[GUFSC] burn OpenOffice.org 1.1 CDs for schools

[grutz]

3rd Birthday Celebration 13th October 2003
Wilmslow High School, UK, burns OpenOffice.org 1.1 CDs for schools in
Malaysia

Taking part in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects can be
educational! We have schools teaching children about ISO images and
how to burn them to disc and pass them to others. FLOSS has great
educational potential to involve students in the software development
projects of the 21st Century. So more than saving some license fees,
get your students involved with helping others. Teach them about
entrepreneurship, social conscience and some technical skills. Join
the OpenOffice.org Edu Project! Get your school featured on our web site!

Press Release SXW | PDF

For more on-going information, subscribe to the mailing list:
educ-subscribe em marketing.openoffice.org now!

Download the ISO CD-ROM image from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/ (German mirror),
Planet Mirror (Australian mirror) or AsiaOSC (Malaysian mirror)

For publicity, download a flyer>


Summary Objectives

   1. To enable all students equality of opportunity to learn using
the best technological tools by providing them with the best free
office suite, money can't buy.
   2. To enable students to learn about new software development
models first hand from one the biggest worldwide projects of the 21st
Century.

Detailed Objectives

Goal 1.
Get as many activists as possible worldwide.

Effective strategies: Tap into your contacts and mailing lists. It
only takes an E-mail to a suitable list so this is a potential large
gain for small effort. Non-native speakers of English are encouraged
to do this because its less likely that the messages set out in
English will cross the language barrier without this.

Goal 2.
Get as many schools as possible to be aware that OpenOffice.org exists.

This simply requires contacting schools and providing factual
information. (i.e. There is a free Office Suite they can download from
www.OpenOffice.org and there are sources of supply on CD-ROM for
nominal media costs. The software is designed for easy migration from
MS Office and has a high degree of file compatibility with it. The
software has functions of significant value to education that go
beyond those found in MS Office. (i.e. the ability to save in Portable
Document Format (PDF) and a powerful drawing and design program). The
method of contacting the schools will depend on local organisation. In
some cases it will be just a matter of talking to a friend or relative
who works in a particular school, in others it might be possible to
contact the administration responsible for a group of schools.
Remember one school contacted is better than no schools contacted so
don't assume that if you can't do a lot its not worthwhile. Every
little bit helps.

Goal 3.
Get OpenOffice.org to as many students as possible.

This can be done via burning some CD's for the project. There are
obviously other methods, but keep in mind that burning the official
1.1 ISO  is encouraged.

Goal 4.
Platform for future development.

This is the beginning. Marketing OpenOffice.org is important as it has
very low start-up costs, yet it has wide market application. Some
ideas include:

    * Students setting up their own small business, that markets and
supports OpenOffice.org in their community.
    * Learning about business costs, competition, as well as customer
relationships
    * Join the qa (Quality Assurance) project and learn how to de-bug
a world class software application
    * Contribute to the web site by donating graphics and art work
    * Contribute to OOextras by providing clip art and templates -
remember donate a brick and get a house!