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On Monday 18 October 2004 20:34, Doug Coats wrote:
Hello all,
I am speaking at a couple of workshops at our regional ACSI (Association of
Christian Schools International) convention. One of them is about using
Linux in the school. I assume most of the attendees will have little or no
experience and probably most just curious. I have promoted it as using
Linux as a Microsoft OS and App replacement for the desktop with enough
power to get the server side of computing done also.
How would you approach this?
- - Give a Knoppix bootable liveCD[1] to everybody attending your talk.
- - Give a DeMuDi bootable liveCD[2] to the music teachers.
- - Ask the list once again which specific liveCD with educational applications
to use.
This will help you show the excellent quality of Free and Open Source
software. Bring an additional three-year-old machine to show how these
machines can be used with the software, or tell people about your experiences
with the software running on an older machine. Point out that LiveCDs are
slooooooow due to CDROM access time.
Pick out two or three applications to showcase. Consider handing out a Windows
installer for OpenOffice.Org, maybe along with the GIMP[3] and Mozilla, maybe
also the Firefox browser. These might as well be your showcase applications
on the GNU/Linux machine.
What would you HAVE to include to feel that
you have done justice?
0.) Start with quoting Aurelius Augustinus "De doctrina christiana":
"Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum
habetur, quomodo habenda est." (google for translation or let the latin
teachers warm up their brains :-) )
1.) Tell people about the history, philosophy and the "Four Freedoms" of the
GNU project[0]. There's plenty of overlap with christian values there, which
might help in your context. It may sound quirky to some, so keep it concise -
you'll get those people later on. Starting with the GNU Project allows to
show how old the development model really is - "In the beginning, software
was free."
2.) Now go on with the arguments of the Open Source community: Quality,
interoperability and other benefits of the development process.
3.) Provide a webpage with links for further reading. Thus you can skip half
of what you wanted to talk about. If you don't have the time for the showcase
part, do a workshop for those interested before and after your talk.
4.) Point out how people can get help from locals like a LUG or something
Maybe that's a good start to lay out your presentation.
All the best to you and your audience, Doug!
- - Burkhard
[0]: More info here: <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/>
[1]: you'll get it at www.knopper.net/knoppix
[2]:
<http://freesoftware.ircam.fr/mirrors/agnula/1.1/1.1.1/demudi-live-cd_1.1.1.iso>
You'll find MD5-checksums of the files in the same directory.
DeMuDi is developed by the AGNULA project, see
<http://www.agnula.org/documentation/dp_tutorials/>
[3]: Watch out, there are 3 packages to install, the windowing toolkit, the
GIMP and GIF support!
Doug Coats
- --
Libre Audio, Libre Video, Libre Software: www.AGNULA.org
Public key available here:
<http://blackhole.pca.dfn.de:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFD82303B>
key FP 0A65 5E83 F44F 47A5 3DFC 19C5 7779 E411 FD82 303B
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