[TOS] Why do you care about TOS?

[Ryan Rix]

On Wed 14 April 2010 12:44:04 am Mel Chua wrote:
[snip]
> Why are *you* here?

I've been idling in the IRC channel for a while trying to get my feel of 
things, so I guess I should finally poke y head out of the bunker and say 
hi :)

My story is the other side of the coin from Mel's. I find that high 
schools, at least the schools I have been exposed to, are not helpful in 
spreading open source software and culture. The high schools that I have 
seen and been to stifle the belief that collaboration and openness and 
believe it is a Good Thing, and I believe this only hurts us in the long 
run.
Sure, university is a different experience, far more open, far more, 
should I say, understanding, of what it is we are trying to do. But I 
think students need to be exposed to these things in high school, while 
they are still able to really grok it. I am lucky enough to have found the 
open source community myself, and have instilled in myself many of the 
beliefs and ideas of the culture we have, but most, I'd say in the upper 
ninety percentile, really haven't the slightest clue.

I guess I'm here to try to make an impact in that. :) My days as a high 
school student are numbered somewhere in the twenties at this point, but I 
still feel that there is a good chance that I _can_ impact high school 
students and that we can. I've been of the belief that to get students 
involved in FOSS it needs to take two different directions: Student 
exposure (students sharing and showing each other the FOSS community) and 
being exposed by teachers and professors as well. Most students have no 
reason to use FOSS if their teachers require the to turn their assignments 
in in Office format, or to collaborate in a community fashion such as ours 
without some outside force. By planting the seeds both within peers and 
mentors, we become far more effective. My involvement in Fedora's Campus 
Ambassadors Program is to eventually lay the groundwork for those peers 
that are already involved in our communities to impress it upon their 
peers, just as TOS is laying the groundwork for professors and teachers.

> --Mel

Ryan
-- 
Ryan Rix
== http://hackersramblings.wordpress.com | http://rix.si/ ==
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