I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
+another interview with the people behind
+Debian Edu and Skolelinux.
+This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo RodrÃguez, one of our great
+helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
+several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
+Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
+Debian Edu
+Squeeze version.
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
-and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
-Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
-teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
-Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
-I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
-primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
-so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
-also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
-to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
-appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
+
I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
+ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
+ICT in schools
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?
-
In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
-server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
-samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
-Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
-did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
-and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
-there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
-problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
-previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
-Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
-downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
-Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
-my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
+
At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
+project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
+similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
+I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
-workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
-ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
-designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
-doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
-school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
-Japan.
+
A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
+really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
+concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
+been used everyday inside Debian Edu.
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
-have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
-make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
-who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
-important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
-instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
-default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
-kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
-Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
-second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
-customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
-multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
-took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
-I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
-help.
+
Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
+economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
+allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
+approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
+lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
+technologies in school.
Which free software do you use daily?
-
Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
-studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
-(customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
-still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
-house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
-the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
-have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
-day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
-installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
-have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
-and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
+
Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
+between Iceweasel, Geany and
+Terminator.
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?
-
Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
-and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
-popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
-to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
-file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
-also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
-Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
-budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
-compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
-is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
-are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
-doesn't play flash, for example.
+
I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
+different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
+environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
+laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.
+
+
Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
+not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
+universities. So different strategies are needed.
+
+
But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
+we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
+our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
+multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
+more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
+using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
+the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
+them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
+working there.