[CoLoCo] canonical booth write up

[Jim Hutchinson]

Okay all,

I've hurriedly hammered out a short post about our recent booth experience
at TIE. It's late and not well written, but it's a start. Please look it
over and make changes and suggestions.

Thanks.

---
Recently, several members of the Colorado Local Community Team manned a
Canonical/Ubuntu booth at the Technology in Education Conference in Copper
Mountain, Colorado. The conference was attended by nearly one thousand
classroom teacher, administrators and technology enthusiasts from around
Colorado and a few surrounding states as well. The booth was open in the
conference exhibition hall on June 20 and 21. Using our own hardware, we
demonstrated Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu, passed out CDs and pamphlets, and
answered questions ranging from setting up thin-clients in schools to
finding good educational applications. Edubuntu was the main focus and was
run on an HP server in a thin-client configuration. Many attendees were
particularly interested in using current hardware installations in a
"dual-boot" environment. This involves using an Edubuntu server and desktop
computers capable of PXE booting allowing typical Windows based computers to
be rebooted into a thin-client mode. This capability was demonstrated with
great success during a three-hour session on using open source software in
schools on June 19th. During our time in the booth, we also demonstrated
various applications, Stellarium was a big hit, ran video clips, and showed
graphics of thin-client basics. In true do-it-yourself Linux fashion, our
"screen" was constructed from an un-ironed table cloth and power strips were
daisy chained together to accommodate all our equipment.

Many people we spoke to expressed great interested in using Edubuntu but
concern over how to actually implement such a change when they themselves
were not in charge of technology in the district. Emboldened by the
enthusiasm of the Colorado Local Team members, we began to collect contact
information, pointed visitors to our team's website, and assured everyone
that if they only asked they would find members willing to come out and
help. This has led to a current team project which is focused on developing
a way to offer local support to schools, or anyone, interested in using any
flavor of Ubuntu. The team expects to "go live" with local support options
within just a couple weeks.

Overall, the booth was a great success and many people went away with new
ideas and tips on how to actually make something happen in their school or
district. Too often, many great ideas are shared at such conferences, but
the reality of education in the United States often prevents positive
change. We not only shared great ideas, but backed it up with commitments to
actually make it happen.

The booth was manned by CoLoCo members Neal McBurnett, Leon Jaimes, Bryan
Gartner and Jim Hutchinson. Visit http://coloco.ubuntu-rocks.org or
https://launchpad.net/~coloradoteam for more information.

-- 
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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