blog/draft/2012-05-skolelinux-mike-gabriel.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2012-04-15 11:30
   4
   5 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
   6
   7
   8 Mike Gabriel
   9
  10 > * Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
  11
  12 My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
  13 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
  14 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
  15 by Angela).
  16
  17 During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator and
  18 part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work touches
  19 free software topics whereever and whenever possible. During the
  20 nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
  21 becoming an osteopath.
  22
  23 Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel) have
  24 set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
  25 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
  26 ,,IT-Zukunft Schule'' (IT future for schools). The project links IT
  27 skills with communication skills.
  28
  29 > * How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu project?
  30
  31 While preparing our own customized Linux distribution for ,,IT-Zukunft
  32   Schule'' we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to reinvent
  33 the wheel. What schools really need is already available, people said.
  34   From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux distributions
  35 that target being used for school networks.
  36
  37 At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
  38 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
  39 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
  40 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
  41 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
  42 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
  43 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
  44 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
  45 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
  46
  47 Parallely, we talked to many local and not-so-local people. People
  48 teaching at schools,  headmasters, politicians, data protection
  49 experts, other IT  professionals.
  50
  51 We came to two conclusions:
  52
  53 First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in bits
  54 and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit by
  55 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup whereas
  56 most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard IT
  57 solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
  58 customizability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
  59 possible.
  60 In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a standardized IT
  61 system for schools (a system that is still to some degree
  62 customizable) there is still a lot of work to do here locally. Debian
  63 Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting point.
  64
  65 Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at all
  66   (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions for
  67 handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What has
  68 been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment of
  69 people into using IT and teaching with IT. ,,IT-Zukunft Schule'' tries
  70 to provide an approach for this.
  71
  72 Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
  73 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
  74 Nothern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
  75 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
  76 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
  77 spare time.
  78
  79 We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were networked
  80 with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school here
  81 around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
  82 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
  83 non-existent until 2010/2011.
  84
  85 Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
  86 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
  87 avoidance do exist.
  88
  89 We discovered that noone has ever taken a closer look at this social
  90 part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey for a
  91 technical  IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
  92 several teachers, headmasters,  politicians, other IT professionals
  93 and they all confirmed: a holistic  approach of considering IT
  94 management at schools, an approach that  includes the people at place,
  95 will be new and probably a gain for all.
  96
  97 > * What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu?
  98
  99 There is a list of advantages: international context, openess to any
 100 kind  of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian, the
 101   different installation scenarios possible (from standalone
 102 workstation  to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
 103 project communication, honest communication within the group of
 104 developers, etc.
 105
 106 > * What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu?
 107
 108 Every coin has two sides:
 109
 110 Technically: BTS issue #311188, tricky upgradebility of a Debian Edu
 111 mainserver, network client installations on top of a plain vanilla
 112 Debian installation should become possible sometime in the near
 113 future, one could think about splitting the very complex package
 114 debian-edu-config into several portions (to make it easier for new
 115 developers to contribute).
 116
 117 Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should find
 118 out more about the network of people who do the marketing for Debian
 119 Edu /  Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany promoting
 120 Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are there other
 121 groups like that in other countries? How can we bring these marketing
 122 people together (marketing group A with group B and all of them with
 123 the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last meeting of the
 124 German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people there being
 125 rather disconnected from the development department of Debian Edu /
 126 Skolelinux.
 127
 128 > * Which free software do you use daily?
 129
 130 For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
 131
 132 For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For serious
 133 text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for more
 134 artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
 135
 136 I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
 137 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
 138 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
 139 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
 140
 141 For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde as
 142 web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber I
 143 have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also the
 144 Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive whiteboard.
 145
 146 My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
 147
 148 > * Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools
 149 >  to use free software?
 150
 151 Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
 152 enrol people.
 153
 154 > * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
 155
 156 Angela Fuß <angela.fuss@das-netzwerkteam.de>
 157
 158 Not for public: without Angela's skills in communications our project
 159 IT-Zukunft Schule would be dead already...
 160
 161 > The result will show up on my blog and on
 162 > <URL: http://planet.skolelinux.org/ >.
 163
 164 Greets,
 165 Mike
 166
 167
 168 [ 11-line signature. Click/Enter to show. ]
 169 --
 170
 171 DAS-NETZWERKTEAM
 172 mike gabriel, dorfstr. 27, 24245 barmissen
 173 fon: +49 (4302) 281418, fax: +49 (4302) 281419
 174
 175 GnuPG Key ID 0xB588399B
 176 mail: mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de
 177
 178 freeBusy:
 179 https://mail.das-netzwerkteam.de/freebusy/m.gabriel%40das-netzwerkteam.de.xfb
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