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Big Linux computer move next Friday

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Fundamental changes are under way at the Creative Arts Charter School, due to a fire that struck on 12.22.11. The Linux desktop lab is being dispersed to make room for a Linux notebook lab. If you would like to help us move machines, please show up at the Creative Arts Charter School this Friday, April 13, 2012, at 9:00 a.m., at 1601 Turk Street at the corner of Pierce. Please bring tools that you will need to triage machines, such as copies of Ubuntu 10.04, screw drivers, needle nose pliers, cable testers, and so forth. Also wear old clothes, because you might get just a little bit dirty moving machines! We will probably be done by about 2:30 pm or so, depending on how it goes. And we will feed you lunch! If you have a camera, please feel free to bring it! Also, people who can drive a truck or a car are especially welcome.

Please feel free to call my google voice number at 415-935-1701, which rings through to my cell phone, so that I can help orient you, as the school is fairly large.

You can read more about the fire here:

http://blog.partimus.org/?p=159

Come join us and be a part of this watershed event in the history of Linux in San Francisco public schools!

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Triagefest this Saturday, March 17, 2012

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This Saturday from 10:30 to 3:00, there will be a triagefest at the Creative Arts Charter School at 1601 Turk Street at the corner of Pierce Street in San Francisco. This is the school that had that huge fire on 12/22/11.  More about that fire here:

http://blog.partimus.org/?p=159

The purpose of this triage fest is to separate good equipment from bad equipment.  Volunteers with a pick-up truck for moving equipment 3 blocks would be particularly appreciated.  Pizza will be served at 12:30 p.m.

Please bring with you everything that you would need to test a computer and its peripheral equipment, and to take a computer apart and put it back together.  It would also be good to bring Ubuntu 10.04 on a flash drive, since we will be installing that distro on some machines.

This public charter school relies on our Linux computers heavily for the work that their students do, so they will definitely appreciate the work!  Thanks in advance to all volunteers!

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Thank you ooshirts.com for Partimus t-shirts!

Saturday, February 4, 2012

A couple months ago I was contacted by Sam Hunt of ooshirts.com, startup company located in Berkeley, who offered Partimus two free t-shirts!

Christian Einfeldt came up with the design with Tux on the front and the words “Take me to school” and the Partimus logo and URL on the back. I submitted the order through their t-shirt creation tool and put in the request for the shirts.

They store the design at a public URL, so now others can order shirts from them (and make edits if they want):

http://www.ooshirts.com/d/66915775

I ordered 2 shirts (one for myself and one for Grant Bowman) on January 6th, with the following options:

1 M White Gildan Cotton T-Shirt
1 L White Gildan Cotton T-Shirt

Colors:

Front: 3
Back: 2

On January 20th they arrived!

Check out the public design and “Order Now” to order one for yourself. As described above (type of shirt, colors) they’re about $22 each, but they reduce the price with bulk, 10 shirts ordered at once are just over $13 each.

We hope to get some “in action” shots at one of our upcoming events, stay tuned! Thanks again ooshirts.com!

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Partimus talk at SCALE10x: Recap

Monday, January 30, 2012

On January 21st I gave a talk at the the 10th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 10x) on Bringing Linux into Public Schools and Community Centers for their Open Source Software in Education track.

Elizabeth Krumbach speaking about Partimus at SCALE10x

I drew heavily from the experience I’ve gathered from Partimus over the past year and a half, as well as through interviews of folks who have been involved with bringing Linux into schools and community centers much longer than I.

Special thanks to the following people whose insight directly for this talk and in general were invaluable to my presentation:

  • James Howard, Christian Einfeldt, Grant Bowman – Partimus
  • Robert Litt – ASCEND School
  • Jim Fisher and Randy Gold – Ubuntu Pennsylvania
  • Charles Profitt – Pittsford Central Schools

I encouraged audience participation and was delighted to find that there were several folks in the audience who were actively deploying Linux and Free/Open Source into their classrooms with varying levels of success. The discussion blossomed so that we even had audience members answering questions for other audience members.

The talk sparked probably a dozen conversations throughout the weekend about my experience, suggestions for Partimus and simple swapping of contact details so we could talk more later. It was a truly inspiring experience to be around so many other people who are passionate about helping their communities through Free/Open Source deployments.

I’ve made my presentation materials available here: slides, notes

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Today’s installation team

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Here is a picture of the team that did the installation work today, Saturday, January 28, 2012, at the Creative Arts public charter school.  Not pictured are Asheesh Laroia, who arrived after this picture was taken, and Christian Einfeldt, who took this picture with his Linux-powered Droid 3 phone from Motorola.  I just was not able to fit this picture into the previous post, so I had to add a separate post.

From left to right: Tom Lopes, Harley Strazzarino, Partimus Board Member Grant Bowman, John Strazzarino, teacher Maria Jenerik and teacher Dina Moskowitz

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We built a mini computer lab today

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Wow, what a busy day this was.  In fact, it was so busy, by the time I post this blog, WordPress will already think it is Sunday, January 29, but it’s not.  It is still Saturday, January 28, 2012, and we will probably be here at the Creative Arts public charter school until 9:30 pm.  Long day, but really satisfying.

