[CLUE-Talk] Linux in Schools, a bottleneck in the higher ups.

[G. Richard Raab]

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On Sunday 17 August 2003 12:44 pm, Kevin Cullis wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I was talking with a friend of my sisters who is a teacher at a local
> high school and this /. article hit the nail on the head:
>
> http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/16/2358216.shtml?tid=107&tid=146&tid=
>187&tid=99
>
> "Business Week describes the current situation in the educational
> market, suggesting that Apple will lose its share among the high school
> teachers and students. The worst enemies, according to Business Week,
> are school superintendents. "We want a single platform," one of them
> said. "We're trying to get there using the carrot, or blackmail, or
> rewards, or whatever you call it.""
>
> The teacher, who teaches computer programming to students, has been
> asked by students to get Linux in the school and she has asked the
> school superintendent when and each time they state "We don't have the
> room." The kids want it, but the higher ups don't want to fool with it.
>
> I know some of you have been active in getting it running in some
> schools, what arguments have you been using?  Their "customers," i.e.
> students, businesses, want it?

I have found that when approaching the school and mentioning the money 
savings; it seems to help. Owens ppl are busy approaching all the schools and 
trying to take over all the purchaseing of it (they are trying to install MS 
everywhere; as One Owens person told me; you do not bite the hand that feeds 
you). The schools that I have talked to seem to prefer keeping teachers and a 
tech rather than turn over this all over to MS. BTW, if you are just staring 
to help a school, go with squid/squid Guard, then move to other server based 
systems. They need a way to protect kids from porn, etc. The current stuff 
being sold out there is in the neighborhood of 3K (with yearly support at 
~2K/year) is a lot of money.
The funny thing is that most of these systems are running slightly modified 
squid/squid guard.


- -- 
cheers
g.r.r.
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