Re: Christian's Questions...

[Alessandro Rubini]

Plese forgive the length of this message, but I think many interesting
points have been raised (and I've been unable to read the thread until
now.


Susan Stewart, replying to Christian Selig:

>> - At which level? National, International? 
> 
> That's a good question, and one that I must admit I'm only 90% sure 
> about.  While school systems differ greatly from one country to another, 
> I think that it would still be beneficial to make this a worldwide 
> effort as the training materials and software we use will be pretty much 
> the same for everyone.

But first of all the "project" must be defined. You look to be
interested in training materials and software. I assume you mean
"educational software" or similar products, but most of the schools
(as far as I know) do not use such stuff. And I personally am not
excited at all about using computers in education.

So are we aiming at introducing Free Software in the schools as a
means to automate education or simply use more software in the
schools? I hope not.  Yes, I noticed that in your first post,
where you state:

  > I would really like to see a push to get schools using free software. 

But i also see in the next line:

  > I'm sure that we are all aware of the devastating effects of high 
  > software licensing costs on schools.

Cost is not the major problem. I agree with Christian Selig about
what the problems are.

Still, I agree with you here:

  >                                                         Unless teachers 
  > know how to use it, and staff is able to maintain the system, all of our 
  > development efforts will amount to naught.


In my opinion, and I'm not alone, any effort to free schools from
proprietary software is about culture. And it's definitely about
involvement of individual teachers.  But we all know what the problems
of teachers are (especially good teachers, the ones that would be
interested in free software, most likely).

> My only qualm about that is the extra paperwork 
> involved in applying for grants funded by the US if we're an 
> international organization.

I don't see where funds are involved. Could you please expand?
Well, i have some ideas, but more detailed plans would help, although
I understand a public list may not be the best place to uncover them.

Sorry to be picky, but I'm convinced that before anything should be
done the aims and the means must be clearly stated.  I'm not usually
listened to when I say so, but then you see projects that started
about "open source" and "linux" end up including reviews of gratis
software running under windows.

>> - Who manages the project (US, Europe)? 
> 
> I'd like to see a small group (not more than 6-8 people) doing the 
> overall coordination, with at least one person from the US and at least 
> one from Europe.  Then we can break it down by country from there.

I tend to agree. But what is the project *exactly*?
 
>> - Who can donate resources? 
> 
> I'd be looking to businesses, LUGs (Linux Users' Groups), and 
> universities for volunteers.  I'm pretty good at rounding up state and 
> federal grant money [...]

What should those subjects do?  Please forgive me if it looks like I'm
opposing you, that's not the case. It's just that I miss information
(or just didn't see it), plus email carries no information at all
besides words, so concepts and feeling are much more difficult to pass
along.

If you bring businesses to the schools, they will do their own
interest most of the time. If you don't have a very tight definition
they will end up promoting their own "linux-based" proprietary
software. No point in doing that, besides opposing a monopoly (which is
good per se, but not enough for many of us to get involved).

And about volunteers, well, I don't think they are going to really
benefit education.  You need people who is very convinced about the
vision, who is not "against" something but "for" something else, who
is able to teach and educate (either the students or the teachers, it
doens't change a lot), who is willing to accept a serious involvement
over time and who's able to fulfill expectations.  Generally, I
wouldn't bring a LUG into a school (even if I know of good experiences),
unless there's a strong group of teachers coordinating the initiative
from inside the school.

> I've put together some ideas for fundraising that can be done at the
> individual school level, and also am trying to think of some things
> that would be more far-reaching.

Any detail available? If not, why not, and when? (there might be very
good reasons not to advertise internal things toa public list, but it
would be good to know if, why, and when).

>> - How would the work of the project look like, specifially? 
> 
> I'd like to provide as complete a support base for schools as possible: 
> help them figure out what they need, aid in writing grant proposals and 
> exploring other avenues of fundraising,

Sorry, I must be particularly stupid tonight, but I don't get the
point.  support base for what? what they need in what field?
fundraising to spend money on what?

> hook them up with local volunteers to help with system setup, and
> provide training resources to allow teachers and staff to make a
> smooth transition.  Also, as a little icing on the cake, I'd like to
> create a computer-related extracurricular program that individual
> schools can open thier own chapters of, then pool resources for
> regional conferences/programming competions/etc.  We could even help
> them find guest speakers, etc.

We have a similar project in Italy. I still don't understand what the
target is. And, believe me, if there's funding and corporate interest
involved, it will be very hard to also bring volunteers in. You have
to choose, in my opinion.

>> - Which existing group/s are willing to cooperate? 
> 
> I anticipate that GNU/FSF will be more than willing to participate, as 
> well as local LUGs.

I'm not speaking for either group, but I doubt, especially for the
former.  Unless the target is well defined and consistent with the
GNU/FSF aims, you won't have official support for the
organizations. Still, people may be willing to cooperate with the
project.

>> please outline your ideas :-)
> 
> First, of course, is materials development: a framework for training, a 
> start for any kind of extracurricular we want to bring to the schools, 

Sorry, still too vague for me. Computers are used in schools for two
things:
        - teaching how they work and how they are programmed
        - showing how to retrieve information and produce information

Training in either field is something that has been worked on by a
huge lot of brilliant (and less brilliant) people. Bringing free
software in (assuming this is your target, even if you never call it
by name) doesn't change much.  Especially in the latter case, that
concerns the huge majority of computer uses in the school nowadays.

I mean, it doesn't change anything *unless* you work on the cultural
level, talking about the ability to own the resources we use, about
the people that exist behind software design and development, about
the freedom of any use to choose which tools to use and to port them
to different computer systems if need arise. And, most of all, about
the freedom of the teacher to choose what to teach (this is about the
former class, i.e. computer classes, much more than the latter).



Kristian A. Rink:
> Aiming at the educational sector always has been a major concern to
> me since, right here, it would give "us" (the GNU / Free Software
> supporters) a very good base to get people interested in our aims
> and our software, in even (at least) make people aware that buying /
> working with a personal computer doesn't necessarily mean saying
> "Yes, I will" to Microsoft, their software and their licenses.

Agreed, although it doesn't apply to microsoft only.

> As Joerg Tauss (who I am, despite his other political
> works, at least appreciating for his dedication to Free Software usage in
> German government) stated on Chemnitz LinuxTag some weeks ago: "It's hard
> to understand why German schools should do free-of-charge product training
> for a company like Microsoft",

That's something Antonio Bernardi is saying since 1997.  He's a
teacher in an Italian school, and one of the maintainers of
www.linuxdidattica.org (in Italian, unfortunately). Oh, btw, some
ideas I express above are my take of his own ideas.

> If needed, I also could be of help writing some stuff on GNU/Linux -
> related topics. I have been lately writing articles for example for
> www.linuxnetmag.de and several other (web/print) ressources and
> guess I this way achieved some basic skills in writing things. :)

There's some skilled people writing out there, but no real structure
to collect and organize those writings. That would be a good project
to pursue.  I personally find the quality of printed magazines not
constant enough (this includes both major and minor mags, as far as I
can tell).  The howto collection is also of too varying quality to be
useable as a whole for anyone but geeks.


Kristian A.Rink:
> For quite some time now already I am a little surprised to see that
> the activities of GNU/FSF concerning the use of free software in
> education are pretty small.

Unfortunately, there's little we can do without help from teachers.
I agree with you when you say:

    Everything else IMHO is an incredible break with everything the word
    "education" stands for.

but unless we can work with the educators, we can't do much
here. Also, remember that most of us are hackers, so we are mostly
involves with programming computers, not humans.

> (1) First of all, I am sure that having edu-eu as a "top level" organisation
> for a strategical approach on getting free software into European
> schools is a pretty good thing.

But I really doubt it would work out that way. First of all, a "top
level" group must be highly selected and closed, if we want it to be
productive.  Closed both to unfriendly lurkers and to pseudo-friendly
DoS attackers like me (with this huge message).

Also, it's difficult to get recognised at any official level,
especially now that independent entities, both commercial and
pseudo-public will start their own projects.

> But, besides that, I think there really is a need for having, let's
> call it project groups for the several countries of Europe; people
> that know about the school systems in their special countries,
> people that are in touch with schools and teachers in their
> countries [...]

Teachers, most. And the bureaucratic part, definitely. 

> We should both try to gather all those ressources on one point

Yes. And no. Are you going to devote energies to that effort? Is there
someone else? This ought to be done, but with great care. 


Bruno Coudoin:
> About my experience on gcompris, teachers are easy to convince that they
> should teach free software but it is hard for them to go further
> because:
> - they don't have enough technical expertice to force the windows admin
> out there to install a dual boot
> - the windows admin refuses to install it
> - they need to convince other teachers but they don't have the
> information we have to convince them.

Yes, agreed. Except I think dual boot is no good at all most of the
time.  I set up a dual-boot schoolroom, but I wouldn't' do it any more
as it's unmaintainable. If I can't have the whole of the disk, I'd
rather do all diskless hosts, rather than half of the disk.

> Perhaps, we could create a specific little book dedicated to the
> education market that would contains explaination on why free software
> in school is mandatory and a description of a list of free software and
> in what they can be used for (or what can they replace) and why not a CD
> like demo linux with that (or a full distrib).

Interesting idea. Volunteers?
  [no, I'm not sarcastic here. I *really* hope there's bright people
   with available time for this]

> Well, I believe our software is good enough often much better than
> proprietary ones but we lack the marketing staff to promote, install
> and support it.

On the other hand, schools do need the best software available, but
"best" is not the same as of a company. Professionals need the "best"
in a techinical sense, schools need the best in an educational sense.
For example, if I teach CAD concepts I don't need the most featureful
CAD out there, I just need one that is small fast and cheap enough to
be copied and used by all of the students.

But again, this is a matter of culture, and a very difficult culture
to spread nowadays. And again, I borrowed the idea from prof. Bernardi.

/alessnandro