[seul-edu] Preliminary thoughts on a Linux in education promotion

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

I'm sending this to both the seul-edu mailing list and to various other
interested people I've come across since RedHat's counter-proposal to
Microsoft's self-serving settlement proposal of its third-party,
class-action antitrust suit was made public.  (Boy, try and parse _that_
sentence!)  These are just some preliminary thoughts of mine and should
not be taken as anything approaching an implementable plan.  By the way,
thanks to Karsten Self for contacting Michael Tiemann at RedHat about
this.  Mr. Tiemann, I hope this won't be bothersome to you; if it is let
me know and I'll make sure we remove you from the address list.

As I've stated previously, I think the RedHat counter-proposal may be
just the thing to catalyze a focused action toward getting Linux and
free/open source software generally more noticed and accepted in
schools.  The counter-proposal has got the notice of some of the
mainstream media, which is a good first step for what I see as a three
part effort.

What are those three parts, you may ask?  Before I get to that, I want
to say that we can't just walk up to the schools and say, "you really
ought to try using Linux instead of Microsoft; it's much better."  That
will get exactly nowhere.  Instead, we need to have good ideas of just
how Linux can be used educationally, with examples of schools that have
done so successfully.  We need to have guides to how to install and
configure Linux, and on how to use various programs in an educational
environment.  We need to have ready answers to the most frequently-asked
questions, whatever they may be.  In short, we need to be prepared.

Now, to those three parts.  First, we need to let the school
administrators, teachers, parents, etc., know that we (the Linux in
education effort) exist.  This will be fundamentally a publicity effort,
and is where the RedHat announcement provides a good starting point.

Second, we need to be successful advocates to those people who show an
interest in what we have to offer.  This is "setting the hook," as any
fishermen out there will understand.  We need to be able to explain why
we think we have a better way of using computers in education than what
they're doing now, and to show why we believe this.  We need to be able
to address their concerns, since we'll be asking them to make a major
change in direction from whatever they're currently doing.  We need to
be able to assuage their understandable fears of the unknown.

Third, we need to be able to support them in their efforts to move to
Linux.  This will undoubtedly involve a good deal of on-line support,
but I think it will definitely require a local, face-to-face contact in
most cases at least until the various schools develop their own
expertise.

So, how do we get from now to then?  I think the very first thing we
need to do is get hard committments from people and organizations to
carry this through.  Otherwise, it will just peter out as people get
tired or their interest flags.  Since RedHat has broached the subject,
perhaps seeking some sponsorship from them might be a place to start. 
Alternatively (if RedHat doesn't want to do this alone), we might
approach some of the other major Linux distributions to create a Linux
educational coalition.  I know that both Mandrake and SuSE are
interested in educational uses for Linux; Debian has the Debian-jr
project that is intended to address this area; and there are some
smaller distros aimed directly at the educational sector.  Let's see if
we can bring them together on this.  Mr. Tiemann, since RedHat is the
initial catalyst on this we'll wait to hear from you.  If things don't
work out for a single sponsor system, we'll contact Mandrake, SuSE, and
Debian (I'm sure there are people on the seul-edu mailing list with
contacts in each group) and see about creating a broad-based coalition.

Then we need to determine just what materials we need to prepare.  This
is where the seul-edu mailing list can come in very handy.  List
members, if you've put Linux in place at your schools could you post
messages telling us why you decided to try Linux, what difficulties you
had in getting it approved, how you got around those difficulties, the
same thing for getting it installed, and what your impressions of Linux
in education are now that you've used it for a while.  (Incidentally,
this is what our Linux in education case studies are for, too.  If you
send a message to the list about this, go fill out a case study
<http://richtech.ca/seul/casestudy.html> too, OK?)  This will give us
material to develop promotional literature from, along with helping us
come up with a Frequently Asked Questions list.  In addition, it will
probably give us a good idea of just what guides we need to develop to
ease the installation, configuration, and use (ICU, for a shorthand) of
Linux in the schools.

The last bit of preparation (I think) will be developing materials for
LUGs to use as local school support teams.  We'll need to lobby the LUGs
to take on school support as an on-going project, and to provide them
with assistance in approaching the schools and dealing with the
administrative and academic culture.  I'll admit to not having thought
this bit through completely just yet.

SEUL/edu has nascent subprojects planned for developing the ICU guides
and for designing the LUG school support teams, but we haven't done any
substantive work on them.  We have a few other nascent subprojects that
might be useful here too, but I don't want to get ahead of things too
much.  But when we're ready to get things moving, we do have some
support structure already in place and can put more up fairly quickly.

As I said at the beginning, this is in no way a comprehensive plan.  But
I think I've come up with some good discussion points.  We have an
opportunity to put together a great effort to extend Linux into the
schools in a big way--let's not let it drop.  Let's talk about this and
come up with some concrete plans, and then let's MOVE!

Doug Loss
drloss@home.com
(570) 326-3987