> Please look through the website and just let me know > if > you're interested. You can help by volunteering, > donating, helping us connect schools in the provinces, > training, etc etc..
I would begin by convincing your boss to use FOSS and thin client technology to achieve your goals. In the FOSS world there are several solutions. There is LTSP, FreeNX, VNC and plain remote X. Old computers that was mentioned in your website and I quote "In the past decade, the Department of Education (DepEd), the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched programs for public high schools focused on providing computers and basic computer literacy. The DepEd and DOST computers were distributed more than 5 yeas ago, so most of the computers have become either obsolete or non-functional." can be re used for thin client systems. I have personally used some of the above mentioned DTI computers as thin clients. A public school in Nabunturan, Compostela Valley, was the site of one of our FOSS seminars, and the school was kind enough to offer their lab. It would have been a pain to install Linux in their PIII 64Mb machines but with LTSP we just brought a server and used the PCs as thin clients. The lab technicians were simply amazed how their computers were suddenly more responsive. We were able to achieve our goal of exposing the participants to the Linux environment and to FOSS applications as well. I could just imagine how many computer labs the DTI could fund if they were using thin client technology. The one of the key aspects to the success of this project is to focus on FOSS applications that are also available in the Windows platform. I am talking here about OO.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, etc.. Also, it is best to focus on computing concepts when teaching students on the use of applications. My favorite is about "Objects and Properties". I use this when I teach OO.org. I always tell participants to select an object (character, paragraph, page, etc.) then right click the mouse and see what "object" properties can be changed. I focus on concepts because I know that these are common in computer applications. Knowing the concepts will allow any person to look into the help files and learn how a particular function is implemented in that application. > My boss is open to the idea of Open Source/Linux since > he talks with engineers, programmers, and browses tech > news a lot. I push Linux/Open Source as much as I can, > but it's hard to do if everyone involved wants to do > the same old thing. (i.e. inertia with microsoft > software). More so if your boss will see the numbers. Thin client solutions can offer tremendous savings. Holden _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
