Attracting the Young, Tech-Savvy Generation
A recent Linux Journal article point to Apple’s selling of heavily discounted Macs to schools and asks what Linux is doing to attract the young, and more tech-savvy, generation. It is very important that Linux does target this group, because they are the generation of the future and the generation others are increasingly turning to for solutions to their technology problems. So what can we do to target this group?
I propose a competition, sponsored by individual donations and contributions from as many Linux distributions as possible. This competition could also be done in connection with college software development classes.
In order to compete in the competition, developers would have to create an open-source application for Linux that targets any segment of education - particularly high school and college students. This would spur true innovation and, hopefully, turn out some incredible Linux applications for students.
For example, what about an application that provides a collaborative platform for note-talking and group projects? Additionally, with a good plug-in system, the functionality could be expanded practically forever. Or how about a better system for handwriting recognition? How about a system for communication among students, and between students and professors? How about a specialized Linux distro for elementary schools (yeah, yeah, I know that some already exist)? The possibilities really are virtually infinite.
Especially if this competition was run together with colleges and universities, in addition to whatever prize was already being offered, winning applications could be pre-installed on top of a Linux distro on laptops, and the participating colleges would recommend these laptops to students.
This competition would give universities a chance to get their names on some really cool applications, give students a chance to show their coding and design skills to the world, promote Linux and open source software, and create a wave of new college students using Linux laptops pre-installed with cool applications. In other words, everyone wins.
We have already seen that this sort of model works with Firefox’s Extend Firefox competion and Google’s Adroid Developer Challenge. Now all we need to do is apply this model to Linux applications designed for students.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Actually, Mono is already doing a great job of attracting students (see Gnome DO project). Universities teach C# as it’s the hot language, Mono allows that to be used on Linux, take uni education + free time = student contributions…
August 31st, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Getting schools to switch to GNU/Linux is the single most important way to break the M$opoly. Not many people realize how vital this area is. These people could be the future kernel hackers, or the future M$ Executives, depending on how we treat them early on.
What we want is to turn the tables. We want to make it so that Windows is suddenly considered to be the “alternative operating system”. The only way we can do this is to take control of the education market.
An overarcing organization should be formed to manage activities similar to this to get GNU/Linux installed in schools. If only someone who recognized the importance of GNU/Linux in schools had the guts to start such an organization…
September 1st, 2008 at 4:45 am
Android developer challenge is without a shadow of doubt that this idea can really work!
There are students that could be great programmers if they were encouraged to use Linux, and as you said “everyone wins”.