Wende School Project – Part 2

Wende School Computer Room - Before decoration
Computer Room at Wende School – Before decoration

Welcome to part 2 of my early post written in October 2009 which is mainly about the school selection, the preparation work and training.

During the school summer holiday, we went back to Wende School a few times and discussed with the headmaster about the computer room decoration and set up. We look at things like:

  • Class orientation (make it easy for teachers to monitor & manage)
  • Server / computer for teacher
  • Internet and Wifi network
  • Electricity and cabling
  • Hardware protection (avoid dust and direct sunlight to computers)
  • Safety management (prevent kids from accessing the electricity sockets)
  • Security and thief proofing (install bars on windows and locks on doors)

By mid August, we visited again to check on the decoration status. What impressed me is that the headmaster actually was renovating the school with his wife by themselves, I saw them sweating while painting the walls and building the fences of the kindergarten. We were however a bit disappointed on the computer lab renovation progress: nothing had started yes and it was still the same storage room that you can see on the photo above. So we could only review the room requirements, discussed about who would be receiving  the training and whether they had a candidate to become part time system admin to manage the lab. Headmaster Cui had already thought about it and suggested to select a few teachers who have been working by his side for a while with some computer knowledge. We didn’t want to train someone to see leaving the school within months (which is currently a generic problem of such schools for migrant workers kids). He of course included himself in the group so they can also manage knowledge transfer by themselves.

Delivered 20 Gdiums to Wende School
Donated 20 Gdiums to Wende School

Early September 2009, Dexxon / the Gdium Foundation donated 20 Gdiums to Wende School as initially agreed. We were very excited about the start! The room was almost ready. It was decorated with nice white paint (it’s a bit plain but we can always add some colorful drawing later), carpets, bars, locks and clean tables and chairs. Not enough electricity sockets were installed, so we had to add a few wire extensions and plugs. Of course there were still some sundries here and there but we were ready to start teachers training sessions. The same day, headmaster Cui provided a server and Wifi router for us to prepare and use in the newly installed lab.

Gdiums in Wende School
Testing 20 Gdiums at Wende School Computer Lab

One week later the whole set up was ready and we could start training the four selected teachers.  In my opinion Mr. Cui did an excellent job by choosing people with a very diverse background: we have a young teacher who is very open to new things; the administration manager, a 40+ years old lady who is only familiar with Windows; a college student who was just hired as part-time system admin to manage the computer room, and himself.

After discussion with the headmaster and the teachers, we agreed to give 4 to 6 days of training depending on the progress. 4 hours per day with a break every hour. 1 training day per week so they have enough time to digest and practice what they have learned. We printed and binded 5 Greenboard Open Textbooks covering all the initial deployment courses, 1 for trainer and 4 for teachers. Seeing the 5 textbooks print out, I got the feeling that a milestone of the project had been reached. Of course this is only version 1.0 (beta) and we already have a roadmap for future versions to come. Besides since the courses are released under a Creative Commons license, anybody can just jump in, give their feedback and actively contribute.

Training Wende School teachers
Giving training to Wende School teachers

On the first day of training, Jason was the key trainer while I was the assistant trainer. Julien and Liantao were testing the server performance with 20 Gdiums. It was exciting to see the reaction and get feedback from the teachers! The student sys-admin and headmaster seems quite familiar with Gdium and its operating system already. I guess they took a bit of advance by taking them home and exploring all the options.

The young teacher (Miss Liu) was very eager to learn and excited to discover new things. the only slight resistance came from the administration manager who had to learn a different system, which is not what she has been using for the past years. At the beginning, she showed her frustration and asked a lot of questions about what’s the hardware performance and if Linux could do the same things as Windows. During each break, we spent some time to explain the benefits of Open Source in general and in education in particular. The last training session covering Gcompris education suite nailed it: we saw her trying out all the educational activities supplied by the suite, with a big smile and satisfaction on her face and she said:  “These games are good for children to learn Maths and English!”  Say no more! What’s better than experiencing it by herself?

As mentioned earlier, making schools understand the benefits of Open Source can be challenging, “Free” as Free beer doesn’t work as almost every software is free in China, we focus on “Free” as “Freedom” but how many people care about it? Most people have habits and are addicted to Microsoft software. It will definitely take some time to change. The good thing is that Open Source and Linux are not companies, we don’t have quarterly financial report to fulfill, that means we have time. By providing a total solution with education oriented customized Operating System for students / teachers / Server computers, a complete training courses / curriculum and constant maintenance support, it will definitely fasten the process. I look forward to seeing more school benefiting from it!

As this is an ongoing project, do expect to read more about our progress, experiences, and maybe difficulties right here!

Software Freedom Day – Beijing TsingHua University

Same as every year, Beijing Linux User Group supported a lot of Software Freedom Day events in Beijing in 2009. Except this year, we helped 7 Universities! Our BLUG member and long time contributor Daniel made a video of the event hosted in Tsing Hua University! In order to cope with the theme “Getting Things Done With Open Source”, we organized a speech and three booths over there to demonstrate students some great FOSS applications like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Gjots2, Freemind, Labyrinth, Gaphor, etc. And like the excellent videos from for Beijing SFD ’07 and packing all the schwags that have been sent out to SFD teams worldwide, this one is definitely another great addition to the BLUG TV!

