David N. Trask Technology Teacher/Director Vassalboro Community School dtrask@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (207)923-3100 ----- Original Message ----- Thursday, April 13, 2006 1:53:10 AM Registered: Message From: "Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn@xxxxxxxxxx> "Robert Arkiletian" <robark@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Fedora Education Initiative Launch To: "Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx gdk@xxxxxxxxxx On 4/10/06, Warren Togami <wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we >> had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current >> successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community >> around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got >> other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, >> which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless >> thousands of students worldwide. >> >> We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to >> further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe >> that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better >> the software for the education community. >> >> Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of >> Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as >> mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize >> the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer >> picture of what it becomes. > Excellent news! However, IMO one of the main issues holding back large scale deployment of K12LTSP in some school districts is that upper management administrators are not comfortable with the support system (lists, OSS communities, etc) and lack the necessary support internally as most tech staff are more MS centric. Two things are needed. One is that official PAID support be available from a reputable company like Redhat as a safety net. Two that Redhat offer a crash training program (or video/book) to bring MS trained techs up to speed to support a turnkey K12LTSP solution. Some districts would not blink at paying the full price of RHEL if the support was there. In fact, I think they would prefer it. Sometimes *FREE* scares people if they don't really understand FOSS. -- Robert Arkiletian http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool C++ GUI tutorial http://fltk.org/links.php?V19 _______________________________________________ K12OSN mailing list K12OSN@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
