Here's my 2 cents... Just like many people use a Windows operating system, or the OS X operating system, or Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Suse or whatever, I don't think the OS is really that big of a deal. Nearly everyone who has ever sat down in my K12LTSP lab can use it after just a little clicking around. So I don't think Red Hat's strategy should be to promote their OS. Speaking as a teacher, what I think is missing for other teachers is familiar resources they can use to do what they do. In Greg's original post, did those teachers just sit down and learn Moodle on their own? I kind of doubt it. We say that we should be teaching word processing and spread sheets, not Microsoft Office, good luck finding such resources. Yes they are out there, but not in the places most educators normally look, such as the website of the big textbook publishers. With all this in mind, I think Red Hat, if they want to put company effort into making their product specifically, and open source generally, into the minds of educators is to promote things like: -publishing and selling textbooks that specifically teach word processing skills, not just Open Office or Word or Abi or whatever -same for spread sheets -same for photo editing -same for desktop publishing -web design -programming -Have available, for extra cost or free, Moodle course material for any of these courses -Provide low cost, highly available training in Moodle (or any other open source classroom software deemed appropriate). This could even be done as a train the trainer type sessions where a teacher who attended the training could then go back and teach others. -help develop moodle material for other courses of popular textbooks. As a math teacher, I've attempted to do Algebra lessons for Moodle, but with equations and graphs, you have to create images for all that. I imagine the same issues would exist for physics or chemistry. I think the best approach would be indirect. Not promote the OS, but promote activities that would require or make desirable, open source. That's my opinion. But as I like to say, I'm just a math teacher from Iowa. Eric On 4/17/07, Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Paul Nelson wrote: > I challenge you to call HP, Dell, IBM or Gateway and ask them for a quote on > a K12LTSP lab for a school. Place the call directly to their educational > sales rep. > > People have a hard time using what they don't have and can't get. > > Honestly, give it a try. Someone try it and report back to this list what > happens. > > K12LTSP motto: It works. It's free. Duh... > > And the hardest part of that to explain is... So I've been talking with lots of folks both inside and outside the company about this. And what I hear from the inside folks is really interesting. We've got a sales team that is, in fact, responsible for selling into schools. They're called the "FED/SLED" team -- FEDeral gov't, State/Local gov't, EDucation. They've got a sales number to hit. I can't go into details, but suffice to say... it's not terribly ambitious. :) And why is that? Two reasons, it seems like: (a) We don't have that much to sell that *clearly* targets the space. (b) Even if we did, we don't have the manpower to sell it. And the fact that (b) is a problem seems to prevent us from making serious headway on (a). So now I'm starting to believe that the way forward looks something like this: 1. Find a way of associating the Red Hat name with worthy education projects. Of which K12LTSP is clearly one, but there are others. 2. Build a channel. Red Hat will never be able to service schools directly, ever -- and neither can Dell/HP/whomever, because even if they *did* sell systems with K12LTSP built in, they wouldn't realistically be able to service schools either. But we *can* provide expertise to local partners who can. Maybe we can provide strong mechanisms for giving channel partners the ability to go sell the crap out of "a proven solution" -- which is training for school admins, plus some low cost/high value level 2 support, plus some other stuff that is valuable for the partners. And in my internal discussions with Redhatters, this is now looking like a sensible goal to shoot for: channel enablement. But wait -- K12LTSP works, and it's free! True enough. But Red Hat has lived in this paradox for a long time: A lot of smart people, for some reason, just don't *trust* free. In the big commercial markets, that's fantastic for us, and allows us to grow a great business and subsidize further development of Linux and open source. But in the education market, this weird distrust of free-ness gets in the way of changing the way computers work in schools. My goal now: to come up with a business model that makes Red Hat *just* enough money -- and it doesn't have to be much in the larger scheme of things -- to push forward the one-to-one message. I'll be at NECC. Steve, I'll see you there. I'm sure I'll be talking first hand with a lot of you as well. --g -- Greg DeKoenigsberg Community Development Manager Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255 "To whomsoever much hath been given... ...from him much shall be asked" _______________________________________________ Fedora-education-list mailing list Fedora-education-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list
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