Business-to-Linux event (Was- A group statement onSCO'sactions)

[District Webmaster]

There's a lot of resistance to change, for a number of reasons. I'm
not in the department that makes a lot of these decisions, so I'm not
certain what would work best. One of the arguments that I've heard
repeatedly is "We need to train students on the technologies they'll
use when they enter the workforce."

I think you may have hit on a way to introduce more OSS into our
schools -- adding a few machines to a CS lab. Certainly any CS student
in today's environment will have at least _some_ interaction w/
OSS in their career.

Will the idea fly? I don't know. I don't understand the resistance to
OSS in the first place. I've even tried to introduce OpenOffice.org
on Windows in _addtion_ to (not a replacement for) MS Word. For some
reason nobody ever understood that it wasn't just for Linux. They
also don't understand that several servers in the district are already
running Linux or a BSD (or that Mac OS X is now a BSD).

I think you may have success getting our technology decision makers
to come to a convention or show if you invite them specifically.

Dave

>>> jesse at cwdkids.com 05/23/03 09:19 AM >>>
I'm sure you've already presented this idea, but what would they think
of maybe just a Linux machine or two in each of the computer labs, or
maybe just the computer science labs so those interested in learning can
get some experience in it?  Maybe this could at least begin to open the
door for them to see what Linux is.  If the students like it and enjoy
it, maybe the educators will begin to embrace it.

-Jesse

> -----Original Message-----
> From: District Webmaster [mailto:webmaster at alpine.k12.ut.us]
> Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 10:59 AM
> To: pluglist at plug.org
> Subject: Re: Business-to-Linux event (Was- A group statement
> onSCO'sactions)
> 
> 
> Our secondary (High School, Junior High) schools are almost 
> exclusively
> Windows; Our elementary schools are almost exclusively Macintosh
> (mostly still on OS 9). I've found it _very_ difficult to get our
> decision makers to embrace OSS. We had one bright spot when Merrill
> Oveson gave us a tour of his facilities (they were impressed) -- but,
> unfortunately, it did not translate into action.
> 
> The main difficulty is that this district (and I suspect others)
> are structured to provide leadership and career-path opportunities
> for educators.  This means we have very little technical experience
> among our decision makers -- and sometimes they just don't get it when
> we try to explain an advantage to OSS. I think they tend to label
> all OSS as "Linux" (without really understanding what Linux is) and
> don't really understanding that adopting OSS doesn't mean you _have_
> to dump everything you have for a new OS, offices suite, etc.
> 
> In the case of our decision makers, I think it would be helpful if
> they could see both Linux-only setups, as well as OSS in a Windows/Mac
> environment.
> 
> Dave Turnbull
> 
> >>We should probably be enlightened by Dave 
> >>what schools and districts really do use.....
> 
> 
> ASD Webmaster
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