[Newark] Getting Free Software Into Schools

Fri Oct 26 17:17:23 BST 2007

Hm, what's the drill here about leaving quoted emails? Normal etiquette used
to be that you got rid of quotes unless you were directly referencing them
to save people downloading messages twice, but that's not really a problem
with modern connections... I'll just leave it there.

I think the award's a great idea! However, your reasons for it being good
are a little incomplete in my opinion - focusing only on the fact that the
publicly funded organisation and its students wouldn't have to spend all
their money on software - I think there are a lot of better reasons that
FOSS in schools is a good thing, but I suppose cold, hard cash is the
obvious one. A lot of FOSS is just hands-down better than commercial stuff.
An awful lot of big companies use Linux servers and even workstations
(Dreamworks and Pixar are the ones closest to my heart but they're by no
means unusual) so completely ignoring the software that a lot of the
students will end up needing to use is a little myo- ah say- a little
myopic. Sorry, no more Foghorn Leghorn impressions...

Computer science uptake by British students isn't all that good, we're not
upholding our proud traditions of maybe being to blame for the creation of
computers, I don't know for sure why that is, but as someone who's got a
pretty good idea how IT GCSEs and Computing A-Levels are, I blame the
courses for being utterly boring. A fairly knowledgeable teenage computer
user learns nothing at all from GCSE IT and next to nothing from Computing
A-Level (note the distinction, Computing not IT or Applied ICT, Computing is
the hardest and lo-and-behold fewer and fewer schools are offering it, I was
lucky to be in one that did). We, as a nation, just don't know much about
computers, so when we write the syllabuses, we write boring, easy tripe
instead of a vaguely challenging course. Those of you who're fairly seasoned
Linux users would probably be amazed at the number of teenagers who don't
actually know what an operating system is, they just can't picture a
computer without Windows or if you're lucky, Mac. Similarly, a lot don't
know what the Internet really, they've not got a chance. So giving them the
opportunity to use Linux might help give them a more rounded understanding
of what computers are and how they work - at least for those who aren't
curious enough to find out on their own.

Of course, that relies on the teachers being able to do more than fiddle
around with GNOME and maybe offer up a silly chart with Windows software and
the equivalent FOSS. Firefox -> Internet Explorer! Yay! OpenOffice Word ->
Microsoft Office Word, it's exactly the same in all the wrong ways! Gedit ->
Notepad - oh, better stay away from that, I always used Word for taking
notes anyway. Gnome-Terminal -> COMMAND, well... isn't that just right?
COMMAND's just like a Linux shell. Sorry, I've gone onto a rant about how
people subconsciously undervalue Linux and yet beef up their opinion of it
because they want to use FOSS for one reason or another and yet aren't
interested enough to actually learn that Linus /really is/ better than Mac
or Windows. Perl -> ..uh.. Perl, but nobody ever has it installed; Python ->
well...; grep -> (d'you know regex?), man -> um...  su -> ..? sed -> ?  the
ttys -> !? Exactly...

I hope we all do know regex.

So, uh, back to the point. I don't know if the teachers will be anything
like fluent enough in FOSS to provide much valuable help, and you'd better
hope the admins have a clue or some punk who happens to know a thing or two
about computers would probably bring down the network. That's why the admins
at my school didn't want to install Linux even though they used it a little
in the admin office (I even got to use it a few times, SuSE seems old..
(SuSE, yep, I still spell it like that and I pronounce it soo-sea, not
suzy)), they didn't think they would be able to set it up well enough what
with their training in Windows. If one can get around all that, it could be
most valuable to the little tykes' education.

Finally...
As some of you may remember, I'm not much of an activist, I don't care about
forcefully spreading FOSS. Seriously, if one reorganises the time one would
spend hitting one's head against the brick wall of FOSS community zealot
rubbish, one can actually afford the time to really be useful to FOSS
projects... by being a software developer! Instead of just thinking one is
giving back to the FOSS community by frequenting forums and handing out
coasters.  (What's with that stuff about giving back to the community
anyway? It's so... wishy-washy.) I don't know where it got confused that
trying to force a bunch of uninterested people to use something they don't
want to and won't be able to is thought of as valuable community work for
those who just can't be bothered to learn C and do some /real work/. So the
reason I support this award isn't because it helps the FOSS community, it's
somewhat nice that the local community (to which you were actually
referring, Chris) might be helped, but the important point is that some of
the kids will learn a thing or two and grow up to be useful and/or
successful. Not everyone can be expected to teach themselves enough computer
science, to uphold their own interest by creating their own challenges, to
motivate themselves, and those who can't are potentially very good
developers, admins, power users and so on who're slipping through the
cracks.

Tom French

On 26/10/2007, Chris Hayes <cbhworld at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello LUG members!
>
> Some of you likely have heard that I am now working at ForLinux, and those
> of you around Newark may have heard that recently, to mark the forth
> Software Freedom Day, ForLinux created a competition to give schools in
> Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire the opportunity to receive
> a years worth of technical support for Free and open source software. This
> is to help a school experience the benefits that open source software can
> give - such as paying less on licenses - as well as making it easy for the
> pupils to use exactly the same software at home as they do at school without
> having to pay anything. And with the help of this award, the school is free
> to do this without having to worry about the technical nitty-gritty side of
> it. Which when considering applications that are considered to be new and
> not the usual standard proprietary stuff that they know they can administer,
> must be an large issue for most schools. The winning school was Newark High,
> a school that has had a fair amount of problems over the last few years -
> but has begun showing some very positive signs. Hopefully this prize will
> help the school even further in becoming better.
>
> Anyhow, from a personal standpoint - this strikes me as a really valuable
> way that companies involved in open source solutions can give back to the
> community - and not the open source community, but rather get Free software
> into the local community.
>
> Anyhow, I'd love to know what you guys think about this award.
>
>
> Chris Hayes / cbhworld
> _______________________________________________
> Newark mailing list
> Newark at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/newark
>
>
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