Praveen Arimbrathodiyil blogs here

Some Background Info

Free Software Foundation of India was successful in its efforts to include free software in the high school curriculam [For the IT @ School project] in Kerala last year. But the teachers were given training only in Microsoft Windows even though GNU/Linux has given equal importance and a choice is given for schools to choose any one of these. About 33 schools [Out of toal 2699 schools in the state. Data from IT @ School Progress Reort ] chose GNU/Linux as a platform of choice and decided to go forward with the Free OS. But the IT @ authorities pressured many to change over to Windows but many persisted and forced to conduct the examinations on Windows as the Soft Exam — the software designed for that purpose was only available for Windows [See a news story from Hindu about protest by KSTA against SoftExam windows only version]. But two schools stood firm and refused to chose Windows [And now they have GNU/Linux version of the Soft exam as well]. The authorities had to budge before their determination and only two schools conducted [After a lot of hard work] their examinations on GNU/Linux platform. One was Mappila Higher Secondary School in Koyilandi and other was in Kannore District. The issue was taken up strongly by KSTA [Kerala State Teachers Association] and the Govt. of Kerala agreed to give training in Free Software only. So the Free Software Foundation and KSTA organised a meeting in Ernakulam on April 2 and discussed various practical issues and plans to go forward and support adoption of Free Software in Kerala. They have formed and action group and decided to give support and training parellel with the government training and form district level committes to support those who wanted to move to the Free platform [GNU/Linux]. There was an email by Arun M of FSF in fsf-friends mailing list to announce the dates of state level meetings and the meeting in Calicut was scheduled to be on 23rd April [Today] and I decided to go and attend it as my exams was over on 21 and just Viva emains.
News from Hindu: SSLC IT practical test begins

Meeting
The meeting was at 10am in Mappila Higher Secondary School Koyilandi. I woke up by 7.30 and left the college by 8.15 [It was very tough to wake up this early as my usual time is 11-12!! (no discrimination between week days and holidays) any how I managed with two alarms -- it was another thing I turned off both and slept!!]. My friend Manjunath SL was waiting for me at Calicut bus stand [he was in Koyilandi before they moved to Kozhikode]. We reached there at sharp 10am. Arum reached there in the morning train and we waited some more time for some more people to arrive. I met Arun and talked about possibilities of conducting a similar meeting in Palakkad and more involvement of students.

We started the meeting by about 10.30 and we discussed various issues and cleared many FUD. We introduced ourselves and Arun started his talk. It was very intetresting and effective. He started with describing change in forms of power as the history progress. In earlier times it physical strength and later money and now it is information. [The other day Dr. KP Aravindan pointed out that the future is IT and Bio-Technology and in both areas the developing countries has an advatage -- the human resource. He came to our campus for a talk on changing patent laws ]. Those who had power in the form of money also realised that the information is power and tried to restrict information in various froms like copy right, patents… The main cause of many problems in the world are loss of confidence in each other. So the solution is by co-operation. In this reagard the Free Software movement is a social movement with a view to have a better world and their arena being software. As the Free Software became popular many other forms of co-peration emerged like wikipedia, Creative commons….

The education policy should have an aim and it should focus on future not today. Tea and snacks were provided.
They had many concers like technical support and industry application. Some suggested moving to Open Office first but that was rejected since it didn’t work last yaer. Even though every one who chose windows platform could easily have chosen open office but they didn’t. So we decided to go for GNU/Linux from start.

Then Arun demonstrated Edu Morphix, a customised version of Morphix with Ubuntu packages and having many educational tools like Tux Paint, Kstars…. The CD was developed by Arun M and Vimal Joseph for FSF [Arun is a full time FSF volunteer].
Here is an image drwn by 11 year old Ms. Mahek using Tux Paint.

Tux paint is a wonderful program for kids. It helps kids to focus on what they do hiding the complexities. See other drawings by kids around the world

The teachers were very enthusiastic and we were astonished by this. Even we (students) don’t have that much enthusiasm. Manju also liked the program. And we were impressed by their closeness and organisational skills whenthey planned next sub-district level meets. The sub-district meets are planned at next sundays (1st , 8th and15th of May).

The demonstartion was over by 2pm and we all were hungry. They arranged lunch for us in Devi Vilasam Hotel. Oh! The meal was so delicious [It felt like heaven as I have joined G mess from 15th because all other messes except F --which is north Indian mess, closed]. It seemed like a marriage feast with long lines of tables and it had facility to provide food for a lot of people at the same time.

After lunch we visited Manju’s ‘Tharavadu’ and in the way back to college we stoped in Manju’s home also. We were back in college by 6.30 pm. It was a wonderful day…