Fw: Ubuntu for School

[Rob Frohne]

Good Project!  The bigger your school is the harder it will be, but it 
will be a good learning experience for you in any case, even if you 
aren't successful totally.

I actually think we all need to come up with some of the tools to make 
administering a lab of computers easier on Ubuntu.  I haven't really 
solved this to my satisfaction for my lab.  Ubuntu actually has some 
commercial software or a service that looked like it would work nicely, 
but it isn't open source of cheap.  It takes far too much time to 
upgrade a whole lab of computers, and just keeping them updated is 
problematic.  One thing that has helped is this little sequence that 
allows me to have the same packages installed on all the lab computers.

dpkg --get-selections > mypackages.txt
sudo dpkg --set-selections < mypackages.txt
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

Best wishes,

Rob

Best regards,

Rob

On 10/13/2010 04:17 PM, epic93dude at gmail.com wrote:
> Someone at ubuntu-marketing told me to send this to you all. I'm a 15 
> year old sophomore in a school in the US , going to try to get my 
> school to adopt ubuntu. Perhaps you might have an idea what a 
> teacher/principal's concerns might be about ubuntu or FOSS in general.
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: * Epic93dude at gmail.com
> *Date: *Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:53:16 +0000
> *To: *<ubuntu-marketing at lists.ubuntu.com>
> *Subject: *Ubuntu for School
>
> Hi Ubuntu-Marketing. I ama a student at a small high school in 
> Southwest Missouri. Recently we had an assignment in a class where we 
> had to give a presentation on a group/organization/movement. I chose 
> to give my presentation on Ubuntu. I explained what an operating 
> system was, then what open source software was. I explained how the 
> open source community worked and why Open Source Software tends to be 
> more secure, faster, and easier to use than Proprietary Software, and 
> how these benefits were present in Ubuntu, in a way that the average 
> computer user could understand. I also demonstrated some programs that 
> come with Ubuntu and how they could do many of the tasks just as well 
> or sometimes better than their Proprietary counterparts.
>
> The response was great. Several students were interested in learning 
> more about Ubuntu and OSS after I gave the presentation. The school's 
> principal, who also happened to be there during the presentation, was 
> also interested in Ubuntu as well as the applications that I showed. I 
> think that there is an opportunity of some kind here to get OSS in use 
> at my school, because the students, teacher (of the class I gave the 
> presentation in), and principal all seemed to be open towards the 
> concept of free software.
>
> What I want to do is get my school to at least try Ubuntu out in one 
> of the computer labs or something like that. I think if I could 
> demonstrate that it is a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows + 
> Office, which is what we currently use on all our computers, would 
> save decent amounts of money, and would give access to some pretty 
> amazing educational programs (The periodic table of elements program 
> immediately comes to mind), they would be willing to try it.
>
> That being said, I need to be able to convince the IT staff that it 
> would be easy to learn, easier to manage than Windows Server Edition 
> (Which is what we use), and compatible with the current infrastructure 
> that we have. If I can do that, plus convince the administration that 
> we would save costs etc., I think they would consider trying it out, 
> or even switching over entirely.
>
> Can you guys help me with this (especially the convincing the IT staff 
> part) ? 

-- 
Rob Frohne, Ph.D., P.E.
E.F. Cross School of Engineering
Walla Walla University
100 SW 4th Street
College Place, WA 99324
(509) 527-2075			 http://people.wallawalla.edu/~rob.frohne

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