[Inschool] Granger Christian

[randy perry]

Thanks for the response guys, I will make contact with school personnel
tomorrow night and keep you posted.  The most important thing to
remember is that we can help shift the MS mentality by training them on
alternative OS and applications before they hit the workforce.  Some of
them may not be hoping to work in IT, and I hope not.  I hope that they
want to become CEOs that mandate their companies use the strengths of
Linux and adhere to open standards.

This also helps to reshape the way education works.  I teach for IvyTech
and Davenport University (barely fits in schedule), but I try not to
brand the classes.  For example, I am teaching an intermediate DB class
using Oracle.  Actually, I am using (and strongly suggest to the
students) that we use MySQL.  That way, they can actually apply their
knowledge in the real world without having to buy Oracle.  Of course, a
personal edition comes with the book- but you can't use it in production
environments.  I am instead, trying to focus on normalization, joins,
SQL statements in general.  Advanced Oracle concepts should be kept to
advanced courses.  I used this same argument for that K-12 school.  One
of their reasons for NOT wanting to use Linux is that parents will
demand that their children learn microsoft applications.  
(here was my response..)
My answer is that your children will experience much more powerful
applications and be able to adapt to new technologies whether on
workstation spreadsheets or enterprise database servers.  In fact, they
will get to work on the same servers that are used to create movies like
Titanic and Shrek.  MS can't touch that, only SGI and Linux.  We aren't
meeting the bar, we are leaps and bounds beyond that point.  They will
program in a stable, secure environment that runs such sites as Google
(which is run by 15,000 linux servers).  No, you're right this is not a
Microsoft shop.  And we don't want to be.

Ohhhh that felt good.

Randall Perry
www.domain-logic.com