Pamela, Although projects such as yours must start with a vision of where you want to go in terms of deliverables, the short advice here, based on lots of experience, is to first identify your local technical support capacity and decide what technology you can support and sustain at the local level, and how you are going to get that local support. Build your technology wish list from there. Don't start with what people are willing to supply. Second, look at what you would like to achieve based on what you can support. As a third step look at what hardware people are willing to provide. Don't start with the gift of hardware.
For software the open source platforms are both available at all levels (i.e., operating systems, browsers, email, server software, OpenOffice application suite, etc. etc.) and there are thousands of open source people online who will help you - at a distance and usually for free -. Lastly, You should look at the online iTrain training materials available at the <http://www.bellanet.org website>. Bellanet is housed at Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) on Ottawa and the iTrain materials were designed for the kind of project you are involved in. Sam Lanfranco Distributed Knowledge Project York University, Canada Pamela McLean wrote: > We are exploring possibilities for equipping a community centre, such as > getting computers through World Computer Exchange (WCE). Any advice or > comments would be welcome. ...snip... > Software query: > > In the long term we recognise that there are good reasons for using Open > Source, but we have no relevant experience. Obviously if we do get > computers we will need technical support, and as available expertise > favours Microsoft, we are likely to start with Microsoft. We have heard > that there are some problems about using 'normal' versions of Microsoft > in some African countries, and that a special African version has to be > acquired. (This is nothing to do with piracy. It is a completely > different issue.) Can someone shed light, and let me know if it has any > implications for use in Nigeria? ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
