Abstract:

The Information and Communication Digital Technologies insertion in education has widely modified several learning spaces providing a greater interactivity among student, teacher and school contents. Based on these technologies, the interactive computer is pointed out, which presents itself as a tool able to provide and intensify students’ involvement on their own learning process. The Federal Government of Brazil, through the Ministry of Education and the National Education Development Fund, offers the possibility to take an interactive computer to public schools, which is composed by computer, projector and interactive whiteboard. This board provides the students' interaction either considering didactic resources and content throughout classes, through its dynamic projection, similar to a large touch screen. This equipment is used in educational environments by teachers who routinely face technical issues related to the educational software installation. The interactive computers model, purchased by the Ministry of Education, has an operating system that does not allow definitive software installation, summarizing, the system returns to the manufacture patterns despising any of the realized installations when the equipment is restarted. The municipality schools in Fortaleza, Brazil, makes use of educational software, such as Luz do Saber, Gcompris, TuxMath, among others, and also the interactive computers as a didactic resource in the teaching-learning process. In each initiation of these interactive computers it is required that teachers perform a new installation of the desired software. Therefore, this article aims to report the customization process of a Free Operating System, which allows the permanent installation of educational software used in the School Units in Fortaleza, in order to simplify teachers’ routine when using the interactive computer. Thus, a partnership with the Technical Advisory Committee on Computers in Education was settled up, which takes care of teachers’ training courses, taking as a subject of the course the educational software and technological resources, such as the interactive computer. So, right after the operating system customization, a presentation consisting of a demonstration and practice were performed and a satisfaction survey evaluation was conducted by the mentioned staff. As a result, some improvements regarding the factory system were pointed out, such as, permitting permanent installation of software, stability and usability, among others. The customized system met the expectations and sorted out the mentioned problem in this research allowing more time for the teachers’ pedagogical interventions.

Keywords:

Digital Didactic Resources, Interactivity, Free Software, Education.