March 25, 2015

As this day comes to a close, I have been pretty satisfied with today's results. So far I've gain multiple affiliate programs for my site allthingscomputers.info, and soon will begin selling product from my online store. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with all this workload but it's been an interesting day so far. I am planning on teaching Computer Literacy at the local community outreach center over here in the small town of Cheney, WA. The only hold back is coming up with the curriculum and building a computer lab from scratch. With barely any resources myself I find myself in an interesting predicament. So I plan on going the free and cheap route with basing my design for the lab with just Raspberry Pi's. On the curriculum side of things I believe that I have to take the approach of adapting as I go along. Teaching people Computer Literacy using these Raspberry Pi's may prove to be quite the challenge considering I have yet to test out the OS' (Operating System's) that are supported by the hardware. The Raspberry Pi 2 is what I'm really looking forward to playing around with considering it's considerably more powerful than it's predecessor. I also have to plan on giving a presentation of said hardware at Linuxfest in Spokane this year. So getting into contact with the Applied Computers Club at Spokane Falls Community College will prove to be detrimental to my efforts. I think this would make quite the interesting project and presentation to give at Linuxfest showing the benefits of using Linux and Open-Source Software to educate the least funded educational resource. TO make one's community better I believe that it takes one spark to get a wave to begin. By this I mean, I have to become the individual who starts the movement in the education sector over here in the Eastern Washington area to switch from Windows-based Software to Linux-based Software. This shouldn't be to hard of a task but the only problem is that people are usually fear the unknown which can cause a lot of unwanted ripples in the sector over here and possibly the attention of Microsoft themselves. I could care less though it's time for the education sector to become familiar with how Linux can benefit them better than paying for Microsoft Software when there is a free option making the cost of IT go significantly down. This can cause more room to budget for things like better hardware, better classrooms, and more computers and computer-related courses. Though I'm not to familiar with the market I'm playing with, I believe that I can eventually get to the level in which I can begin creating custom OSs for each school to benefit them greatly. The best part being that they only have to pay me for my labor considering most of the software packages I'll be using will be free. