[plug] Education Big Day Out/SIGfest: thanks Gavin!

[Chris Caston]

On Sun, 2003-05-25 at 11:56, Leon Brooks wrote:
> Big thank you to Gavin Melhuish for turning up (with his missus) and 
> leaving an excellent impression on the SVSHS folk!
> 
> >From the excessively small numbers of PLUG people reported to be there, 
> I'm guessing that most of you have no idea how important penguin 
> penetration into the education arena is, and that the remainder of you 
> are as busy as a one-legged bipolar sufferer in an egg-and-spoon race.
> 
> The bottom line is that the children going through high school now will 
> be starting to hit decision-maker territory in less than a decade. If 
> all they've seen, all they're used to is Borgware, they're not going to 
> be making decisions anything like as favourable to you and your 
> interests and industry as they would otherwise.


Let's show the benefits to education that open source software has. I'd
rather not go after high schools just because we have the superior
ideology and want the world to be using Linux.

A lot of parents want them to teach Windows/Office in high school
because they believe it gives their kids a better chance of giving them
the skills that employers want.

So do we want Linux as an extra curricula thing for kids (that are
interested in tech) to play around with (build servers and the like) on
the machines that the school isn't using anymore or do we want it as
part of the curriculum?

How can Linux offer a wider and more satisfying course that students
want to select when they are deciding their subjects?

How can administration be convinced to give students the choice in the
first place.

When I was in school I played around with redhat a bit at home but I
never even really considered running it at school. I suppose because we
only have 486's and stuff and that was way before LTSP.

regards,

Chris Caston