SEUL: edos project

["Bill Stephenson" <bill@secureshopper.com>]

Hi all, 

I've got a meeting with Kim Borisek at The Computer Technology I class at
Gibson Technical Center this Thursday.  It is my understanding that they
have around 25-30 computers that the students have assembled in their
workshop. I'm going to see how many she wants to use with this project. We
have a discount book store that has a few Linux books on sale that I'll pick
up and I'm going to buy a Red Hat distribution for the kids to use. I'm
hoping it won't be long before they're teaching me. ; )

I haven't found much for GNU educational software yet. Selena Sol has a
perl/cgi script called "Multiple_choice".  I will try to set up a demo on
the edos.org site in the next few days with links for downloading.

I think I can get edos in front of 5000 Missouri teachers and other
educators at the Interface 2000 conference in Feb, 2000. I would like to
take Linux to the 1999 conference but I don't think I'm ready to do that
myself quite yet. 

I must admit that I don't really even know right now what software these
K-12 teachers are using. I assume they have interactive apps that help with
reading, math, etc.  One of the teachers I spoke with recently showed me the
grade tracking software the school just starting using. Since it was not
password protected, he said he would keep using his old software. This seems
like a pretty basic feature for this kind of app. It also seems like a
natural for perl so maybe this is where I'll start my own little piece of
the suite  : ) It would be nice for parents to be able to access their
children's grades on a somewhat real time basis too eh?.

I'll try and get over to the elementary school this week and talk to them
about an edos test in one of their classrooms. If nothing else, I'll set up
a box with the games, Gimp, and whatever else we come up with and let the
kids bang away at it to see what happens.

I'm trying to come up with some ways to fund developers who will work on
free educational apps. This seems like a cause that might work well with
corporate sponsorships. I've been talking to colleagues about government
grants too. Both of these sources are viable. Distribution of these funds
(if any become available) needs to be addressed.  Is there a current working
model of this in the Linux community? Maybe it's to early to even address
this but the need for quality software is obvious.  As an example, would the
Gimp developers create a version for "first graders" if we could find funds?
Do we ask them if they can find the funds for this? Or, do we find
developers and try to find to funds so they can eat while working on the
source code of gimp.

I have so much to learn...

Thanks all, 

Bill Stephenson