Linux School Club?

[t3chb0y]

I've been thinking of creating a club at school for the 07-08 year and beyond that's based on Linux , its fundamentals and technology included.

Like almost any commonplace , most people would start barging up with questions such as
Does Linux run on Windows?
What is Linux?

Considering that we only get around 30 minutes of lunch time , each meeting would have to be considerably short ( Many people , myself included , have a lot of extra-curriculars after school and can't afford to hold meetings then . )

The thing is ...how should a newbie Linux club work? I already thought of many ways but with the limited time we have , it's hard to get a lot of stuff all done in 10 minutes.

Not to mention that I would find it hard to get some type of incentitive for people (I'm trying to target all audiences) to join. ( Would like ideas about it ...)

About the name ...I've been thinking about it for a while...but here's some of my ideas. The basic concept is to make it sound less techie and more "general"
1st idea : LFOA : Linux Foundations of America
Scraped because ...I want to reach out also internationally some day
2nd idea : LSI : The Linux Syndicate Intl.


At the same time , me and a friend are constructing a site that will also be like a central hub/helpdesk center for those involved in the club itself and also for the purpose of a "resource" site.

My goal for this club is to reach out to other schools besides the one I'm in now . As a result , the use of Linux and open source technologies would become more known and used due to the fact that our generation would eventually become the future "workforce" thus prompting changes and of the such. Typically a company would save money if needed and then there's the "microsoft tax" of running windows on hundreds of computers. So , with common logic , if the company's workers and such are knowledgable about Linux , company saves money (since linux is free) basically with the implentation of Linux in its working environment.

This goal of mine may be a bit unrealistic but I might as well strive for it.

Any thoughts?

[zackboarman]

If you are planing on having the club in other schools to, then just create a association with a name like "The School Linux Clubs Associaton" or "School LUG's Association" & to handle the time shortage, just have it in the morning when people get to school, heck I get to school a good 45 minutes on somedays. Also, how are you going to get sponsers for the club, because many high school's including mine require new clubs to have a few finacial sponsers for what ever reason that they migh have. So you would probetly be better off having the Main Group external & to have a chapter of that club in the school. & to solve the "What is linux" & "the will it run on X" just have panthlets with that stuff on it. & if all else faills then just start a Linux User Group for your area or a student linux user group, like some collages do.

Me & some of my friends have been consedring doing the same thing, but we are very short on money, so the school wouldn't let us for that alone, so we formed a lug for our community.

But still, get together with a friend or to & try to get a teacher to let ya'll use the classroom for metting & hand out small, but imformative panthlets about FOSS, Linux, Ubuntu, etc. I know that this would be out of the question, but try to make a coustom LiveCD complete with school color & logo's along with some GOOD games & maby WINE to, so they can run some Win32 programes. If that doesen't work then just have a small group of friends get together & talk about linux & people with a intress will *might* join. If they don't then see if you can't get a old PC that will be thrown away & pop Linux on it & have it in a public place for people to fool around with, with a stack of LiveCD's next to it.

[t3chb0y]

Apparently people get to school at different times , some at 7 and some at 8 it also affects when ppl get off...some a 2 and some a 3...

the only way to make it practical for meetings would be at 6 AM in the morning but some people have sports at 5AM ..so that makes it impractical for them..

lunch is basically the only time I could possibly get all targeted audiences.

Me and a friend are planning to advertise Linux to be a stable , secure and reliable platform compared to Windows ( and to encourage the newcomers to "dual-boot setups" )

I was thinking of distributing Live CDs (both ordered and burned copies) of different distros and have people try it

also..there's always this club day at school during lunch where all the clubs advertise themselves...
I was thinking of getting 3 computers loaded with different distros to represent the desktop environments ( KDE , Gnome and Xfce) and put out a demo of Compiz Fusion to entice those who look for aesthetics in an operating system

And about the funds and such ...the school here is willing to supply us equipment that they already have and don't use ( provided that we don't damage them intentionally and agree to pay all charges if we do )

Any other things that would require money would basically come out of club membership fees.