From left to right: Tom Lopes (seated), Harley Strazzarino (back to camera), and Grant Bowman (red jacket).

We arrived at 10:00 a.m., and got right to work, triaging computers.  We triaged a total of 20 computers, and we installed 11 of them in the class rooms of Maria Jenerik and Dina Moskowitz.  Maria teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade social studies and math, and Dina teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade language arts and math.  Here is a shot of Grant Bowman, Tom Lopes, and Harley Strazzarino in the triage room (the library) discussing some of the finer points of system administration.

Many of the machines that we installed today were the machines that were donated yesterday, Friday, January 27, by Mr. So Trinh, an IT Director at San Francisco State University.   Once again, many thanks to So and SFSU for those donations!

We actually were here so long today, that we had two rounds of pizza!  The first round arrived at 1:00 pm, and the second round arrived at 4:00 pm.  The first round was 2 extra large pies, the first featuring sausage and mushroom, and the second was our traditional Partimus broccoli and pineapple pizza for which we are so very famous.

Harley Strazzarino puts the finishing touches on a machine before diving into a sausage and mushroom pizza

 

At the end of the day, here is a picture of the small room where 7 of the 11 Ubuntu GNU-Linux comptures will be used by the students.  They will start right away on Monday by putting together a yearbook, under the direction of Maria Jenerik.

All of the computers pictured here were free of cost to the Creative Arts public charter school.  The machines were donated, and the software is free open source software, which is the product of millions of hours of work by developers all over the world.  I find it to be such a beautiful statement about humanity that so much free goodwill is donated to the proposition that software should be made available to everyone, regardless of income.

In the next post I will included a shot of the team that did the installation work today.

Four new installations of Ubuntu GNU-Linux 10.04, featuring pictures of a ring nebula in outer space from the Hubble Telescope

So it was a long, long day, but I think that I can speak for the whole crew when I say that we had a feeling of great accomplishment.  Many thanks to everyone who participated!

 

 

 

 

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Nice new machines donated by San Francisco State University

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Partimus would like to thank Mr. So Trinh, an IT Director at San Francisco State University for donating 10 pre-owned computers and monitors to us for our work in public schools!

Such beautiful new monitors!

 

 

LCD monitors have been available to the public for a while now, but many of the poor public schools that Partimus services are still using CRT monitors, so these monitors are really special.

And not only did Mr. Trinh donate the computers, he also pre-installed Ubuntu GNU-Linux 10.04 on them, which happens to be exactly the kind of Linux that we use at the schools!

A nice fresh installation of Lucid Lynx Ubuntu Linux!

 

This donation also came just in time, because one of the teachers is going to start a Yearbook project this upcoming Monday, January 30, and so the addition of these new machines will be welcome, indeed.  Thanks again to Mr. So Trinh, and thanks to Dr. Sameer Verma of San Francisco State University for introducing us to Mr. Trinh!

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Triage fest Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 10 am to 3 pm

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Partimus.org will be having a triage fest this  Saturday, January 28, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 pm, at the Creative Arts Charter School at 1601 Turk Street, at the corner of Turk and Pierce.  This is the school that had that huge fire on 12/22/11.  More about that fire by clicking here

The purpose of this triage fest is to separate good equipment from bad equipment and at 2:00 pm, we will move the bad equipment off premises (assuming that we get a volunteer who has a vehicle, preferably a pick-up truck).  Truck or no truck, we will finish at 3:00 pm.

Pizza will be served at 12:30 p.m.

A yummy pizza like this could be in your future!

Please bring with you everything that you would need to test a computer and its peripheral equipment, and to take a computer apart and put it back together.  It would also be good to bring Ubuntu 10.04 on a flash drive, since we will be installing that distro on some machines.

This public school relies on our Linux computers heavily for the work that their students do, so they will definitely appreciate the work!  Thanks in advance to all volunteers!

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Partimus talk at SCALE10x

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

On Saturday January 21st at 10AM I will be giving a talk at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE10x) featuring work in a community center I’ve observed in Ubuntu Pennsylvania when I lived in Philadelphia and the work of Partimus in schools here in California. I’ll be discussing some of the core lessons we’ve learned through our deployments and featuring Creative Arts Charter School in San Francisco and ASCEND in Oakland.

Presentation details here: Bringing Linux into Public Schools and Community Centers by Elizabeth Krumbach

We will not have a booth on the expo floor like we did last year, but we will be giving out information about the work Partimus does at the Ubuntu booth run by Ubuntu California, so drop by and say hello!

Talk notes and slides will be made available following the conference.

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A start to the new lab

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Today was a tiny step toward starting the new Linux lab at the Creative Arts Charter School (a public charter school) following the devastating fire of 2011.12.22.  A professional moving company had placed a number of our computers into a closet in the new lab.  Today, we moved 2000 lbs of computers out of the closet and into the main room so that we could start to triage and sort them.  A small, but important step was accomplished.

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