Re: [seul-edu] Some ideas to consider

[Dennis Daniels <ddaniels@magic.fr>]

training and support

Schools and districts are wary of the 'mavericks' that try out a new app 
or sys. The mavericks move on, leaving the app or system and noone knows 
or cares how to keep it going. The interest dies because it is not 
getting life support from new stakeholders.

Training and support is tough to come by for linux in general. Courses 
here  in California for linux classes run in the big bucks. And, most 
tech guys/ people are lousy teachers (I've sat through a couple of those 
courses). As a techy kind of teacher, I can understand why the 
non-techies are not interested. As well, from a management perspective, 
the administration, they fear change rightly for the chaos it brings 
into an already chaotic structure.

For the mildly tech inclined... well, it's an individual learning 
matter. Very lonely, often misunderstood, and swimming against the 
current of MS and Apple stuffed schools.

Dennis

Jason wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 14:16:57 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:
>
>
> > Other initial ideas?
> >
> > looking forwards to pong.
> > -Karl
>
> PONG. 
> It seems a lot of the schools invovled are using Linux due to bugetary
> constraints. We can use that as a tool since all taxpayers want to see
> cost reductions and the administrators like to give the impression
> they're saving money. 
> One of the problems I can see happening is that teachers and some sys
> admins w/ little Linux experience are "afraid" of supporting Linux
> systems. We should mention that Windows can be used in the interim as
> there is plenty of Open Source office and educational software. 
> It would be nice to see other success stories outside of the school
> environment as well. If program administrators see that Linux is
> adopted elsewhere it might open their eyes that its a viable solution.
>
> Jason