Hi all, Linux Australia has secured a booth at the NSW Education Expo. This event attracts over 9000 attendees including parents, teachers and students to find out about all things to do with education. Last year we were there and we spoke to loads of people, getting information about FOSS through to the education sector. This year we are planning some extra activities for kids K-12 to encourage them to actually use FOSS and get excited about it.
The purpose of the challenge is to encourage students to actually USE an Open Source program and PRODUCE something on the day for the challenge and THEN receive an LA pack. It's important that the students and parents feel that the children were successful and achieved something and of course understand that there are opportunities with Linux and Open Source. We need to look at making the most out of this event. Programs to include: Tux Paint, The Gimp, Open Office, a browser, email, Gcompris, etc making a point that Linux/Open Source is user friendly and fun. The apps will be catered to the childrens ages. Students will win a "Linux pack" which will include a fluffy penguin, a badge, a certificate and an Open CD (with added information like the OSV FOSS in education guide and the FOSS in Australian education research by Kathryn Moyle). Imagine 500 kids going to school news to talk about the Linux challenge they did on the weekend :) That will get people talking about it! We'll then be inviting the older students (Yrs 10-12) to the linux.conf.au Open Day (if you don't know about it, read the pitch. It's going to rock!) which means a great chance to get people along to a community event for the public. Anyway, this will be on the 24-25th June, details on their website (http://www.edexpo.info/) and we are looking for people to help out :) We need people to: - give out information and talk to people - wear a penguin suit. The one at CeBIT was a hit :) - help set up and pull down the booth (this only takes about 30 mins each) If anyone has some tables/chairs we can use, that would be great. The furniture we had at CeBIT was ok, but we need two nice looking tables and a chair each to sit at those tables (and two chairs for volunteers = 4 chairs total). We will be making the badges, hopefully getting the penguins sponsored, printing the certificates, and getting the CDs stamped, again hopefully by a sponsor. Please email me offline if you are interested in getting involved. It will be loads of fun :) Cheers, Pia -- Linux Australia http://linux.org.au/ "I dig your vibe." - Rove McManus to Ice T -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
