[cumbria_lug] Meeting on Friday

[Jen Phillips]

On Tuesday 06 July 2004 10:22 pm, Trevor Pearson wrote:

> I'm always planning. Yes I'll be there I have permision,

Excellent.

> I've an old, old box that I got at SRI i've upgraded it and would
> happily donate it running linux.  I would be happy to support this.

Great. The plan is to provide a PC to be set up at the Scout Hut for use by 
anyone in the Scouts. Initially, we're aiming it at Dad's scout group, based 
at Trinity School, Carlisle. If people know of other scout groups (or indeed 
other groups) who would also be interested, there seem to be enough old PCs 
lying around to do the same for several.

> Giving out disks might not be a good idea as someone could go home, run
> the installer (which we know is not the most user friendly piece of
> software) and wipe somebodys data which may not make us popular.
> I would be happy if the p.c. belonged to the scout of course.

The Open CD is a bunch of Windows programs with a nice, user-friendly auto-run 
menu thingy. I wouldn't advocate handing out Linux distros to Scouts who 
could wreck their Dad's machine ;-)

> I don't know much about 'scouting' do they do a 'computer use' badge ?

Scouts is all about helping each other out and being part of a greater 
community, which is where the ideals over-lap nicely.

They actually have a several-stage badge, designed to be followed throughout 
the Scouting career. The lowest level involves such things as turning a PC on 
and off safely, and is designed with Beavers (6 yr olds) in mind. Dad is 
planning on starting the Scouts (12 yr olds) on Level 3, which includes 
writing letters, simple spreadsheets, showing understanding of the Web, etc. 
I think it goes as high as level 5, and specifies that all work should be 
done on the scout's "choice of software" :-)

We've got all the official blurb, if anyone wants to look through it on 
Friday.

> How about using linux to learn about computers/internet and the FOSS
> movement? Plus a couple of games some office software and I have a
> hub so we could also network the aforementioned offending items.

More or less what we were thinking, but we don't have a hub we can give away.

> Would the scouts be interested in having a number of sessions
> introducing such things as 'how to write a web page', 'How to use
> e-mail' or other I.T. skills ?

I'm sure they would. As Russ said, they're always looking for things to do 
with the Scouts, and this several-stage badge gives them quite a few options 
to work at. They'd need some structured stuff, and then work on it on their 
own, and be tested. Perhaps the best would be to do two sessions for them - 
one to set them going, and another a while later to test them and hand out 
badges.

It seems to me that there's quite a bit of cross-over between what's needed 
for this, and what's needed for the Infopoint thing in terms of figuring out 
what to say to people who know nothing, what benefits to highlight, what 
software to offer them, etc.

Hugs,

Jen