[CoLoCo] canonical booth write up

[Neal McBurnett]

Thanks, Jim!  It was great fun.

I'd emphasize your 3-hour conference session a lot more - that was the
highlight for me.  The conference organizers told us that our session
was the most popular lab session of the day (50 attendees?), and a
number of people left the other sessions to come to ours.  And there
was a nice tie-in with the theme of the keynote, from what I heard.
Link to your presentation on the conference site also.

Note that when there are a lot of thin clients on one server running
CPU-intensive applications, things can get slow, so choosing apps
carefully and/or tuning the lab can pay off.

We'd still love more advice on good K-12 apps to show off, and lesson
plans for them.  Link to the official tiecolorado site, our
tiecolorado wiki and the lessons wiki.

A few edits:

> 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

During our time in the booth, we also demonstrated various
applications like Stellarium (a big hit), ran video clips, and showed
how thin-client labs are set up.

> The booth was manned by CoLoCo members Neal McBurnett, Leon Jaimes, Bryan
> Gartner and Jim Hutchinson.

CoLoCo members Jim Hutchinson, Bryan Gartner, David Overcash, Leon
Jaimes and Neal McBurnett participated in the event.  HP provided the
big server for the LTSP lab.


Cheers,

-Neal

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 12:37:21AM -0600, Jim Hutchinson wrote:
> 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

> -- 
> Ubuntu-us-co mailing list
> Ubuntu-us-co at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-co