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?
-
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.
+
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?
-
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.
+
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?
-
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.
+
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?
-
Nothing yet.
+
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?
-
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.
+
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?
-
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.
+
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.