Next Wednesday, October 31st, St. Stephen's Armenian Elementary School is holding a Technology Open House. It will take place between 9 and 11 a.m. at the school, which is located at 47 Nichols Avenue in Watertown.

The purpose of the Open House is to announce our recent adoption of Ubuntu Linux to meet our educational computer needs. We are inviting school officials and IT staff from schools located in Watertown and adjacent communities. They will be able to test-drive the Ubuntu workstations in our computer lab, and to discuss the details of the Windows-to-Linux conversion with our own IT staff. Visitors will find a gallery of sample work that students have produced with Open Office, Tux Paint, and other open source programs. We will also give away copies of the Ubuntu Live Install CD to our guests.

St Stephen's appears to be the first school in Massachusetts to adopt Ubuntu Linux as our main computing platform. Now that we have seen how well it works here, our next step is to initiate a technology transfer project with our sister school in Armenia. In June 2008, our 5th grade students will travel to Armenia and help set up a computer lab at an elementary school in an impoverished region of Armenia. Our plan is to ship a complete, turn-key set of workstations and servers that have already been localized for the Armenian language.

We are looking forward to a very special guest who will join us for the Open House next week. We have invited Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the London-based company that distributes Ubuntu Linux. He is also a civilian cosmonaut who spent 10 days visiting the international space station in 2002.

For more information, please contact Michael Selva by telephone (617-605-7429) or email (ms@ssaes.org). You can also read about Ubuntu Linux at our technology web site (http://baronselva.edublogs.org).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP by calling the school's main number (617-926-6979). For directions, visit our Google map (http://tinyurl.com/278q42).

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MICHAEL SELVA
Technology Specialist
Saint Stephen's Armenian Elementary School
phone: 617-605-7429
email: ms@ssaes.org
URL: http://baronselva.edublogs.org/
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