On Tuesday 16th September, an orientation to Ubuntu was done with about 60 Fourth and Fifth Form Students of Central Corentyne Secondary School.

This is the first time that we took Ubuntu into a secondary school environment for students to play around with it.

Lenandlar Singh had said let us do something out of town, and he contacted Sebastian Lilly, IT Teacher at Central Corentyne Secondary School who said yes immediately. The school is in a beautiful setting - the beach and the sea are behind it.

The lab was donated by Metro and they have some Dells there. When I arrived with the high RAM demanding Ubuntu 8, I realised we would need computers. Turns out that Michael is an Ubuntu user on his IBM Thinkpad. Sebastian brought his CPU from home. Another teacher brought hers as well while another teacher lent a laptop.
The lab technician Martin, had a laptop whose display was connected to a monitor. We loaded up the live CDs. The fourth and fifth formers came in batches, and we briefly discussed what open source software was, piracy (like copying music and movies), and then they went to play around on the desktop, and used Open Office and one or two of them opened the games and the spreadsheet. Michael used his cell phone to connect to the Ubuntu (no other software needed) and he got Internet, so there was some browsing. Normally, they do not get to see the internet there due to unavailability of additional phone lines.

The salt air from the sea helped to cool the place down. Thanks to Sebastian and his colleagues for setting things up. The sessions were short enough to have the students not wanting to leave.
Michael Daybydeen has uploaded some pictures here
Submitted by Vidyaratha Kissoon