Re: [seul-edu] Linux community support for education

[Emilio Gerardo Milian <egmilian@gene.com>]

Doug: for your information for what is worth: I would like to share my
Linux classroom experience.

Last year (2000) , I asked the school to offer Linux in addition to
Windows computer classes.
After much debating the issue, the school agreed to do a test to see
what kind of demand there was for Linux.
The school was telling me they didn't have the money to buy new
equipment.
Well, they did buy 10 new Pentium 3 pcs, and we installed Win NT and
Linux dual boot for the two classes o be offered in room 34 at the South
San Francisco Adult School. Many of the Windows NT students signed up
for Linux classes as well. 

The typical class fee is $30, but the school said the fee for this class
would be $100. You can imagine that I got cold feet because I didn't
think anyone would want to pay that much.  Well, after advertising the
class, we got tremendous responses, we started a waiting list that
included over 50 names. That was a pleasant surprise for all of us.

The class was offered in the Fall, and the class was sold out. We had
the class for 8 weeks, the school wanted me to offer a second session in
November which we did and we had a smaller class. For Spring 2001, we
will be offering the class again starting the week of Jan. 29th 2001, so
I'm doing what I can to get the word out again to the public about this
class and see if we can fill up the class again.

We had some hardware problems with the new computers, as they bought
some no-name hardware, and it was difficult to get drivers, and still
having problems in configuring the video to something other than
640X480, also, trying to upgrade to RH7.0 doesn't seem to work right on
these PC's. 
Since I'm not a Linux expert yet, I have been asking for help from LUG's
in the San Francisco area, and have had limited help, but still need to
have more assistance for the advanced topics such as setting up Samba.

I mentioned to the principal that the greatest risk is not taking one.
We (I) took a risk in offering this class and we seem to have hit
paydirt. It takes a lot of work, and sometimes you have to be fanatical
about it to get it to see daylight.  If it wasn't for my constant
pushing and asking the principal, this class would not have been
offered. Sometimes, I think that I bit more than I can chew, but I'm
learning along as we go. I would not turn down any help right now, as
one person cannot do it alone.

Emilio

Doug Loss wrote:
> 
> Dave Prentice wrote:
> 
> >  Doug,    I wish I had a local Linux group to call on. I don't
> > even know anybody else in the New Orleans area that has Linux
> > installed on anything. If there is anybody that can give detailed
> > technical assistance, it sure would be helpful. Everything has
> > been by trial and error -- setting up, configuring the network,
> > remote printing, getting NIS working --  but I still haven't
> > figured out how to set up my client machines to go through the
> > gateway to get to the Internet. It's probably something simple,
> > but there's nobody to show me what I'm doing wrong. Anybody want
> > to take a trip to N.O. to show me what to do?    Anyway, in my
> > school district the tech support department has barely even heard
> > of Linux, let alone support it. All they will support are Pentium
> > 233's or better running Windows NT. As if my school has any chance
> > of getting some of those!Thanks,Dave Prentice
> > prentice@instruction.com
> 
> Dave,
> 
> Take a look here:
> 
> <http://www.nolug.org/>
> 
> and here:
> 
> <http://noframes.linuxjournal.com/glue/groups/us/louisiana>
> 
> I hope some of these will be helpful.
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 God is a comedian playing
> Data Network Coordinator  to an audience too afraid
> Bloomsburg University     to laugh.
> dloss@bloomu.edu                Voltaire