[ubuntu-za] Free and Open Source Software in Schools

[Johan Mynhardt]

I just had an idea, sort of a light-bulb-moment.

If at all possible, what would the possibility be of organising an online IRC
event, say for one or two days, where we can dedicate time to run a live Q/A
session but we advertise and encourage schools, especially Technology classes to
plan for this day, and let every pupil join and ask questions should they have
any. I can only imagine this to be a somewhat chaotic experience should there be
any IRC first-timers that play with the technology during the period.

But I still think this might be a great opportunity to reach into classrooms and
tell the pupils, and the educators about what can be done.

Frank Kusel wrote:
> Hilton Theunissen wrote:
> <snip>
>> We have several very successfull schools but that is in the minority. 
>> Saxonworld primary school in johannesburg is a very successfull 
>> commercial model. We did so well over the past year that school extended 
>> the network to teacher workstations into every classroom. 55 diskless 
>> fat terminals running from single ubuntu ltsp.org server.
>>
>> Getting back to floss in schools - do it commercially and use new 
>> hardware. Deploy a full-time IT teacher. Purchase propriety Educational 
>> content - must be delivered via browser. Set your SLA for a visit twice 
>> a week in 1st 6-12months. Upgrade software every 12months.  Have a 
>> certification roadmap - Ingots delivered that for tuXlab schools. We 
>> have e-learning solution for OpenICDL but the adoption rate is not good 
>> at all.
>>
>>   
>>
> <snip>
> 
> In my experience the biggest hurdle is IT teachers who are not remotely 
> interested in or brave enough to try FOSS solutions - mostly because 
> they are afraid of looking silly, or that it will be too difficult.
> 
> I'm not sure how one would counter this.
> 
> Regards,
> Frank
> 
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