Huan and Andy,I posted that email regarding UberStudent, but haven't had that much experience with it as of yet. I have been at Truman for 2 years now, starting my 3rd, I became interested in alternatives from windows and word while working at East Central College as Learning Center Coordinator and the Title III Activity Director, and headed up several technology projects, (not the technology brain behind them, but the budget for the projects through the grant I worked under.) I learned a lot in those five years about the benefits of open source. I bought a webbook from Dell with Ubuntu. I became very fond of open source alternatives, we utilized several, including switching our entire campus from WebCT to Moodle. The IT Department there was very open to and preferred using open source alternatives every chance they could. When I started here at Truman, and met Jim McNabb, he directed me to the FSCK list after some discussions about Linux, Moodle, and the like.
Anyway, I find the emails intriguing and think that it is important to keep the conversation alive and help students, faculty, and staff realize there are viable alternatives out there. I haven't been to a meeting yet either, but would love to see the group stay together and expand the reach to new folks and students. I think that in an institution of higher learning, it is important.
My two cents, Todd Todd S. Phillips Director, Student Success Center Truman State University 112B Kirk Building 100 East Normal Street Kirksville, MO 63501 (660)785-4864 (660)785-4118 fax [email protected] facebook.com/TrumanSuccess On Aug 27, 2010, at 1:52 AM, Andy Hilgartner wrote:
Dear Huan,I didn't get to any FSCK meetings last year -- I won't bother with excuses. But I did see an FSCK e-mil about UberStudent, and decided to look into it. I now have it on my dual-boot computer. It seems to me to have many advantages for me as a lifelong researcher. I still don't really know how to run Linux, but I sure would like to learn -- if I could find such coaching.Perhaps FSCK meetings could prove supportive to me.Or perhaps I might find someone skillful in Linux (and Windows, which I cannot completely abandon, so far as I now know) who would consent to help me on a personal basis. Anyway, please consider me as one tentative vote for resuming FSCK meetings.Andy Hilgartner On 8/27/2010 12:52 AM, Huan Truong wrote:Hi FSCK,I don't know if any of you guys are still interested in FSCK, but it isapparent that the interest for free software last semester was rather low, while we are having a very good momentum for it.Now we have people who are aware of alternative choices, such as Mac andAndroid instead of just Windows and MS Office. For example, I've seen students who are proud to talk to me that they can use Pages on their Mac instead of MS Word for word processing, and save some tens of dollars. The funny thing about that is we used to *think* that people don't like free software because it has different UI, and it's notcompatible with existing files that they had. Now actually OpenOffice isbetter than Pages in terms of familiarity and compatibility, and manystudents want to save money. It's funny that they just aren't aware of the existence of oOo, and when they know about it, it's just too littletoo late, they already bought and used Pages. We also have people whoare willing to try things like Linux or oOo but don't know where to gethelp, and is afraid of not being able to get help. Last semester I personally helped some-five students to know and start using Linux (including non-CS majors), but it's really bad that none of them knowabout FSCK, and even when I told them about that, they still prefer toask me personally than asking on the mailing list. Composing mail is inconvenient when one wants to fix the WiFi connection, and it's just not good that they feel they are among very very few people having to deal with the problem if there is any.I wonder if we can 'polish' FSCK a little bit and have a more friendly approach for general audiences, or at least MathCS students. I believe that many students, professors, and staff members on the list do have a whole bunch of topics ranging from interesting to jaw-dropping to share.For example, we can host some tech-talk or presentation weekly orbi-weekly in the nerdery (and ask professors such as Dr Bindner, Dr Beck or Dr Matthews to talk). It will not only be very beneficial to membersbut also is a very cultural thing of Truman MathCS.It's like how Apple make people to be happy using Macs. That way people are more aware of things and feel good to be well supported by others.So it's just my sketchy and unorganized ideas, if anyone is still interested, please speak up and hopefully we can figure out something...? - H. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe ------------------------------------------------------------------- C. A. Hilgartner Phone: 660-627-2519 2413 North East Street Email: [email protected] Kirksville MO 63501 USA URL: www.hilgart.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- To get off this list, send email to [email protected] with Subject: unsubscribe -----------------------------------------------------------------
