[seul-edu] Corbett Elementary School Linux project, and more

[Harry McGregor <micros@azstarnet.com>]

	As many of you will remember, I have been working on a project to
integrate a Linux based computer lab into Corbett Elementary school
(http://www.corbettschool.org).  The lab has been open in working for over
a year now.  As many of you that are involved in similar projects know,
this is an ever evolving installation, requiring constant upgrades.  We
recently had our official opening of the computer lab, inviting in the
donors of the equipment, and members of the community.  An article in the
local newspaper (http://www.azstarnet.com), star-tech section on the lab
is pending.  As a result of this opening we have increased community
interest in open source in education.

The Corbett Computer Lab:
	Donated Pentium 90 systems
		Upgraded to 64MB ram
		600MB hard disk drives
		A mix of 17", 15" and 14" monitors
		New 10/100 PCI network cards.
	A Switched, 10/100 network (most at 10 currently, moving 100Mbit)
	Internet access provided though the Tucson Unified School District
wide area network, though accelerated by a local Squid proxy server.
	800x600 InFocus LP225 projector
	Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (potato)
	Wine (three windows educational applications)
	StarOffice (hacked to work (mostly...) over an NFS filesystem
	AbiWord
	Netscape 4.7

On about the first of December, 1999 we were contacted by a local charter
school (not quite a public school, though not a private school, in Arizona
charter schools are supported by state funding, etc).  We entered into
discussions on how to build the lab, received the contract, and had the
lab completed by Jan 3, 2000, the start of the school year.  This lab was
done a little differently than Corbett, mostly in the fact that it is a
network boot setup, dealing with a single file system.  This greatly
reduces administraive tasks.  We are using Etherboot
(http://www.slug.org.au/etherboot) on 10/100 network cards (we had to buy
an EPROM writer to make this possible), which boots the systems over the
network.

The Charter School Computer Lab:
	Pentium PRO 200 workstations:
		64MB Ram
		4MB PCI video cards
		17" monitors
	Internet access provided via DSL line, accelerated/restricted via
Squid/Squid Guard software

During the last few months of last year I started working with a team of
Linux/OSS people, consisting of Justin Zeigler, Tom Rini, and Nick Lopez.
Together we decided to form a Non-Profit charitable organization to
further pursue Linux in Education.  This includes supporting developers,
and developing hardware and software solutions targeted at education
(specificaly Schools and Libraries).  We are currently working on forming
this corporation (we need to have promises of donation, a fiscal plan for
three years, etc to appease the US IRS).  When finished, we will be a
501c3 non-profit charitable organization.

If anyone here has any questions about what we are doing, or would like to
assist us in anyway (i.e. getting us in contact with companies and
individuals that would be interested in donating to a charity with an
emphasis in Technology in Education), please feel free to contact me,
micros@azstarnet.com


		Harry McGregor