When my kids were in High School I tried working with our school district (Mora, MN.) in about 1998 just to get programming taught, somewhere. The school used all Macs but had at least one MSWindows 95 in some kind of lab. On a day they canceled school because of an ice storm I called and they said I could install the QBasic from Windows, along with program examples galore. So I left my kids home and drove to town and installed it all. I later went to school board meetings and they fought me until my kids all graduated. "Political" is an understatement. I use Linux because I can program it. I don't know how kids can make it in the future without knowing electronics and programming. It seems they are trying to cripple kids with sports, and retard them intellectually. It sure wasn't that way in the 1960s. Linda Kateley wrote: > > I started working with my school district about 10 years ago. The > problems I find there are always political and never about technology. > > What worked for me is to find one champion in the system that speaks > the administrations language. I found there were a ton of people who > wanted to know, just not at the top. > > I introduced scratch to the elementary STEM school about 5 years ago, > https://scratch.mit.edu/. It was the districts first involvement with > opensource or community. The project has been very very successful and > it opened the doors to more. But then they hired a new superintendent > that thought it was stupid so..that happened ;( > > linda > > > On 8/21/16 10:43 AM, Sandwhich Eyes wrote: >> I have already given one presentation at the Blair Taylor School >> with the principal and an IT guy and have been asked to give a follow >> up talk to them and the head of the IT department. >> They had macbook air for the older kids and ipads for the younger >> ones. They bring these home at the end of the school day. This time >> they decided to go with cromebooks. It one of the best.. rated or >> testing, can't think of an appropriate word, but with the quality of >> the teachers out here i am pretty sure they could give my kids sticks >> and a box of sand and they would still be well prepared for life on >> their own/college. I am 100% positive they will be much better off if >> they can learn without restrictions from open source hardware, >> software, classes (like MIT offers open courseware) and the ability >> to choose, to not be scolded for breaking some license agreement or >> for reading and modifying code should that be an interest. I want >> them to have Linux. >> I have gave a compelling argument in the last meeting. This time I >> want to have as many resources available to provide for them, >> including reasons why schools frequently choose to not use Linux. >> Anything will help. I had quite the presentation last time and the IT >> guy didn't know what Unix or BSD 4.4 was; or Linux, BSD, Solaris. >> Seems Ubuntu provides computers reloaded with Linux and tablets so >> how they didn't find anything about open source or Linux/BSD/ETC is >> beyond me. I gave them a live Ubuntu OS on a thumb drive. I wanted to >> make some more and use persistence to load up some information to >> give to the IT people who are possibly way under informed, to give >> them plenty of time on their own to absorb what open source has to >> offer; mostly community! >> They asked many questions about community. Yes we work together >> and keep our favorite distributions alive often without corporate >> support! >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list