My project

Since I wasnt able to be in class on Thursday night, I'm going to recap my project here. I have been working a lot with FOSS from many different ways.

1. Through the Linux Terminal Server Projects that Jay has been working on. Currently there are two such projects of interest: one in Cumberland County, and secondly the Episcopal School here in Knoxville. Both are using servers and thin clients for computer services in the class room. It is in this area that I will be doing my project -- but more on that in a bit
2. Through a class, we have been looking at perceptions of using FOSS as a before and after analysis. That is, what do the students (preservice teachers usually) think about FOSS when the start the course and how do they view FOSS at the end of the course.
3. Through my summer teaching of high schoolers and their perceptions of FOSS both before and after being exposed to it. One comment I might make here is the ease with which these students were able to use FOSS. No training required. Simply tell them where the software was (in this case word processing) and they were able to use it with no instructions.

So with this said, the rest of my semester looks like this:

The small paper: Here I will look at the barriers to teachers using technology, the internet, and FOSS that I can find in the literature. This will be the lit review for my project.

The project: Based on the barriers discovered above, a weekly survey will be created and given to the teachers using the LTSP above. This weekly survey will be a pilot for the project to ascertain what questions SHOULD we be asking. If I get a chance to interview some of the teachers, so much the better.

I'm going out to the Episcopal School on Tuesday morning. Hopefully I will have the survey done by the middle of next week, and can send it out. This survey will then become a tool in the iterations of a larger, design based project I would like to do.