[school-discuss] K12Linux Texas update...

[<pnelson@riverdale.k12.or.us>]

Hello again folks,

Well things went VERY well and we had a great 2 hour presentation. LOTS of 
interest, teachers all over the place blocking the isles. They should have 
given us more room... ;-)

For the most part K12Linux and the whole nature of Open Source was new info 
to these teachers.

Up here in Oregon and Washington I know many schools are moving towards 
using Linux but after being at this conference with 10,000+ teachers from 
all over the country I feel like we have a long way to go. No matter how 
good our software is we need to market it in a way that will be more 
effective.

I'll post some more ideas on this later but there must be things we can do 
to have a greater impact. MS and Apple are here with HUGE booths, lights, 
multimedia and people all over the place sharing their vision. In some ways 
at a conference this large, sharing the message of what open source can do 
seems difficult. I feel like a small voice in a large crowd of noise.

I am determined however to do better next year when NECC is held in Seattle.
http://ccenter.uoregon.edu/conferences/NECC2003/

Let's talk about that on the list some. I'd like to see an open source 
thread of sessions and talks from all of you out there using Linux. One 
example: today there was HUGE interest in the squidguard setup Eric 
Harrision has available from the MESD [http://squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us/].

We need folks to give talks on all the cool software out there. The ISO 
project Schoolforge.net is working would be a great focus. 
http://archives.seul.org/schoolforge/discuss/Jun-2002/msg00035.html

I'd like for many of you right now to plan on doing presentations in 
Seattle this week in June next year. I'll be contacting you and twisting 
your arms. We need an open source in education convention and there's no 
reason why we can't just crash this party.

That's a short update for now. I'll get back with more later.

Thanks again to Red Hat Linux and Linuxfund.org for sending me. I was the 
ONLY Linux topic here this week. I can't tell you how many times teachers 
asked why there was not a greater presense.

;-) Paul



> 
> Hello Folks,
> 
> Well, tomorrow morning [June 18] at 5:50 am (just a few hours and 20
> more K12LTSP CD sets away...) I'll be off for the NECC conference in
> Texas.  www.neccsite.org
> 
> This is the largest education/technology conference in the USA.
> There will be 10,000+ teachers there. Thanks to the generosity of
> Red Hat and Linuxfund.org, K12LTSP will be there too.
> 
snip.........