[lug] BVSD Windows vs Mac craziness

[Rob Nagler]

Ron Wright writes:
> I think that the district has to be very careful accepting help from
> volunteers.  Anything that requires "on-going support" has great potential
> to be abandoned by the (well intentioned) volunteer(s) who set it up.

This is a complicated issue, and one that IT has used to avoid dealing
with volunteers.  Most BVSD schools today would fall apart with the
volunteers that take care of everything from raising money to doing
critical systems support.

What IT needs to do is enlist the help of the local tech community,
esp. those who believe in a a "cause", such as Linux, and organize
those people.  With today's modern communications infrastructure,
which is essentially free, this is completely doable.  That was what I
was trying to get them to do a few years ago, but it failed due to
bureaucratic stonewalling.

Instead my company developed impactoneducation.org and freiker.org,
which have been fun and successful.

Again, volunteers are critical to making schools run today.
Command-and-control bureaucrats are afraid of them, when they could be
using them.   This paradigm shift is what this school board issue is
all about.

Rob