* Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx> [2007-07-15 12:59:56]: > Chris Gregan wrote: >> One question: How did you manage to get the IT staff to allow you to >> start using Linux and open source? I guess this goes for anyone in the >> group. I have extreme difficulty getting IT admins to agree to any open >> source usage. As a consultant I talk to Principals and Teachers who all >> want to use it, but the effort stalls when it comes to the IT admin. Any >> advice would be greatly appreciated. > > Great links Chris, I'm going to try UbuntuStudio on my wife's new Ubuntu > laptop from Dell. > > After we made many presentations to the IT department of APS, showed them > by example how well it worked, ultimately it was the educational folk who > convinced the IT leadership to try a pilot in other schools after they saw > how much it improved test scores, and it also helped that we had several > proponents in the IT department, even if not the top leadership. Since APS > currently plans to do 20-30 new schools this coming year, best thing might > be to get your IT folks in touch with the leader of the APS pilot effort. > If you'd like her contact info I'll get it to you off list, I know she's > been approached by several other school districts. What APS did really did > blaze new territory in the US, which is going to an enterprise scale of > K12LTSP (thanks to the work of Jim Kinney), and the cost model is even > cheaper due to being able to hang over 100 clients off a single one of > Jim's servers. Jim subscribes to this list as well, he might be able to > provide your IT folk with the even lower cost model that can be achieved > with the enterprise version. > > And as always, I'm happy to talk to anyone willing to listen about how > beneficial it was to APS both in IT terms as well as academic performance. > Even the inner city schools that were having trouble with academic > performance showed significant improvement after getting the Linux > enterprise K12LTSP system. But I do think you have to get outside the IT > department to convince them. If you can get to the superintendent, try > that. > > Best, > Daniel > Well, from my experince it goes along the lines of people tends to stick to the thinngs they know. In other words educate them. Show them the candy bag, not the whip. In my mind no matter what is choocen by convincing someone turns out bad. But if the person had been educated in it then some tends to change point of view. One thing that could make me change my mind about something is that if it has benifits that i can use for something. And that has made me from starting to use FreeBSD (started in 199803) as a regular user to a developer today. Even though i do Linux development for a living. There tends to be good and bad sides to everything. I think i've spent my 2 cents (the meter says 5 cents now) /Soeren -- Soeren Straarup | aka OZ2DAK aka Xride FreeBSD committer | FreeBSD since 2.2.6-R If a program is not working right, then send a patch
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