Need about 1k ubuntu experts in SC USA

[culaben]

Dear Ubuntu advocates,
We have proposed a state wide school project to reform K-12 education in SC, USA. We propose equiping all 750,000 school students with an individual thin client running edubuntu. We anticipate using one wirelesss network per school. We are currently envisioning starting Fall of 2006. We have about 1k schools in South Carolina. We willl probably start in the poorer school districts. The state-wide non-completion of high school rate exceeds 50%. Twenty percent (20%) of our nineth graders drop out of school. We have a total of 85 public school districts in SC. In SC we currently have the highest percentage of nationally certified teachers in the USA. However we still use periodic atendance in computer labs; so computer exposure is very limited. We want the children to assemble the computers and eventually write the programs (edubuntu) so they have ownership of the computer process.
Please e-mail me at: cewtr @juno.com if you can help.

Thanks,

Charles Winfield
cewtr@juno.com

[mips]

May I ask how computers will stop the drop out rate in schools ? When i was in school we only had one pc lab for the whole school which you visited twice a week. Furthermore it was compulsary to attend school up to grade 10 (10yrs) and very few people dropped out after that, 1-2% and of those went to technical colleges to learn a trade. I honestly believe computers are over rated in education and distract from the basic you should be taught.

To deploy that many pc's you will have to look at using staging servers to install the OS on the PC and then LOCK them down so they cannot be fiddled with.

Maybe you should approach Canonical for advice on such a large rollout.

[n3gbz]

Do you have a mailing list or RSS feed to keep everyone updated about the project?

I will be spending some time in South Carolina in fall of 2007, probably Greenville area, would like to help out.

[arsenic23]

I honestly believe computers are over rated in education and distract from the basic you should be taught.

Agree 100%

[jayson.rowe]

I am in the Florence, SC area - email sent...

[Peyton]

Where are you getting your dropout figures?