Beijing Normal University FOSS Club Launched!

Normal University FOSS Club - First initial meeting
Normal University FOSS Club – First initial meeting

The first time I met Bauer Yung, a Computer Science student from Beijing Normal University was at a Beijing Linux User Group meeting a few months ago he was attracted by the concept of Open Source. As the leader of College Open Source Society I encouraged him to start a FOSS Club in his college. We met again at the WiserU workshop and discussed a bit more in details.  In a similar manner as what we did when Jesse Zhang (Beihang University) wanted to start his FOSS Club following the GNOME.Asia Summit, I suggested to have a meeting together with FOSS clubs core members from other Beijing Universities.

After some miscommunication about the meeting arrangement we finally ended up with a date conflicting with the Beijing GNOME User Group preventing some members to join. The good thing is that it gave us the first opportunity to share experiences about scheduling, meeting arrangement and locations.

The whole meeting went very well, there were about 10 students from Normal University and about the same numbers from Beihang University and USTB joined, as well as myself and Fred. Bauer wrote a very detailed meeting notes (in Chinese) which can be accessed here.

Basically everybody shared their views and perspectives about:

  • What’s the purpose of the FOSS club
  • What it takes to start (mailing list, website and regular meeting time / venue)
  • What are the tasks of each core members
  • How to promote the group
  • What are the challenges, problems and their solutions
As a leader of Techgirls Group, I noticed and couldn’t help talking with one of the core members girlfriend, Qingning, English student in Beijing Normal University. She had of course heard a bit about Open Source (through her boyfriend) and even tried Open Solaris which turned out a bit difficult for a beginner so she gave up. She couldn’t understand why people are contributing to Open Source, and even more her boyfriend. Her concerns were mainly around the business model and opportunities as she wouldn’t want him wasting time on something that cannot help them make a living. Hence, Fred and I spent quite some time explaining her the software industry landscape in China where people do not pay for license and all the major online companies IT infrastructures run Linux and Open Source technologies. Finaly she said she’ll give another try and must be using Linux now! I strongly believe Qingning will be a great asset for the newly launched BNU OSS Club, especially for meetings and events organization and building awareness. What’s better than non-geeks like Qingning to talk to people like herself about Linux?

As a leader of Techgirls Group, I noticed and couldn’t help talking with one of the core members girlfriend, Qingning, English student in Beijing Normal University. She had of course heard a bit about Open Source (through her boyfriend) and even tried Open Solaris which turned out a bit difficult for a beginner so she gave up. She couldn’t understand why people are contributing to Open Source, and even more her boyfriend. Her concerns were mainly around the business model and opportunities as she wouldn’t want him wasting time on something that cannot help them make a living. Hence, Fred and I spent quite some time explaining her the software industry landscape in China where people do not pay for license and all the major online companies IT infrastructures run Linux and Open Source technologies. Finaly she said she’ll give another try and must be using Linux now! I strongly believe Qingning will be a great asset for the newly launched BNU OSS Club, especially for meetings and events organization and building awareness. What’s better than non-geeks like Qingning to talk to people like herself about Linux?

2009 GNOME.Asia Summit Call for Participants

Gnome.Asia Summit 2009As part of the organizing members for the first GNOME.Asia Summit in 2008 in Beijing, we had been calling for the next organizing community to host the second Asia Summit for months since early 2009. Knowing that my friend, Mario, would be moving to Vietnam, he proposed that the second GNOME.Asia Summit could be in Vietnam with the help of the local Linux User Group.  After a few months of effort from the whole committee, here we are! Right now we are in progress of calling for participants including speakers, exhibitors, audiences and sponsors. Below you will find the announcement, please join us and help to spread the word!

The second GNOME.Asia Summit will be held in Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam, from 20-22 November, 2009. The GNOME.Asia Summit is an exciting event gathering many contributors from the free and open source desktop communities, bringing together the Asian community, and providing a forum for planning future development and growth. This document serves as the formal invitation to participate in the summit. Please join us and participate!

The theme of the summit is ‘Get Freedom With GNOME’ which refers to the primary goals of the GNOME.Asia Summit: spreading the knowledge of GNOME and free/open source software across Asia; and building a vibrant, thriving community around it. Our target audiences include GNOME users, developers, contributors, students, and clients in Asia.

The event will feature keynotes, sessions, lightning talks, exhibitions, and a hands-on lab. We are asking for submissions for three types of proposals:

  1. Sessions
  2. Lightning talks
  3. Exhibition, hands-on lab

The sessions at the GNOME.Asia Summit will be scheduled for one hour blocks of time. You should expect approximately 45 minutes of lecture with the final 15 minutes used for questions and group discussion. Please take into consideration any time you will need for preparation. The session could be a technical talk, panel discussion, or BOF.

