[Lias] An opportunity to grab!

[Paul Shirren]

summer at corridors.wa.edu.au wrote:
> 
> My wife is a teacher. Courseware from the Dept is for Windows.
> 

My soon-to-be wife is a teacher as well. She uses Ubuntu at home, and 
does all her teacher prep using OpenOffice, Inkscape & Gimp. She edits 
video of class projects using Cinellera. She puts courses up on her Moodle.

The tools she has at school are much less powerful in comparison and 
place a lot more restrictions on her. There is no doubt she can do her 
job entirely with open source software.

I have worked in schools and know many excellent school sys admins, and 
people shouldn't underestimate the complexity of issues both at the 
school, regional and departmental levels. There is a huge amount of 
inertia, and also some very practical reasons not to change.

There are plenty of friendly people in the system, and plenty willing to 
listen. What they need to see is some proof that linux is not just a 
practical, but a sustainable choice.

Sometimes I think it is better not to push this stuff too hard. I would 
rather walk into a school with an Edubuntu based on Dapper than a 
nineties slackware. Let them use OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity, Inkscape, 
Firefox on Windows for awhile and hope gconf can compete with Windows AD 
and Group policies soon.