Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001
10:20
Subject: RE: [seul-edu] Linux community
support for education
Looks like there is a New Orleans LUG.
:-)
Your technical support organization needs to be more
flexible to grow as the school grows. Many schools fell into the trap of
paying the high license fees to redmond for Windows NT but more and more
schools are waking up and actually preparing their students for the real world
by running some flavor of UNIX. Granted, UNIX is a whole different beast
to support than Windows NT and your tech support folks are right in being
afraid. After all, you can't point and click your way to everything in
UNIX.
Trip
to New Orleans? Who's paying? :-)
Doug,
I wish I had a local
Linux group to call on. I don't even know anybody else in the New Orleans
area that has Linux installed on anything. If there is anybody that can give
detailed technical assistance, it sure would be helpful. Everything has been
by trial and error -- setting up, configuring the network, remote printing,
getting NIS working -- but I still haven't figured out how to set up
my client machines to go through the gateway to get to the Internet. It's
probably something simple, but there's nobody to show me what I'm doing
wrong. Anybody want to take a trip to N.O. to show me what to
do?
Anyway, in my school
district the tech support department has barely even heard of Linux, let
alone support it. All they will support are Pentium 233's or better running
Windows NT. As if my school has any chance of getting some of
those!
Thanks,
As most of you
know, I write fortnightly reports on Linux in
education. My next
report is due on Monday, and I have very little
to write about.
For that reason I'm trying to "prime the pump" and
generate some
interesting and useful discussion. If you can think
of any
questions you'd like to ask the list, now is the time.
Here's my
question. We've talked before about how the Linux
community can
get involved in education through advocacy and support
of local
schools. That was useful information for those of us who
are
primarily Linux techies but not educators. What I'd like to
find
out is if any of us who are teachers or school administrators
have
received or tried to enlist the help of local LUGs or other
Linux
community resources in their efforts to use Linux in school.
If so, how
successful were you? If you were dissatisfied with the
help you
received (if any), why and in what way was it lacking? If
you
haven't tried to locate and avail yourself of local Linux
resources,
why not? Is there anything the Linux community can or
should do
to help you in your efforts?
I'll be on a panel dealing with Linux
use in education at the
LinuxWorld Expo in New York City in a few
weeks, and your responses
will very likely become part of what I say to
the attendees. Here's
your chance to speak to the
community!
--
Doug
Loss
God is a comedian playing
Data Network Coordinator to an audience
too afraid
Bloomsburg University to
laugh.
dloss@bloomu.edu
Voltaire