RULE at the 2003 IT conference of the American School of Paris

(report written by Richard Kweskin)

A one hour talk on the Rule project given by Rule member Richard Kweskin took place in March 2003 at the American School of Paris. Those attending were computer/IT teachers from other such schools. A laptop running Redhat 8.0 and Open Office 1.0.1 was used and the presentation was projected to a screen. Afterwards, it was agreed that a roundtable discussion on GNU/Linux be led by Richard and another teacher on the final morning.

Nearly the same group attended this discussion with the addition of David Bucknell and some others. A proposal was made to form a user’s group and the corresponding list began on March 9th with everyone there. A few days later one of the teachers on the list asked for more details on Rule. Marco has asked that the response be looked at on the Rule list with the view of further developing the online installer’s guide.

The event was a three day conference which is done once each year at different member schools. This time there was an emphasis on free software, open source, and gnu/linux. David Bucknell was invited to be a main speaker and he explained his own Iteachnet and how useful he has found this software to be for schools. There were several people at the conference who had already begun using some, but almost no one knew the flexibility of the system could lead to a Rule approach. Indeed, most are not even aware that there is such a need.