[lug] Free Software in Schools

[Logan Garbarini]

That last email just reminded me of a story that might provide an example. When I was in middle school a teacher helped me start a computer club. We managed to grab some old school computers (Pentium IIs) and get some donations from teachers and parents. We put Ubuntu on all the computers and everyone loved fiddling with them. At least five kids learned a lot about the UNIX shell as well as other important skills. The teacher also had computers students could use for doing research and plugging data into spreadsheets. We had a great club until the man who supported us at BVSD left for the private sector. He understood that Linux didn't need antivirus and didn't need to be managed by the district. However, his replacement mandated that we install McAfee AV and connect our computers to the Active Directory domain so they could be managed. He didn't understand what Linux was an so we got our internet connection pulled. About that time, I left for high school and without internet, the cl
ub died. 

-- 
Logan Garbarini



On Friday, December 21, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Quentin Hartman wrote:

> Logan brings up another great point that I alluded to, but didn't directly mention: Staff. Almost all of the teachers will already know either Mac or Windows well enough to get around, and will recoil at something different, even if it isn't actually harder. 
> 
> And then you have IT staff. For every one IT pro with the knowledge and desire to run a school on Linux, you will find 5 who can do it with Macs, and 10 with Windows. We're a minority. And a minority who usually demands higher pay than our Mac / Windows focused counterparts.
> 
> QH
> 
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