[Lias] An opportunity to grab!

[Pia Waugh]

Hi all,

I've cc'd all the FOSS education lists I know as I think here is a good
opportunity for us to approach the education scene and solve the real
problem of inequal access to technology. If you haven't seen the news yet:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/teachers-revolt-over-computing-test/2006/03/11/1141701732607.html

  "TEACHERS have voted to ban the year 10 Computing Skills Assessment test,
  which was due to be held for the first time this year in all NSW schools.

  They blame a shortage of computers in schools, a lack of teacher training,
  poor technical support and "dinosaur technology that should be thrown out"."

So, I'm going to call the NSW Teachers Federation on Monday, but I think we
should all be thinking about this as a chance to talk about FOSS as:

1) a way to deliver sustainable and cheap technology to all students in
Australia
2) a huge resource of information, documentation, software, code, and other
tools to both help teachers teach and help students learn
3) a community of people who share information that would be a valuable
resource to plug our IT students into at a young age
4) a HUGE amount of free software without license restrictions which both
restricts the students ability to learn ("DON'T install that, we don't have
an licence for it!") and restricts the functionality they have access to ("we
can't afford that, sorry")

Anyway, thought I'd bring up the idea, but this could be a great opportunity
to present FOSS as a practical solution to a real problem. What do you all
think?

Cheers,
Pia

-- 
Linux Australia                                         http://linux.org.au/
 
                      Jeff: Whatchootalkin'boutwillis?
                            Pia: What's Willis?