Re: Testing Ground.
Hi,
On Sun, Dec 10, 2000 at 05:44:25PM -0600, Barrett Conrad wrote:
> Hi there. I am Barrett Conrad of the New Orleans Technology Assistance
> Program, part of Tulane University's CACTUS (Community Action Council of
> Tulane University Students). We are a newly formed group of students,
> mostly from the Computer Science department, that is developing a
> project to help "bridge the digital divide" here in New Orleans.
I checked www.tulane.edu/~cactus and browsed old news articles mentioning
CACTUS from the search page at www.tulane.edu. I must say I am quite
impressed and moved by what I saw. I wish you the best with your project,
and I hope Debian Jr. can play a part in helping you realize your goals.
> We have gathered a number of old computer parts to assemble and build
> a network of x-terminals, running Linux, within an existing community
> project. We plan to use this setup as easy access to the internet,
> word processing, and other tools, as well as being a resource for
> skill building and education of both technical and non-technical material.
Since you have followed what we've been doing, by now you are probably
aware we have studiously avoided solving the "computers in education"
constellation of problems. However, since there is significant overlap
between what children need and want in a home computer and a school
computer, this is a great opportunity for us to work together. And in
many ways, I imagine a community outreach program like this is going to
have more freedom to operate like as a "family-like" environment to the
children than the typical school. Being on a larger scale than the home,
you will of course face some problems that simply are not there for the
home. As those problems crop up, we entrust you to the care of
debian-devel and SEUL/edu, both of which are better equipped than Debian
Jr. to handle that sort of thing. (Although it is becoming clearer now
from the responses you have received so far that there are people on this
list, too, who are facing and finding solutions for the same sort of
problems as you are.)
> We have also been looking around for software that can be easily used
> and helpful (and of course entertaining) to our children. Our search
> has brought us to Debian Jr. Besides Debian being the Linux
> distribution we chose to use, the Debian Jr project looks to be a great
> asset to our project. My purpose in posting to this list it to offer
> our project as a testing ground for Debian Jr to both improve our
> project and Debian Jr.
I have always said that although I would like to keep Debian Jr. focused
on the subset of problems facing children's sys admins in the home, that I
hoped the user community would take what we have done and apply it in
education as well. If you and others on the list are successful in taking
our project and applying it in the schools, then perhaps you will consider
banding together to become your own project, "Debian/edu", that deals with
Debian-specific issues deploying Debian in an educational setting. One of
the advantages to doing that is that I imagine such a group would address
a broader range of ages than ours, which is currently focused on the eight
and under age range and hopes to expand only upwards as far as twelve. Yet
problems facing administrators and educators in high-school and college
settings are going to find commonalities with those in the lower grades.
So it makes sense to deal with it all within one group.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. You already have the one new project to
look after, and that probably keeps you busy enough. For the time being,
Debian Jr. will be packaging quite a number of things that will be
appealing to children, and as that is partly what you are looking for,
we'd be happy to have you be a testing ground for our material. Just this
week I was wishing we had more reviewers making submissions to our
"already packaged" list. If you can contribute some feedback
(particularly drawn from direct experience using the packages with
children) about our current selections on that list and begin to add to
it, that would be great. Also, we have been hashing out how the menus
will be organized. You can find in the archives my proposal. I'd be
interested in seeing how this works out in practice "in the field" once we
have it implemented.
> As I have tried to follow the progress of Debian Jr, I have see that
> many of you have tested it on your own children, but I think we could
> offer you a place to test Debian Jr in a larger and more educational
> setting.
I hope I haven't come across as being anything but supportive of this sort
of use for Debian Jr. My own caution about entering directly into the
educational world with this project is all about keeping focus for our
energies on what we know best. From it's conception, my idea was to get
Debian developers to give back directly to the children in their lives. It
is the next step from "I package it because I want it" to "I package it
because someone I care about wants it". I know too well from past
experience that I tend to bite off more than I can chew. By sticking with
this first idea and keeping focus in just one direction, hopefully we'll
see results sooner (read "in my lifetime" :) than if we tried to solve all
possible problems relating to children using Debian.
> I would also like to know if any of you have tried projects
> similar to the one we are attempting and what successes (and failures)
> you have had with them. I hope that we can find each other of some
> help and we look forward to working with you.
We look forward to working with you too. I am confident we will work
together well.
Regards,
Ben
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
[ pgp key fingerprint = 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ]
[ gpg key fingerprint = 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
Reply to: