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Thank you ooshirts.com for Partimus t-shirts!

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!

Partimus talk at SCALE10x: Recap

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

Today’s installation team

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

We built a mini computer lab today

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!

 

 

 

 

Nice new machines donated by San Francisco State University

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!

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

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!

Partimus talk at SCALE10x

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.

A start to the new lab

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.

Coping with the damage from the fire

The Creative Arts Charter School (CACS) is slowly digging itself out from the December 22, 2011 fire that wiped out two apartment buildings and scorched the eastern wall of the elementary school portion of  CACS.  The fire itself only burned the exterior eastern wall of CACS.  This damage included scorching of the windows of the principal’s office, the elementary school library, and two classrooms.

But the real damage has come in the form of water damage to floors and ceilings in the entire building.  Here is a picture of one of the classrooms on the western side of the building, which was away from the fire.  This classroom suffered nothing more than smoke damage, which has been remediated.

This classroom suffered only smoke damage

However, the finished floors have been ripped out of the hallway and many of the classrooms.  Here is a picture of the hallway.  Notice the raw floorboards are exposed, and don’t have the fine finished polish as show above.

Damage in the hallway, second floor. Note the exposed raw floor and ceiling.

Note in the shot attached below, you can see the second floor by peering through the slats in the floor board from the third floor:

The lighter color of the second floor is visible through the slats in the third floor.

 

Obviously, the teachers have had to spend their holiday break moving everything from their classrooms into the upper school.  This means that, essentially, the students, teachers, and equipment which were formally housed in two buildings now have to fit into one building.  This means that all of the classrooms are going to be doing double duty, including the classroom that houses the Partimus GNU-Linux lab.

The fire comes at a very awkward moment for the school, because CACS has been undergoing construction since the beginning of the school year to upgrade the facilities.  This means that half of the upper school is under construction, which means that teachers are actually rotating classrooms to accomodate classes.

It is important to keep in mind that CACS is a public charter school.  Any child from any city in California can attend the school for free of cost.  The City and County of San Francisco owns the building and pays for teacher salaries on a one-year delayed basis. CACS must float a lot of the costs themselves.  CACS prides itself on serving a diverse population base.  The children of local judges and public officials attend school here with children from many of the most impoverished neighborhoods in San Francisco.

Partimus volunteers will be going into the school this weekend to begin the work of sorting and testing the remaining computer equipment.  We will be laying out the floor plan for the computer lab, and if there is time, we will begin installing computers.  There is a lot of work ahead of us.  We currently are anticipating that we will be needing to purchase electrical cables to run power from the limited power outlets to the computers.  We are a recognized 501(c)(3), and donations to Partimus can be made by going to this page.  We can particularly use large lots of notebook computers.  Please email Partimus Executive Director Christian Einfeldt if you would like to donate lots of notebook computers at einfeldt at gmail dot com.  Thanks!

A link to all of the pictures taken on 2012.1.13 by Christian Einfeldt can be found here:  http://is.gd/y40alm

 

Loving those Ubuntu earrings!

The Ubuntu earrings from Boutique Academia are quite popular! In only three months between September and December, these beautiful earrings generated $174.00 in donations to Partimus from sales of the earrings from Boutique Academia.

Silver Ubuntu earrings from Boutique Academia

Silver Ubuntu earrings from Boutique Academia

It is great to see that these earrings have such staying power. We first blogged about these earrings on June 13, 2011. We then announced on August 4, 2011, that we were adding silver-colored earrings, as our first offerings were in gold.

These earrings are nice on so many levels. They represent the Ubuntu logo, which symbolizes the family of humanity arm in arm. Of course, Ubuntu means “humanity unto others”, so this is a great symbol of international peace to be circulating. Ubuntu is one of the more popular GNU-Linux distributions, a really power operating system that is free as in free speech and free as in free beer. Most of our Partimus.org computers run on Ubuntu. The earrings are made by a woman-run business, Boutigue Academia, which is run by one of the Partimus co-founders, Maile Urbancic. And $6.00 of each earring sale are passed along to Partimus!

Also, with each purchase, people are making a subtle commitment in their hearts and their minds to the concepts of freedom that underly the Ubuntu logo.  Branding can be a powerful thing, when it is used properly, and for a truly good cause like peace, digital freedom, and public education.

There is a lot to get excited about here. Please spread the word about these great earrings!

And here is an image of the $174 check from Boutique Academia.  Thanks again, Maile!

The $174 check

The $174 check