PAGES liked FOSS
Today I spoke with the PAGES group which is a group of Employment Service organisations in our community.
The seed for this came from Penny Richardson of 'Employment Access' here in Mount Gambier. She attended our regional Software Freedom Day event in Penola. Penny felt that FOSS might be of interest to clients of the various Employment Services.
My presentation took all of 15 minutes and I gave each of the attendees a copy of the OpenDisc. Some people wondered what the catch was. My approach was to talk about removing the blocks to learning and to talk about access and equity. We have been doing this at Grant High School for the past 6 or more years where each enrolment gets a copy of FOSS software and we also ensure that this software is installed on all computers in the school. General consensus seemed to be that FOSS was of use to the Employment Services clients.
I posed the question of whether we should approach the City Library to perhaps have copies of the OpenDisc available for loan. Helen Strickland indicated that she would take the disc to the council with the view of them distributing it to citizens for free. She felt that it would be consistent with the council vision of building a 'learning community'.
On the new libary page of the City Council website is this quote - "The Council’s Strategic Plan 2007 – 2012 incorporates a ‘Lifelong Community Learning’ strategy"
The seed for this came from Penny Richardson of 'Employment Access' here in Mount Gambier. She attended our regional Software Freedom Day event in Penola. Penny felt that FOSS might be of interest to clients of the various Employment Services.
My presentation took all of 15 minutes and I gave each of the attendees a copy of the OpenDisc. Some people wondered what the catch was. My approach was to talk about removing the blocks to learning and to talk about access and equity. We have been doing this at Grant High School for the past 6 or more years where each enrolment gets a copy of FOSS software and we also ensure that this software is installed on all computers in the school. General consensus seemed to be that FOSS was of use to the Employment Services clients.
I posed the question of whether we should approach the City Library to perhaps have copies of the OpenDisc available for loan. Helen Strickland indicated that she would take the disc to the council with the view of them distributing it to citizens for free. She felt that it would be consistent with the council vision of building a 'learning community'.
On the new libary page of the City Council website is this quote - "The Council’s Strategic Plan 2007 – 2012 incorporates a ‘Lifelong Community Learning’ strategy"
posted by Wara @ 7:06 pm
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