[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Info

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hornain Frederic wrote:

>Dear Rahul,
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>>It would be helpful if you can detail your ideas behind using Fedora for schools.
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>Indeed, the next generation of users, managers and so on... are currently at school and they will be the ones who will take the decisions in the futur. Agree ?
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Right.

>However, nearly all of them are using MS Windows for the moment. :(
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Not a coincidence. This is the result of targeted marketing to the 
education sector.

>Ok, I can admit more and more students are using Linux -I am glad ! :) - but the majority of these ones unfortunatly are still running  proprietary OS. 
>Although it is maybe not the same case in all countries, in France and Belgium it is more and less like that.
>Not due to students but mainly due to Edcuation choice, teachers knowledges or preferences, current technologies used in companies, so on so for....
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What are the primary blockers?. Is it the syllabus, awareness or 
perception of unsuitability, combination of these?

For the national level syllabus in India (CBSE) , Red Hat advocated and 
got some success is getting the government to adopt a vendor neutral 
syllabus recently. This in general paves way for the schools now to 
adopt open source and Linux solutions where appropriate.

http://lists.wikicities.com/pipermail/fci-l/2006-January/000051.html.

I am sure similar efforts can be done for other regions too if not 
already. This might be one of the key areas where better advocacy 
targeting the top level decision makers is required. A grassroots 
approach tends to fail. Students in general have no say in what the 
College/School administration decides. Even if they personally choose 
Linux, it might not impact their career as long as the education is 
rooted in learning proprietary products instead of underlying concepts.

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>So I am convinced we should invest in schools. 
>Because, if we can help students, teachers, and educational organistation to work actively with Linux and not only install it  in order to know how it looks like. I pretty sure that we would manage the revolution cause if they have used it during their student life it could be their choice during their active life.
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>Ok, I agree. It will not be so easy than that cause when you begin your active life, you are not often directly an (IT) manager or the boss. 
>But if you are more than one who know linux in your first company I am sure you can influence the future choice of your manager. 
>Anyway, it is better than nothing.
>In addition, there is more chance to use linux in their futur company if someone of the team know how to use it.
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>The ideas behind using Fedora for schools is to create a linux group of students, teachers in each school who interact with the fedora communauty and will learn the benefit of using open source instead of using proprietary systems.
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That we should invest is obvious. The harder part is deciding to invest 
where it makes a high impact. This is where local ambassadors who better 
understand the regional culture and requirements better can make a big 
difference. That means all of the Fedora ambassadors here have to step 
up to the needful.

>>Is there any preconfigured setup or kickstart profiles?. 
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>Well, I think that we have to start with computers University students.
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We need to come up with more detailed plans and measurable milestones 
for that.

>>What are the current experiences and potential for improvements?
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>In the next few day, I will  create a wiki page for that.
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Yes. That would be nice.

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers