-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
-
-
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---
-
-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
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