rhyll: (Default)
rhyll ([personal profile] rhyll) wrote2007-11-24 08:38 pm

Calling all geeks

After much effort by the FOSS community, RMS, and some key people within Kerala's government, the state's IT policy now explicitly states that:

"Free and Open Source Software will be used in all government funded ICT
e-Governance projects to the maximum extent possible. Preferential treatment will be
given to FOSS as it enables the knowledge to be used democratically, makes software
accessible to every one and is economical."

So there are a few pretty cool projects happening here, many of them run through SPACE - today we learnt a bit about the IT @ School program to get highschools using FOSS. Apparently over the last year (?) they've got the program running in hundreds of schools, trained all the teachers, and rewritten the textbooks (!). We also looked at Insight, a school where they're teaching blind people to use Orca and Ubuntu to use computers, as well as to train others.

It's all pretty nifty. And they could use help - especially if people are willing to come for a few months (they said four to six months would be a good span of time, and they could help out with accommodation). So if you're thinking of taking a break and doing something new for a while, perhaps you should come hang out here (or at Janastu) for a bit and help out? I think you would have fun.