hi,
Ajith Kumar wrote on Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:01:01PM +0530:
I join fsf-* recently. I'm from chennai and am planning to become a part-time volunteering teacher for fsf-edu and after 5 or 6 years become a full-time volunteer.
I have been trying to do the same stuff that you have done so far and I have certain questions to ask the people here.
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* Those who offered entry level courses and charged moderate fees. Their fee was decided by the competition in the market. People who go there do not atach much importance to the certificates they issue.
Initially I tried offering myself as a volunteering 'free{beer}' GNU/Linux lecturer at one such chota institute. For the first three days I never gave technical lectures and all my talks were about software freedom, etc.,. and by the end of three days, the proprietor of the institute got bugged and asked me to 'kindly leave' :D From his perspective, I was more of a 'waste of time' and I could understand that I only disappointed him for he wanted me to teach something technical. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten too philisophical. How do you think should this be done? Should I talk about the freedom aspect at all (atleast while beginning with)?
[Note: I thought it might have a better impact if he heard about freedom from the horse's mouth. I gave him a recorded tape of RMS's speech (and also asked him to make the students hear the tape). No workie]
* The second category is the franchisees of bigger agencies. Charged high fees and promised a lot and now busted along with the dotcom bubble.
This category of institutes is the worst, IMO:
1. They _never_ talk about the freedom aspect. 2. They sometimes give misleading information: (examples: "GNU is a set of tools", "It was all started in 1991 by a student...", etc.,)
How can they be approached and a change in syllabus be brought about? Has anybody successfully corrected them?
Syllabus (changes to that put on the web)Functional introduction to IT. Hardware and Software parts of a computer.
[:snip:]
Essential part. Interacts with the user - starts other programs -manages storage. Starting the OS - the booting process -
wouldn't it be nice if the free software movement's efforts, goals, path finds a mention in the syllabus? :)
I would also be glad to find more volunteers from chennai for conducting small GNU/Linux workshops for children of the age 10 and above.
I have an idea of conducting puppet shows for younger children (9 and below) talking about the freedom aspect at one of the schools here. Would it be worth an attempt?
suggestions would be very helpful.
thanks & regards,
-Suraj