[plug] suggestion: PLUG 4 Schools

[Denis Brown]

At 11:27 6/05/2002 +0800, Sol wrote:
>"Our greatest resource is our local user group. We need to
>help schools and LUGs around the country make connections. Towards this

>---some snipping ---

>Why doesn't PLUG make a public offer to metropolitan schools (say the first
>one to sign an agreement with PLUG) to have PLUG members migrate their school
>over to Linux servers and workstations and offer supplementary assistance in

--- some more snipping ---

I imagine this is more realistic in the USA where I assume there are 
significantly more active PLUG-like associations both inter- and 
intra-state.  Colin's already commented on the potential magnitude of such 
an undertaking in response to Sol's suggestion.   Perhaps a viable place to 
start might be to establish a working demo, ideally a portable one, which 
could then be demo'd to interested parties?  The demo's would then be 
possible at a normal PLUG venue with 'net access such as UWA or Murdoch, or 
could be set up in a "target" school's environment.  We are talking 
something akin to the K12LTSP aren't we, with a server and X-capable 
workstations?  So PLUGgers show up with three+ laptops, one a server and 
the others set up as workstations.  Apart from security, reliability, etc 
the emphasis would probably be on the ability to use existing 
resource-impoverished hardware at the client end.

If we're thinking in terms of utilising the grunt already in the desktops, 
and there seems to be no shortage of that these days, then just have the 
demo set up again as client-server but emphasising security, reliability, 
administrative control and so forth.  Indeed if that's the case maybe each 
"client" laptop could default to a different desktop environment (and of 
course be preloaded with all those to be demo'ed.)  Demo-ee says "ooh, I 
like that one", demo-er kills the "disliked" desktop environments and 
launches the "liked" environment and hey presto.

Once seen to be "do-able" and having commercial backup, maybe the fear of 
being left in limbo when / if something goes wrong would be 
reduced.  OpenOffice is going to have a lot to do with acceptability, I 
think, regardless of the other worthy open source projects in the 
productivity realm (eg AbiWord).  I am keen to begin using OO here for 
example, initially in a Windows environment because too much change is seen 
to be scary.  Well, maybe that's just my environment :-)

My 2c,
Denis