Sunday's intstallfest, so to speak, was pretty impressive thanks to some
great FOSS tools. Consequently, 50 Elementary students in Isabela(1)
will soon be learning and creating with donated computers from Hawaii.
Pictures were taken, and they will be posted to the website soon.
Over the course of the day a garage was transformed into a computer
workshop. A driveway was transformed into a loading and shipping zone.
With computers from JALPAK Hawaii(2), boxing labor from the the group
sponsoring the shipment(3), and a little HOSEF magic, it all worked out.
We pxe booted Clonezilla(4) from DRBL(5) to image the workstations. It
took about 5 minutes per computer to install a complete desktop
operating system with education applications, an office suite,
creativity tools, and more. We imaged them in batches of 7, but we
could have done all 50 at once if we had the space. Seriously. We
installed Edubuntu.(6)
In the past people like Time Newsham have labored pretty tirelessly to
help with a mass install using Systemimager. It never really worked
well with GRUB due to the limitations of the application. Vince
appropriately described it as a glorified rsync system. Nonetheless,
those computers were completed and flown by the Air Force to an
orphanage and women's shelter run through BYU in Cambodia.
In refurbishing and donating computers back when we did stuff at
McKinley, we would install them by hand (using a CD) one by one. It
created good learning opportunities, but it was not conducive to JIT
management. Now we can JIT the you know what out of a pretty fair
number of computers.
Sometimes "we" sounds a bit misleading. Those of you who have come
around for a while know that I have had a pet frog for years, and that
the two of us combine to be "we" pretty often. In the case of Sunday,
it was Roland (a real person) and myself. That's all, and that was plenty.
If you ever decide to come around, don't worry that you will be
intruding on some intricate process. I have, however, refined our
ability to transform a previously discarded computer into a fully
functional workstation within 20 minutes. The more of you who I can
encourage to become part of the we(7), the more computers we can save.
--scott
(1) Pis-Ba-Kal Elementary School (Pissay, Angadanan, Isabela)
(2) http://www.jalpak.com/
(3) Hawaii has a sister relationship with the Province of Isabela and
Governor Grace Padaca. Many first generation Filipino families sponsor
the shipment of these computers. This project was part of The Task
Force Aloha Isabela - Hawaii Sisterhood.
(4) http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/
(5) http://drbl.sourceforge.net/
(6) http://www.edubuntu.com
(7) HOSEF needs your help organizing our many volunteer related tasks.
If you want to help in some non-technical way, I sure need you. I am
quite behind in responding to many volunteer requests.
--
R. Scott Belford
Founder/Executive Director
The Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation
P.O. Box 2644
Ewa Beach, HI 96706
808.689.6518 phone/fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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