[Linux-aus] Fwd: [LACTTE] Notes for Council Meeting 2010/02/03

[Russell Stuart]

On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 12:28 +1100, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> The students ordinarily don't know about Linux. None of the other kids
> at my son's school do unless they heard about it from him. So, this is
> as much about informing them that such software exists as it is about
> encouraging them to use it. But yes, the letter would need both: where
> to download it from and where to get support from.

As the father of some now adult teenagers, I am fairly certain they
devote roughly the attention span of a gnat to pronouncements from their
elders on the coolness of a given technology.

If you want to get more than that, you have a few choices:

1.  Get one of their peers to champion it.

2.  Make it do something that is immediately useful to them.  For
example, if the mandatory internet filter comes out produce a live CD
that lets them bypass it easily.

3.  Use our control of the system to pound it into them.  Eg get
teachers interested, or get projects into schools that use open source,
present a talk at the school computer class, or put up an open source
tent at the school fete to make a plea to mum and dads hip pocket.

Getting (1) to happen is difficult.  You and/or LA probably don't like
the idea of (2).  Which leaves (3).  But just handing out CD's without
doing something to garner more than a gnat like attention span is just
going to create land fill.