I see you have a techunix.technion.ac.il address, so I would guess that you are from the Technion. May I ask you one thing: Why has the technion started using linux so widely? Why other "schools" have not done so?
I can give you one example: money. Lets say you need to have s/w for about 200 desktops and about 15 servers. How much money will it cost using billware? Now, if that institute makes a deal with MS, they can lower the prices by a great factor, and in exchange, the institute will teach some courses related to billware only. [1] In this case billie will also make the "hishtalmuiot" for the teachers, and making discounts on the books (if needed). Now the money that will be donated by billie, can be invested elswhere, not only in computers. [2] They will also have a good reputation, since "they work directly" with billie, and thus it's students will know better the subjects used "in the real world", and thus giving "a good reputation" to that school. If linux is ever to get into the education system, much more is needed. Since even if the minister of education will like the proposal for a training program, not all schools will like it, then can do some tricks for not actually teaching that stuff. That is MHO at least... [1] http://www.whatsup.org.il/article.php?sid=800 [2] http://www.whatsup.org.il/article.php?sid=1426 ביום רביעי, 4 ביוני 2003, 19:06, Beni Cherniavsky כתב: > Thinking about promotion of FS/OS in schools, I got an idea. As far > as I see, FS/OS programs can be specifically useful for schools either > accidentally (because the technology happens to be convenient in > school settings, e.g. LTSP) or by guessing that a specific thing would > be nice and writing it (e.g. DrGenius). In the first case the > software is created for other reasongs and usability for education is > a free bonus. In the later case, there is a deliberate investment of > time to create something attractive to schools but judging by current > situation these are mostly shots in the dark. > > So, since there *is* a motivation among hackers to provide schools > with free software that would benefit them, why won't the schools tell > us what they want? I'm thinking along the lines of some site where > schools/teachers can post "wanted" requests describing what they want. > > Perhaps HaMakor could convince the ministry of education to create > such a thing. It could be presented from the "enraged tax-payer" > point of view: we eventually pay for the commercial software purchased > by schools, we have good reasons to believe it could be spent better > and some of us are ready to contribute time to create missing pieces. > What we request is to tell us what software schools currently use and > pay for and what new investments are planned. This would be in line > with the wide practice of spending state money by a competition > between companies for the task; it's just an extension of it into a > world were individual volunteers have a lot to offer too. > > It could take the form of some official policy from the MoE > encouraging schools and teachers to openly post their requirements for > software. As for the process itself, it should be as direct as > possible, avoiding any beurocracy. Perhaps it would be enough to > simply post such info on an existing site (Whatsup?). > > And of course all this is not limited to education but that seems a > particularly important niche. -- - diego _______________________________________ / Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of \ | people in any working group tends to | | increase regardless of the amount of | \ work to be done. / --------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (xx)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ U ||----w | || || Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
