[NH LoCo] Manchester school outreach

[Arc Riley]

We don't need a background check to meet with the faculty, those things only
come into play if we were part of a program such as a computer club or were
doing work for the school.  This is just meeting with the faculty which
doesn't even need to happen at the school.

There's three schools I'm looking at specifically because they're in the
community network deployment zone, two of which are private schools.  If we
were to just go to talk to them about the network, without any real use for
them, it wouldn't be very effective.  A focus on a crossover of two specific
areas, however:

   - what can they do with Ubuntu that they cannot with Windows
   - what can they do over the community network that is infeasable with the
   Internet

I see two possible ways to get in our foot in the door - either through the
computer dept or through the art dept.

The computer depts are hit or miss.  If the person we talk to is a Microsoft
fanboy it's a non-starter, but we won't know that until we meet with them.
Remember these schools are completely separate from each other.

I've had some good luck with art teachers in the past with Blender, their
budgets are usually really tight and being able to setup free modeling on
workstations with distributed rendering is a huge boon.  The community
network could extend that further, allowing students to utilize the art dept
systems from home for their files and rendering.  Students being able to run
the same software from home, vs even the student discounted $1500 licenses
on some 3d modeling software, is an easy sell.


On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Broderick <employeeno5 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Come home soon Tom!
>
> As far as pitching to schools, there are a couple things that come to mind.
> Firstly, colleges I'm all for us talking with any time about any kind of
> use.
>
> Public schools with children at them however, have extremely strict
> curricula and regulations that they have to deal with. Also, to be on site
> doing any kind of work or promotion or project requires by law background
> checks, even if we're not there during school hours. These are not hard to
> get, I've had them for work before, but it's important to know the setting
> you would be dealing with. Ideally, any proposal for the schools using these
> computers in the classroom needs to be brought to district level, not school
> by school or teacher by teacher. It's possible that one could get some
> teachers on board who would aid us in a proposal, but it would need to be
> district wide.
>
> Another option however, is to find out if there are any computer science or
> programing clubs. We could contact those moderators and see if they were
> interested in learning more about incorporating Linux. Even if they didn't
> want to make a it regular thing, perhaps they would be happy to allow a
> presentation/demonstration for students about how they can start using Linux
> at home sometime. I think this is the most appropriate way for a community
> group to proceed with any activity at public schools.
>
> If we're talking about bringing Linux into school libraries, computer
> classes or offices, I think we need to approach the district office. At most
> I think the first contact point would be to contact a school administration
> and ask them if they could pass our name onto their computer
> department/teacher and tell them we'd be interested in seeing what they
> thought about more open source programs or education in the classroom. I
> think any pitch after that would fairly easy to put together, however, it
> may still be unconvincing given that schools are used to be sold things and
> they don't need more problems or anything further complicated, particularly
> if they see nothing wrong with their current situation. Just because it
> could be better doesn't mean it's worth taking the bother or risk with
> something new. However, while they may be skeptical of some random nerds
> evangelizing about saving money and feel good ideas about education and
> freedom, they may be very open to taking seriously other administrators and
> educators. There are lots of public school systems around the country that
> use Linux. I'm sure getting letters, testimony, or numbers from other
> schools and districts about their success will sell better than any amount
> of well crafted rhetoric or insightful presentation we could give. This kind
> of change in something like a school system usually needs to come from
> inside the school system. If we can find a teacher or administrator who
> would already be all for this, then perhaps we can offer support, but other
> than that, I think our best best would be to contact people in other school
> districts that have had success. Even then though, any seasoned
> administrator won't be able to help but ask, "Why do you care? What's in it
> for you to pitch this or help with this?" While a passion for technology
> education and community service are all well and good one should be prepared
> to be greeted by skepticism if the authorities in question are not very tech
> savvy.
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Arc Riley <arcriley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have a feeling this is going to be more of a two of us sits down with
>> one or two of them scenario, not a presentation with projector.
>>
>> This is less an introduction of what Ubuntu is than a set of things the
>> schools could be doing with Ubuntu, ie cloud computing for students, such
>> that come Fall students are encouraged to use Ubuntu even if just as a
>> remote terminal to their school account via virtualized LTSP.
>>
>> Given the community network that's being built, a lot of options are
>> opening up for high bandwidth services like this.
>>
>> Material on different ways schools are using Ubuntu now, especially with
>> LTSP and cloud computing with Edubuntu, is something I think we're going to
>> have to put together ourselves.
>>
>> BTW - is anyone signed up for the Ubuntu One beta?
>> https://ubuntuone.com/
>>
>>
>> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Thomas A. Cantara <tacantara at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know if this will help, but here are some files that came with
>>> my Kubuntu 9.04 CD.  If you have access to a projector, the presentation
>>> could be helpful.  If not, you could print it and use it as a handout.
>>>
>>>
>>
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