[ale] Notes from Jun 19th meeting

[Daniel Howard]

Since we didn't record it, here's my vague recollection of important 
points raised by the audience during the talk, add/edit as you recall. 
Enjoyed seeing you all again, hopefully next time I update the group, 
we'll have lots more deployments to discuss.  Daniel

Notes:

We discussed Autodesk Inventor and Autocad as windoz apps that are 
desired by one school for support even after moving to Linux.  I 
rechecked the Wine compatibility database and unfortunately Inventor 
gets a garbage rating, so I'll have to use a conventional Windows app 
delivery mechanism to make that work (could folks summarize the 
different approaches and tradeoffs they've seen here?)  In addition to 
rebooting clients from the hard drive to use Windoz apps, there is also 
using a Windoz 2000 server and Virtualization.  Would be nice not to 
have to reboot clients.

Another key Windoz app brought up as a barrier to transitioning to Linux 
was PrintShop.  However, if teacher's PCs are still Windoz, then they 
should be able to print banners, science projects, etc. without any 
problem.  I did some playing around and found a great way to do banners 
with OpenOffice and Adobe Reader: Open Impress (presentation), set page 
width to say 22 inches (or multiples of 11 inches), and then make a 
banner using graphics, fonts, and word art ("Fontwork") gallery, and 
then copy the entire page.  Then open the spreadsheet Calc and set the 
page format to landscape, and then paste the image into the spreadsheet. 
  You can then print the banner and Calc will automatically tile it so 
you can cut and paste the individual pages together.  Geoffrey, see what 
your wife thinks of that approach compared to PrintShop, and point out 
that anyone can do this at home as well as at school, students and 
teachers without requiring that they all purchase PrintShop.

Another barrier, especially in Alabama is local companies that make 
Windoz apps and lobby the legislatures to dictate use of this software 
in schools.  However in Indiana, the same thing happened, only this time 
it was a Linux company who made Linspire desktops that were spec'd by 
the state DoE.  So we need to identify companies that would benefit from 
Linux deployment and get their assistance in lobbying legislatures for 
moving or at least enabling Linux deployments.

All agreed that going after Charter schools was an easier target due to 
independence from district oversight, and Drew Charter was mentioned as 
a potential target here in the Atlanta area.

Many thought what made the GOSEF story work for Brandon elementary was 
the combination of buy-in by principal and PTA first, then being ignored 
by the district IT staff, demonstrating the benefits, and luckily having 
the test scores go up.  I'd say we just kept meeting whatever obstacles 
arose case by case.  Since I'm about to do the whole thing over for 
another school, we'll see what makes it happen this time.  But we're 
starting with buy-in up front, and no district IT leadership to battle 
this time.

Best,
Daniel
-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation