summary of meeting today, 26sep2k2, 2pm,
between rajmathur + linuxlingam and 4students + faculty at the school.
thus:
1) summary of the internal ilugd + LAP meeting held on 21sep2k2 shared with
the school.
2) school wishes to know if there are dangers in this getting manipulated or
abused by others, specifically, work done for free and for freedom by kids
and teachers, getting exploited in any way, by others. raj explains the gnu
philosophy.
3) for peer evaluation and monitoring+mentoring, school wonders if a group
consisting of the principals and teachers should be formed. linuxlingam
endorses the idea, but stresses beyond the group (which could turn on itself,
who knows?) the gnu gpl fdl license ensures no one, external or internal,can
exploit or abuse the content and work.
4) the process of creating the content still not clear. they wondered if they
could use microsoft office? but they discovered it can't export xml output.
tut! tut!. raj recommends openoffice. linuxlingam mentions an ilugd member
volunteered to create a utility if need be.
5) the structure of the website is discussed. too intricate to discuss here,
best discussed when you come to the meeting scheduled for saturday
afternoon, 2;59pm.
6) school insists on seeing a demo, on getting further queries answered.
linuxlingam suggests how about a demo within 4 to 5 days, to not just the
school, but to *all* the participating schools with their faculty and
students involved in this event. school will get back on when this meeting is
scheduled, (mon, tue, wed... yes! that early!)
7) raj promises to give the people at this meet from other schools, knoppix
cds. go forth and multiply!
8) raj elaborated a great deal on the vision of freedom, its implication on
education, the paradigm shifts possible with this in education, and spoke
eloquently. the teachers and students content with their queries and doubts
laid to rest. *but* its obvious this needs to be done with the other schools
to ensure the idea and vision is properly understood.
9) details of how the website will be accessed, how data will be presented,
etc., thought-aloud.
10) more details with raj on the meeting, as he was making notes. in any
case, lemme repeat, we do need to urgently meet this saturday:
prateek+vipul+llinuxlingam+raj+pankaj+viksit+gaurav+dhruv+tripta+otherz to
finalize several thingz.
11) raj impressed with the fact that the schools are finally more open and
receptive to the idea of freedom in education and academia. the teachers also
discussed the fascinating possibilities with its implications to education
worldwide.
12) the quesiton of why teachers should share their valuable notes etc was
discussed. both raj and linuxlingam explained the many dimensions of
knowledge, learning, and how it is and has always been based on sharing.
finally, linuxlingam stressed that those teachers who do not wish to share
their knowledge will be allowed to do so, provided they commit that all the
knowledge that they have gathered through their life, was *never* shared to
them from others. and, how come newton and einstien and others who shared
their knowledge so freely with academia, and created their knowledge out of
the sharing and interaction with others, never talked about royalties,
copyrights, licensing. what if schools+colleges had to pay newton+einstien
licensing fee to teach their topics.
(e=mc2, now taught in school at the reduced price of 25 dollars per student,
conditions apply. u may make a bomb out of this equation provided u pay a
royalty fee of US dollar 10 for each collatoral damage, *but* u may not use
this equation for any peaceful purposes as this may violate the eula. sharing
of this equation with others expressly forbidden. duh!)
excuse the above para!
13) raj + Linuxlingam committed they and other volunteers will give free
training and orientation to the schools in deploying gnulinux on desktops as
we come to that stage.
14) the next meeting, would have more volunteers active in this project from
ilgud, attending and doing their thing. as usual, this is a collaborative
effort. plus many issues need many minds to find collective solutions.
(Linuxlingam is only too happy to fade-to-black, anyways.)
raj has more notes and details of the meet.
see u guyz saturday, 28sep, 2:59pm
LL
