[Westwales] Linux in schools

[Matt Hill]

Hi Rob

On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 21:08, Rob wrote:

> I would like to set
> up an after school club to encourage the kids, but I'd need a room of PC's
> and I'm not confident/competent enough to set them up suitably so the kid's
> couldn't scramble them and I'd need to convince the Headmaster of the
> benefits of a non-MS suite too.

I work with Baglan IT, who you might know of as providing IT-everything
(including headaches) to schools in Swansea and Neath & Port Talbot. I
dont work with the schools myself, but my project has some facilities
which are school based, so I know a little about their setup.

I dont know how Carmarthenshire work it, but certainly in our area
having a suite of PCs with Linux on them would be a very difficult thing
to accomplish. All school PCs are SLA'd and under that Baglan IT have
specified that they have control of the PCs. If a school were to ask
that they had some dual boot ability to Linux, Baglan wouldnt support
it, or allow it on any PC that was under the SLA. Of course if enough
schools wanted that, or a big enough stink was made, they would have to
do something.

A linux based room would probably have to be seperated from the rest of
the school network, and would be unlikely to be allowed internet access
over the wide area network.  


This is over in the Swansea / Neath & Port Talbot area of course, but I
would have thought that Carmarthenshire would have something similar? If
so you may find them a bigger barrier than the Head.

All that aside, I'd be happy to lend my meagre skills to help if you
were looking at doing this in Carmarthen or Llanelli-wards of it.


> Would anyone be interested in a LUG meet in Carmarthen some time?

Carmarthen eh? you know I've heard stories about the pubs and clubs (?)
in Carmarthen. Can't remember any of them tho, just that they were
strange, or disturbing in some other way.

Couldn't be much worse than a night out down here tho  :o)


Matt


note - none of the above is at all representative of the views of Baglan
IT, there are spies everywhere, I might get in trouble ;o)

--
Matt Hill  <matt@twpsyn.com>
-
When in doubt, do it.  It's much easier to apologize than to get permission.
		-- Grace Murray Hopper