[seul-edu] Re: Greetings from Red Escolar Linux.]

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

> Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 12:56:29 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Arturo Espinosa Aldama <arturo@mezcal.dyndns.org>
> To: seul-edu@seul.org
> Subject: Greetings from Red Escolar Linux.
> 
> I'm the project leader for the Red Escolar Linux project, here in the
> National Autonomous University of Mexico. I was wondering if our
> effort
> could be integrated as part of the seul-edu projects, because he have
> so
> much in common. How could we do this?
> 
Arturo,

   I would be overjoyed if we could put our two groups in closer
contact.  Here at SEUL we try to help everyone who is working to make
Linux easier to use and more appealing to the computing community
outside of the traditional techie enclave.  Let's think about how we
can accomplish this.  First, do you have any ideas about how you'd like
to structure the association?

   We already have you listed on our worldwide links page.  We could
also list you as a project on our projects page, which would likely
make you more visible to visitors to our site.  What would probably be
most useful is if you could send me regular updates on the status of
Red Escolar and news when it occurs so I can include those in my
regular Linux in education reports that get linked to on Linux Weekly
News and LinuxToday.  That would help me too, as sometimes it's a bit
of work to find enough to say to fill the report.

   I think it would also be very useful to have someone from Red
Escolar on our mailing list (I know you were and still may be on the
list from your UNAM address; let us know if we should put you on from
this address and remove the UNAM one).  That way you could quickly see
if we come up with anything interesting and useful to you, and you
could help direct the development of these things.  Also, you could let
us know what you're doing and where we can help you.  We have some very
knowledgeable and helpful people on the list, and I like to think we'd
be of some use to you.

   We have a number of people from Latin America on the seul-edu list. 
I know they'd like to know much more about Red Escolar.  I think they
might also be interested in developing open source educational contacts
within Latin America to help each other promote the use of Linux and
Free (libre) Software generally in their respective countries.  It
would be very nice if we could help all of you get something like this
going.

   Finally, Alejandro Diaz Infante <ainfante@gauss.logicnet.com.mx>
sent me a wonderful multimedia presentation on CDROM on Mexican history
(the Porfirian Period and the Maderist Revolution) that we displayed at
the LinuxCanada Expo just past.  Alejandro is a teacher at a teacher's
college in Zacatecas (ENMAC, I think).  His group is still working on
obtaining permission to use all the copyright material in the
presentation before they can distribute the CDROM widely, but I think
it's just the sort of thing that could make Linux take off in the
schools.  The ENMAC group isn't made up of programmers but of teachers.
 They used MetaCard to create this presentation.  As soon as it's
distributable, we hope to make it downloadable from our website, and to
have Alejandro and his group write a document in the terms teachers are
familiar with on how they created it.  We'd like to see other teachers
and students from around the world create similar things.  This would
be a major event in the use of Linux in education, I think.  If you're
not familiar with this presentation, you ought to contact Alejandro and
see how you can all work together to your mutual benefit.

-- 
Doug Loss            There's no trick to being a humorist
dloss@suscom.net     when you have the whole government
(570) 326-3987       working for you.
                        Will Rogers