On Sun, 17 Oct 2004, Brian Scanlan wrote:
> The Norwegian model is pretty neat and volunteers run the Irish schools' PCs
> anyway. Offering community support for a single, stable platform integrated
I would be surprised if "Offering community support" for any great leap
would be welcomed. A school will want to either control a project,
or cede all responsibility for it - and why would this be wrong?
A keen teacher trying to get more use out of resources is an example of
the former, the Broadband for Schools project is an example of the latter.
A bunch of techies from outside the school offering to help them Do
Computers In A Better Way is neither, and leaves them looking like they're
doing some risky while giving them no real control (they don't understand
it - how can they steer it?).
Successful pilots allow the fire to spread from keen teacher X to keen
teacher Y in a different school, but if school Z does not (yet)have a
teacher ready to run with this ball, then I advocate not spending any
time on pushing Linux in school Z right now.
(Disclaimer: I tried doing this, met with We're Totally Petrified Of What
You Might Do resistance, and am slightly disillusioned as a result. I am
more than willing to get involved in another project if the above
condition is met, though.)
Ronan
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
