NUUG-styremedlem Hans-Petter Fjeld +meldte +nettopp at han har sendt inn NUUGs +høringsuttalelse angående Difi sin standardkatalog v3.1. Jeg er veldig +glad for at så mange bidro og sikret at vår stemme blir hørt i denne +høringen. Anbefaler alle å lese våre +to +sider med innspill.
+Germany is a core area for the -Debian Edu and Skolelinux -user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang -Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany. - -
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
- -I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in -Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school -"Westfalen-Kolleg -Dortmund", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given -the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school -examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This -second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective -or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.
- -Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a -blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other -information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been -teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my -school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at -the end of April this year.
- -How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu -project?
- -The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my -attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server -Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997 -using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since -2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin -clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of -reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the -Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About -two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only -known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system: -Skolelinux.
- -Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a -better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin -clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI -was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI -and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for -the admin teachers.
- -What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?
- -It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's -Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented! -So it was a perfect choice.
- -Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's -possible to point teachers and students to programs like -OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of -high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of -a school and to choose where to get support for this.
- -What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?
- -Nothing yet.
- -Which free software do you use daily?
- -At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice, -Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF -Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit, -LibreOffice.
- -Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to -get schools to use free software?
- -Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But -that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more -interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.
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