Desktop Linux distribution Zorin OS 15 quickly moved to the center of my radar when it was released, because of its overall polish, easy customization options, installation support and out-of-the-box usability. Now the Zorin Group is bringing that accessibility to the classroom with the free Zorin OS Education.
Veyon gives teachers visibility into what every student is doing on their computers in class. Staff can even take control of students’ computers when they need help or broadcast their screen to their students, remotely and wirelessly.
Zorin Group
In general, Zorin OS 15 has solid support for touchscreens (including tablets, 2-in-1 laptops and smart whiteboards), and has a neat “Auto Theme” feature that adapts the desktop wallpaper depending on the time of day. It’s based on Ubuntu 19.04 LTS and ships with Linux kernel 4.18; not bleeding-edge, but certainly stable and thus an ideal fit for the classroom.
The Zorin OS Education edition takes the base feature set from Zorin OS 15 and layers on “a plethora” of educational apps and games.
New to this version is the open source app Veyon, which lets teachers view the desktops of every student, and offer remote and wireless assistance.
There’s also Scratch3, an app specifically designed for children ages 8 to 16 to learn code, collaboration and encourage creative problem solving.
Scratch 3
Zorin Group
More than 100 educational games and activities are bundled in the Childsplay and eduActive8 collections, and music notation software MuseScore is also included.
All of this open source software is easy enough to acquire, and it’s all free, but the appeal here (as with Zorin OS 15 Ultimate) is having it all included by default.
Zorin OS Education is available to download for free.
If you’re a teacher who uses Zorin OS Education, I’d love to hear about your experience with it. You can reach out to me directly on Twitter or by contacting me via this contact form.
