Stephen O'Neill wrote: > | so why would it hire a network admin who can't run the software on its > I hear that a number of network admins are teachers that fell into the > role part time through a coincidence of knowing how to use a computer,
Absolutely right. Most schools can only afford to pay teachers and teaching assistants, they cannot afford to pay the proper rate for a separate network engineer. Whichever teacher or teaching assistant has the best technical skills will be assigned the role of sysadmin. My mother, a primary school maths teacher, was "Technology co-ordinator" for the whole of Shropshire Local Education Authority, on the grounds that she knew how to set the timer on the video cassette recorder. Everything she did with computers was based on learning, parrot-fashion, a fixed sequence of steps - she never "understood computers", she just prepared several lists of bullet points and worked off those. Basically, for all but the largest schools, there is NO in-house computer technician. Schools recognise this, and plan their computing facilities around "whichever is supported by the county council" and not "whichever is best for the children". Unless there is ALREADY a Linux geek within the ranks of the teachers and teaching assistants, you stand NO CHANCE of persuading a school to switch. The focus, then, should be on persuading individual influential teaching staff to switch. From a teacher's or student's point of view, the most important program is the wordprocessor. I recommend starting with OpenOffice Writer and working from there. The best way to persuade someone to switch to OpenOffice is to buy them this physically-printed book for less than 15 quid inc. delivery: http://www.lulu.com/content/690763 A truly fabulous book which will allow any Microsoft Word addict to easily and painlessly ditch their affliction, and to become confident that they can continue doing all manner of simple or advanced wordprocessing tasks without needing anything from Microsoft. Donate one copy to your local school technology officer, and if you can spare more, donate extra copies to your local school library. -- Andrew Oakley -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