The lightning talks at the GNOME.Asia Summit are short presentations. Each lightning talk is only 5 minutes long with no time for Q&A. Please take into consideration any time you will need for preparation, such as projector setup. Proposals for lightning talks will be accepted on a first-come-first-served basis, limited by available space.

At the GNOME.Asia summit 2009, we will have a special area for exhibition and hands-on Lab. Exhibitions including booths, posters and stands, and hands-on Lab are welcome.

Topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • GNOME 3.0
  • Localization & Internationalization
  • Mobile platforms and thin clients
  • GNOME Communities
  • GNOME library and application development
  • Desktop deployments
  • School software

In short, any area of GNOME and its related projects that you feel passionate is a great topic for you to speak about!

To be considered for inclusion as a participant at the GNOME.Asia Summit 2009, please send an email to asia-summit-list@gnome.org with a short abstract about your proposal. The submitted abstract should indicate the type of your proposal. Include your name, biographical information, a photo suitable for the web, a title, and a description of your presentation (under 400 words). The reviewing team will evaluate the entries based on the submitted abstracts and available time in the schedule.

The deadline for submissions is October 28, 2009 November 6th, 2009. Successful candidates will be selected and notified by the organizing committee by October 30, 2009. November 9th, 2009. Once your abstract is selected you will need to create an account on the GNOME.Asia Summit website where you will need to update your topic information, along with providing some biographical information.

All interested contributors are highly encouraged to send in their proposals. Please help us to spread the invitation to other potential participants. Even you do not plan to be a speaker, please consider joining us. This is going to be a great event!

Sincerely,

GNOME.Asia Summit committee

Wende School Project – Part 1

Wende School Part 1

Introduced by the LEAD organization in early 2009, we have been going to numerous Migrant Workers’ Children Schools especially in ChaoYang district to give training to teachers and headmasters about computers, Open Source and Open Education in schools. For most of them, it’s the first time for them to hear about Open Source and Open Education.

A few months ago, we had a chance to go to Wende School and met the headmaster and all the teachers over there on a Saturday morning. After the training, they asked a lot of questions and I got a very good impression about the school as they are very interested by the concepts we promoted.

Schoolwise, it is similar to a lot of other Migrant schools here in China. Many of the schools exist in conditions of absolute poverty and lack qualified teachers or administrators. They have very scarce equipment as well. Wende school has about 250 students (aged 6 to 12), 15 teachers and 10 classrooms without any laboratory, computer classroom or library. Wherever this is true, it remains unlikely that migrant children will receive an adequate education.

Wende School Headmaster
A picture with the headmaster of Wende Migrant School, Mr. Cui

Unlike other headmasters I have met so far in other Migrant schools, most of them are
migrant workers themselves, they are usually some individuals taking opportunity to profit from a huge potential market due to the increased demand from migrant workers for education. Hence they would only see computers as tools to recruit more students for their schools without caring so much about the education side of the whole thing.  They tend to have some second hand unusable computers to put in a room as display. However, Mr. Cui, Headmaster of Wende, previously worked as System Administrator taking care of computers and networks in companies. He is very open minded and understands that the benefits of introducing computers to kids not only for the sake of just learning how to use computers, but to use them as tools to solve problems and widen the scope to other educational domains as well.

Since then, we went back to Wende School a few times to discuss about their needs, sponsoring some Gdiums and developing a computer lab. Of course by doing so, it would involve a lot of preparation like:

  • Decoration and set up of the room with computers
  • Completion of the Operating System for computers and server
  • Training materials for teachers
  • Training schedule for the teachers and system admin
  • Who would be receiving the training
  • Who would be the system administrator
  • Maintenance and support, etc.

Ones of the weaknesses of Open Source in Education is lack of knowledge of Open Source from teachers and lack of documentation (especially in Chinese). Microsoft is perceived as “free” software here and all the public exams are based on Microsoft software in China while  their strategy is to give away textbooks to poor schools to make sure their market domination remains.

In order to have schools understand Open Source, we spent about 6 months to talk with schools and teachers to deliver a solution that covers their IT teaching needs but also Maths, Geography, English, Chinese, Art, Music, Typing, Office Suite, Internet and so on. Based on those requirements, we customized G-Linux and built a classroom server using applications like Gcompris, Rur-pleK-Geography, Stardict, OpenOffice.org, etc.. We also built  the training materials (in Chinese) and finally published our first release of Greenboard Open Textbook. All the contents is freely available on the Greenboard wiki pages and licensed under Creative Commons. Here I would like to thank the whole team including Julien Forgeat, Jason Wu, Frederic Muller, Helen Wang, SunLianTao and SunLiWen who have been constantly contributing to this meaningful project!

This article is getting too long to read so I will stop it here for now! In part two, I will talk about the installation / set up of the computer lab and training. In this trial, I hope that we can all learn together whether they are problems or useful tricks. Looking forward to the success in bringing computers with Linux and Open Source Software to Migrant schools in China.