[CLUE-Talk] Fw: [CLUE-Tech] Good Karma

[Newell, Glen]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Newell, Glen" <glen.newell at ccd.edu>
To: <clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us>
Cc: <chart at aritek.com>
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 1:15 PM
Subject: [CLUE-Tech] Good Karma


>
> Hi everyone-
>
> Right now I'm involved with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver,
> getting ready to set up a new club, and dealing with a number of issues
> involving using and re-using donated hardware. As some of you might know
> from doing this kind of thing yourself, the available supply tends to run
> the gamut from nice, almost new, or new but slightly behind tech, to stuff
> that collected dust because it was pretty much useless. This brought up
the
> usual issues, and I thought I would toss out some questions and see what
> your thoughts were.
>
> One of the programs that BGC does is to provide computers for
> underprivileged kids. They have volunteers ( IT Samaritans or someone like
> that) refurbish older machines, put Win98 on them, maybe do a little
> tutorial, and then wish them luck. This brings up, to me, a couple
> interesting thoughts.
>
> First, the obvious first thoughts are 'hey, we can put Linux on even
*older
> and crappier hardware* and get the currently 'useless' boxes into service
as
> 'net and homework and learning machines'...this is great, but the question
> of support becomes foremost in people's minds: as an open source
evangelist,
> my usual responses involve the higher stability of a Linux box, and any
> support is community based, look for forums and online docs. This is great
> for a literate adult, but schoolkids from under-educated and
under-financed
> homes don't have the cultural access to this level of
information-gathering,
> usually. Using and supporting Linux isn't hard, but its different...
>
> I was thinking about this today and an interesting ( though I'm sure not
> unique) idea occurred to me: What about a collective of people qualified
and
> willing to give some of their time to do the support of projects like
this-
> say a kid (or any new user) gets a machine as part of a program like this,
> and needs some advice. They look at a little card or sticker they got with
> the machine and they send an email, got to a website, or call a phone
> number. Someone gives them the 10 minutes (average, probably) help
required
> to get them back on the right track: a kid has learned, Linux wins a new
> supporter, and some Linux geek's karma has just been improved.
>
> I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks about this...
>
> Glen
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