educationaLinux 2003 is finished!

Media Releases Submit a Paper LCA2003

a miniconference of LCA2003

The mini-cponference is over, but things are still popping! Visit our media releases page regularly to stay in touch.

educationaLinux was about Linux in an Educational setting: in classroom, office and for individuals either at home or doing distance-education courses.

Linux and other Open Source Software (especially Free Software, as distinct from the often low-quality Freeware) is well known for saving money and avoiding onerous licencing terms, for good security and impeccable reliability. But in an educational setting, Linux brings special advantages and faces special difficulties.

educationaLinux 2003 was a miniconference leading into LCA2003 and covering peculiarly academic abilities and needs of Linux. It was held in the hallowed and sunny halls of the University of Western Australia.

Day 1 – Monday 20 January 2003 Sunrise at 05:30 (zone GMT/UTC+08:00)
08:30 – 09:30	Registration
09:30 – 10:00	Welcome to educationaLinux and Orientation
10:00 – 11:00	Department of Education and Children's Services (South Australia), Open Source Code, Schooling and Government Policies, South Australian Government's view of Linux and fellow travellers, how their properties impact policies WRT schooling. (Kathryn Moyle, – precis)
11:00 – 12:00	Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, choices of Open Source Software and open standards for teaching basic principles, experiences with trialling OpenOffice and other OSS assets on Linux. (Tim Bell for Richard Wraith – precis)
12:00 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 14:00	The Heights School Implementing Open Source Software at The Heights School - step by step: audit of existing systems, planning, upgrade phases, internet cafe and wordprocessing room, emulation, evaluation and forecast. (Desmond Elliott – precis)
14:00 – 15:00	MicroBits Creating a desktop Linux distribution for schools, including selection of a Linux distribution, setup, selection of applications, configuration, packaging and deployment; step by step. (David Lloyd – precis)
15:00 – 16:00	CHANGED, Salisbury North Youth IT Project is built on Linux by volunteers; this is their experiences teaching a group of young people basic computing skills, them gaining their ICDL certification and Train Small Groups certification. (Ian Loxton – precis)
16:00 – 17:00	Northern Michigan University The Linux Kernel as a Real-Time Hands-On Teaching Tool (Randy Appleton – precis)
17:00 onwards	Touristing, surfing, hobnobbing, shopping, bushwalking-ish in King's Park, whatever (sunset at 19:25)

Day 2 – Tuesday 21 January 2003 Sunrise at 05:31
09:00 – 10:00	Lake Ginninderra College (Canberra), case study of a new LTSP implementation from an Australian school. (Geoff Smith – precis)
10:00 – 11:00	Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School (Victoria): case study of an established Open Source system from an Australian school. (Kim Perkins – precis)
11:00 – 12:00	Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, net-booting (ie non-LTSP) workstations for school labs, includes a rundown on Trinity's systems, their Linux business case, complete details for setting up a lab like it, and war stories from Trinity's installed-last-week lab. (Tim Bell – precis)
12:00 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 14:00	CyberKnights The Hidden, Free Supercomputer in your School: implementing LTSP/Mosix, even if your workstations don't normally run Linux. (Leon Brooks – precis)
14:00 – 15:00	Canberra Institute of Technology Teaching Linux: the rationale for teaching linux / how linux was introduced into the courses / what is currently taught + strategies used / plans for expanding linux content in other subjects / managing bias in the curriculum / exciting plans for the future (Judy Adams, James Hamilton – precis)
15:00 – 16:30 (?)	ROUND-TABLE, a chaired discussion of what's been said in the last two days, discussion on possible solutions to problems raised, and approaches to realising unexploited opportunities for Linux in Education. Chairman^* and two roving wireless mikes will be streamed from the event, and each personal participant will be permitted to nominate one absentee to participate via IRC. – precis
16:30 onwards	Wrapup, then touristing, surfing, hobnobbing... (sunset at 19:24)

Why you couldn't afford to miss educationaLinux

This was a unique opportunity to:

Sort out issues that are blocking your institution's adoption of secure, reliable, affordable technology; and
Find out what your applications need to do to gain wide educational acceptance; and
Share your needs and achievements with other academics; and
Build your background knowledge of Linux, in education and other areas (the miniconf feeds into the main Linux conference); and
Take a break from the humdrum and seek inspiration in sunny, congenial Western Australia during the northern hemisphere winter?

Missed out? Then reserve your place early for the next mini-conference, to be held in either Canberra or Adelaide!

* Yes, I realise that this is politically incorrect at a surface level. However, the word “chairman” is a contraction of “chair-manager”, making the expansion “chair-personager” somewhat inappropriate. I do leave the lid up when I'm done. (-:

The background picture (-: best vewed at 1600x1200 :-) is a savagely flattened JPEG image facing south along Boreline Road, east of Port Hedland and south of Pardoo Roadhouse, Western Australia, the day before Cyclone Rosita deleted [3.5MB, p14] the Eco Beach resort near Broome in 2000. The road in the foreground is bone dry, but the De Grey River, some tens of kilometers behind Shay Gap (the minesite is about 10km west/right of scene) was running 8 metres deep over the crossing when the shot was taken. The camera was a Sony DSC-F505 and the images were downloaded with the Linux usb-storage driver. A less compressed copy of the image is available [350kB].

Version 2.3 of this page