+Title: Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
+Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
+Date: 2012-04-15 11:30
+
+<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
+
+
+Mike Gabriel
+
+> * Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
+Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
+(Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
+by Angela).
+
+During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator and
+part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work touches
+free software topics whereever and whenever possible. During the
+nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
+becoming an osteopath.
+
+Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel) have
+set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
+introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
+,,IT-Zukunft Schule'' (IT future for schools). The project links IT
+skills with communication skills.
+
+> * How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu project?
+
+While preparing our own customized Linux distribution for ,,IT-Zukunft
+ Schule'' we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to reinvent
+the wheel. What schools really need is already available, people said.
+ From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux distributions
+that target being used for school networks.
+
+At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
+commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
+Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
+went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
+and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
+got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
+attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
+the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
+
+Parallely, we talked to many local and not-so-local people. People
+teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data protection
+experts, other IT professionals.
+
+We came to two conclusions:
+
+First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in bits
+and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit by
+100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup whereas
+most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard IT
+solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
+customizability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
+possible.
+In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a standardized IT
+system for schools (a system that is still to some degree
+customizable) there is still a lot of work to do here locally. Debian
+Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting point.
+
+Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at all
+ (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions for
+handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What has
+been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment of
+people into using IT and teaching with IT. ,,IT-Zukunft Schule'' tries
+to provide an approach for this.
+
+Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
+defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
+Nothern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
+equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
+teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
+spare time.
+
+We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were networked
+with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school here
+around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
+teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
+non-existent until 2010/2011.
+
+Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
+class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
+avoidance do exist.
+
+We discovered that noone has ever taken a closer look at this social
+part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey for a
+technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
+several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals
+and they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT
+management at schools, an approach that includes the people at place,
+will be new and probably a gain for all.
+
+> * What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu?
+
+There is a list of advantages: international context, openess to any
+kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian, the
+ different installation scenarios possible (from standalone
+workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
+project communication, honest communication within the group of
+developers, etc.
+
+> * What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu?
+
+Every coin has two sides:
+
+Technically: BTS issue #311188, tricky upgradebility of a Debian Edu
+mainserver, network client installations on top of a plain vanilla
+Debian installation should become possible sometime in the near
+future, one could think about splitting the very complex package
+debian-edu-config into several portions (to make it easier for new
+developers to contribute).
+
+Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should find
+out more about the network of people who do the marketing for Debian
+Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany promoting
+Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are there other
+groups like that in other countries? How can we bring these marketing
+people together (marketing group A with group B and all of them with
+the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last meeting of the
+German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people there being
+rather disconnected from the development department of Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux.
+
+> * Which free software do you use daily?
+
+For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
+
+For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For serious
+text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for more
+artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
+
+I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
+development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
+PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
+is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
+
+For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde as
+web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber I
+have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also the
+Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive whiteboard.
+
+My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
+
+> * Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools
+> to use free software?
+
+Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
+enrol people.
+
+> * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
+
+Angela Fuß <angela.fuss@das-netzwerkteam.de>
+
+Not for public: without Angela's skills in communications our project
+IT-Zukunft Schule would be dead already...
+
+> The result will show up on my blog and on
+> <URL: http://planet.skolelinux.org/ >.
+
+Greets,
+Mike
+
+
+[ 11-line signature. Click/Enter to show. ]
+--
+
+DAS-NETZWERKTEAM
+mike gabriel, dorfstr. 27, 24245 barmissen
+fon: +49 (4302) 281418, fax: +49 (4302) 281419
+
+GnuPG Key ID 0xB588399B
+mail: mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de
+
+freeBusy:
+https://mail.das-netzwerkteam.de/freebusy/m.gabriel%40das-netzwerkteam.de.xfb
+[ application/pgp-signature ]
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