Linux for Irish schools was Re: [ILUG] AGM 2004

[Timothy Murphy]

On Sunday 17 October 2004 17:49, Ronan Cunniffe 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.

I'm afraid those were more or less my thoughts
as I listened to the talk on Linux in schools at the AGM.
There seemed to be a suggestion that the Dept of Education,
or NCTE, or HEAnet, were going to tell teachers what to do.
I don't see volunteer teachers following instructions like that,
especially if it involved them in extra (unpaid) work.

The idea of a standard Linux setup for schools sounds like a great idea to me,
even if it were only running in a very small number of schools.
But I think the only hope of getting it accepted in any schools
would be through teachers who were already Linux converts.

Maybe ILUG could organise a short course for teachers?




-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland