Back to Alma mater with FOSS!!

Recently on 30th June 2010, I got an opportunity to give back something to my school, my  Alma mater !! Below is a small story how things started and went....

I had this thing in my mind for quite some time, schools are the places where we are taught basic morals, etiquette, sharing things, knowledge and other good things but unfortunately most of the Schools in India teach Proprietary software like MS Windows, Office and other Adobe stuff like Flash etc. so was the case with my school, DAV CPS[1], Paschim Enclave, New Delhi. So I talked to Anand Wardhan sir, one of the best teachers, I have met in my life!! Although, he is an Economics teacher but still he understood my point when I told him about FOSS Stuff and he immediately agreed for a workshop in School. So it was 30th June, the day I was eagerly waiting for but was a bit nervous too because it was for teachers!! OMG, now I had to present something to teachers to who taught me some years back but I knew it will be good!! So it was 11:45, and I started, first telling about FOSS history and then its advantages, then SchoolOS[2] but since I had just 1hr or so, I had to quickly jump to the Demo Educational FOSS....I started with Maths S/w like Kig then showed Chemistry tools and I tried to show almost every subject related FOSS but as always I fell short of time and had to wind up my presentation showing FET and Dia Diagram Editor, but as a start, it was enough, the teachers were all smiling, blessing me!! It was a wonderful experience.... many teacher in particular my chem teacher asked me to install BKChem and other chem S/w asap because she found them really helpful! Overall it was awesome but this is not it, I want things to get implemented asap, want students and teachers to use FOSS!! Looking forward to it...All I wanna tell everyone reading this, seriously its a beautiful experience doing something for your school, your people!! Try it this summer go back to your previous schools and tell them about Freedom that you get when you use FOSS, so that the next gen coming can live in a pure Free World! In the end, I would like to thank Anand Wardhan Sir, Manju Malik Ma'm(Principal) and above all the Almighty, for the opportunity and all my teachers for their patience and support..

[1] My School's Website - http://davschoolpemn.org
[2] SchoolOS - http://schoolos.org

You can also view/download my presentation from: http://www.slideshare.net/parinsharma/fos-sintro-presdav