[seul-edu] Beginning of NECC presentation--first draft

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Here's the first draft of the intro to my NECC presentation.  Critiques?

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Good morning.  Most if not all of you have heard of Linux, but I suspect 
most of you have also turned away from it as not quite ready for 
scholastic use.  I'm here to show you just how Linux and open source 
resources in general can be useful to you.

You may not realize it, but the email garden at this conference runs 
entirely on Linux.  Did you have any problems using it?  You see, Linux 
isn't as difficult to use as many proprietary software organizations 
want you to think.  Linux's reputation for difficulty comes primarily 
from perceived difficulty in installing Linux on a new computer. 
However, that installation complexity (which has been quite successfully 
addressed) is only in comparison to a system pre-installed with 
Microsoft Windows or Macintosh OS X.  If a user had to install those 
operating systems from scratch, they would find the challenge just as 
daunting as installing Linux.

But there are now even easier ways to try Linux.  Members of our 
"umbrella" organization, Schoolforge, brought copies of two different 
bootable CDs of Linux that are specifically tailored to educational use. 
 We've been passing them out all during the conference.  Why more than 
one, you may ask?  That's one of the strengths of Linux and open 
resources.  One CD, Freeduc, was tailored especially for a student 
desktop system, with appropriate applications and menu selections.  The 
other, Knoppix for Kids, is aimed more at the school offices, with 
administrative applications.  There's substantial overlap between them, 
but the ease of sculpting a Linux distribution to your particular needs 
made creating both of them no big effort.

In addition, one of Schoolforge's member groups, K12LTSP, has created an 
easy to administer school lab system that costs much less to implement 
than any other system we've seen.  They set one up here and many of you 
have been playing with it all week.  In fact, some of the applications 
we'll be demonstrating reside on the K12LTSP server.

Before we get into specifics though, I'd like to talk about philosophy. 
 Yeah, I know, the vision thing.  But bear with me for a moment.

The primary organizing principle of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) 
movement is that all software and other resources that comes out of the 
movement must be adaptable by the user for whatever purpose is desired. 
 This means that the source code used to create the software must be 
available to anyone, and that no one may take that open source code and 
later close it to other viewers.  Further, any derivative works created 
from that open source code must be similarly licensed.

This principle fosters extremely rapid upgrades and "bugfixes," as 
anyone who finds a problem or who would like an enhancement can in 
principle fix the perceived problem directly.  It also means that it's 
very difficult to get any sort of substandard or damaging code into an 
application, as everyone can review what's being done.

This is exactly analogous to the academic concept of peer review, where 
research is held up to the scrutiny of others knowledgeable in the field 
for their critique before being accepted as solid.  This is 
unsurprising, as academia is where the FOSS movement originated.

Now back to particulars.  One of the groups that comprise Schoolforge, 
SEUL/edu, has taken it upon itself to compile a listing of software that 
runs on Linux that is useful in education.  At this time the listing 
runs to over 500 applications.  You can find it at 
<ttp://richtech.ca/seul/>.  It's divided into numerous categories, which 
are undergoing review and modification in the near future to make them 
better fit educator's expectations.  All of the applications we'll be 
showing here today are listed on that website.

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Doug Loss                 Courage is resistance to
Data Network Coordinator  fear, mastery of fear --
Bloomsburg University     not absence of fear.
dloss@bloomu.edu           Mark Twain