Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (303 mails)

[garry saddington <garry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 01 December 2003 22:06, Jez Rogers wrote:
> ICT Support Officer wrote:
> >>The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to
> >>compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas.  The world WOULD
> >>be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose.  If they
> >>choose proprietary then so be it.
> >
> >  Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax payers
> > money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately;
> > wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of
> > pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is
> > such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this
> > money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our
> > salaries.
>
> Whoa! As a chair of governors and an RHCE, I resent you assumption that
> governors are all in the Microsoft Camp. As our budget is extremely
> tight this year, I can assure that I am particulary aware of the
> financial situation.
>
> Governors are charged with ensuring value for money whilst delivering an
> effective curriculum. Best value does not necessarily mean free, neither
> does it mean paid for. You can save money, effort or time, but never all
> three.
>
> Switching away from Microsoft will typically involve time, effort  and
> skills that teachers simply may not have, particulary if they are not
> full time IT teachers.
>
> Governors don't, and should not, get involved with the nitty gritty of
> the curriculum contents, they are not qualified to do so. That's why
> they delegate this to the Head and staff. They can, of course, make sure
> that alternatives are known about.
>
> I'd dearly love to kick our aging RM system into touch and replace it
> with something open source. Sadly I'm not aware of an OSS equivalent
> that'll do the job with the same level of automation, thereby allowing
> our hard pressed ICT coordinator to concentrate on teaching, not
> hardware/software maintenance.
>
> There's a market for someone, somewhere.

I'll advise you for free. I am an ICT co-ordinator with a full teaching load 
and i support 90 workstations running Linux as thin clients and I have a life 
outside school. Once set up my system just works and thats it. I'll come to 
you if you want.
regards
garry

>
> --
> jez
>
> Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much
> we think we know.  The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . .
>
> mailto:jez@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> http://www.jezndi.org