[seul-edu] Young Linuxers in school

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

Since Pete and I had the editorial published on Freshmeat, I've received
some email messages from early- to mid-teenaged people telling me about
what they've done at their schools and asking how they can help.  This
brings two thoughts to my mind.

First, there is evidently some effort at some schools to slip Linux into
the school "under the radar" of the school administration.  I hadn't
thought about that, but in retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising. 
Testing the limits and challenging orthodoxy are de rigeur at that age, and
Linux fits by both criteria.  I don't know how these grass-roots efforts
will help or hinder the work on getting Linux into the schools through the
front doors.  It will probably depend on the individual schools and
districts.

Second, there's a strong interest in Linux and an interest in helping among
the young people who contacted me.  What should we do to foster and channel
that interest?  I've invited them all to join us here, and I'm sure that at
least some of them have.  Since most of us are older and are either
teachers or technical (or both), I think these folks can provide us with a
valuable perspective.  But I don't want to bore them if we can avoid it. 
Perhaps we can thing about something like an email mentoring program, where
some of us take on interested young people as cyber-apprentices.  The whole
idea is a bit hazy to me just now; let's squint at it for a bit and see if
it comes into focus.  At any rate, let's talk about how we can use their
interest and energy.

This may be a good impetus for us to work on developing some of the
configuration guides we're planning.  They might make it easier for these
students to convince their schools to let them set up Linux systems overtly
("Oh, there's a manual on how to do this?  Well then, go ahead; just follow
the instructions.").

-- 
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