existing
one, based on commercial, licence program equipment.
The successful execution of the practical part of the teaching
subject Informatics at the Grammar school Murska sobota, exclusively
based on the use of free software, is very stimulative. The optimism
in educational system can be even higher, since the Slovene Ministry
of Education, Science and Sport has this year started a project
OKO (to introduce the open code and free program equipment into
educational establishment).
We will present in detail the solution used in Grammar school
Murska Sobota, which can also be a good starting point in many
other places, not only in schools.
Computer skills were practiced in classrooms, as this is typical
for our educational system. It consisted of 16 workstations,
one demonstrative workstation for teachers and classroom server.
At the time the freshest version 8.0 of Red Hat Linux was installed
in all of the computers. Same packages were installed in each
computer, also those not very necessary, since there was an opinion
extra program equipment can't harm the students but it can lead
them to realise how wide the spectrum of Linux applications is.
14 at that time new 1.7 GHz Pentium Celerons were used as workstations
and a server. For the remaining four workstations three year's
old 350 MHz Pentiums were used. New computers used only a part
of hard disk, while the old computers used all 4 GB disk. There
were absolutely no problems when installing and configurating
hardware drivers. Student received, if requested, copied Linux
instalment CDs. Request for them was surprising and 50 packages
were recorded.
Server proved to be very reliable and it completely justified
its mission. There were no problems with it. The only problem
we had is related to one of the workstations. NIS and NFS were
used, so the students always had the same environment at disposal,
no matter which workstation had been used. Such a scheme is favourable
also because the web server offers the students the access to
their home pages from their home directories. There was a plan
to use quota for the server, but it proved unnecessary despite
a small 40 GB server. There was also a printer connected to the
server and available to all workstations through LPD.
All of the computers were running in the graphical mode. Students
were suggested to use KDE, but it was not obligatory. Some were
using GNOME instead. The curriculum is directed to general applications,
therefore the stress is on the effective usage of applications.
As an office package, OpenOffice.org was used, and Mozilla as
a browser. The importance of both is the Slovene version and
the existence of MS Windows version, which enabled the students
to study at home without installing Linux. It had been proved
the students in the introduction part when they were becoming
familiar working with desktop and file system, they lost the
fear of Linux as something hard to use and different. The fact
is just the opposite. Linux became a challenge and the discovery
of something new. They were proud to be acquainted with something
more than other students of their age. Their dreams of working
with computers without annoying viruses came true.
|
