[school-discuss] [Fwd: [seul-edu] Re: ISO]

[Douglas Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Over on the seul-edu mailing list we've started planning for a new 
project which we think will be very helpful in making Linux more 
appealing to the schools we present it to: a CD-ROM image (ISO) of all 
the useful educational applications we've found for Linux.  Our 
current sequence for development is listed below.

The reason I'm writing is that the first two steps in this sequence 
_really_ need the assistance of teachers and other educators in 
addition to us interested techies.  We need to get some teachers to 
look through the SEUL/edu Educational Applications Index 
<http://richtech.ca/seul/> and pick the apps that look like good 
candidates.  I _know_ there are a number of teachers reading this 
message.  Step up!  You don't have to go over the entire list.  Just 
pick your particular area of expertise and take a good look at the 
apps in that category.  If some category doesn't get any volunteers, 
we'll have to look at parceling those apps out to people willing to 
look at them.

This is your chance to influence the course of the Linux in education 
movement, folks!  Join us!

-------------------------------------------

[1]
First, let's look through the entries in the Educational Applications 
Index <http://richtech.ca/seul/> and identify candidates for inclusion 
in the ISO.

[2]
Once we've identified candidate apps, people have to install and test
them.  This is where a fair amount of effort is involved.  This is 
something that is best done by teachers or people who can have 
teachers test it for them.  We want to find out what would actually be 
useful in school, not what looks like a good idea to us but that 
teachers wouldn't use.  After these tests we should have a list of 
available, useful apps.

[3]
Then we need to package the apps.  There's a fair amound of effort 
involved here, too, but this can probably be done by fewer, dedicated 
people than the previous task.

[4]
After that we need to come up with an installer.  If the packages are 
included with standard distros it should be up to the distro 
manufacturers to add hooks to their various installers to add our 
stuff; but if someone is downloading our ISO we should have some easy 
to use installer as an integral part of it.  Matt Jezorek, what are 
you using with Blue Linux?

[5]
Finally, we need to construct the ISO.  That should be fairly easy, I 
think.  After that, we need to put it up for download, try to get 
CheapBytes to carry it, and advocate it to all the distro people.


-- 
Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
(570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
                           Ashleigh Brilliant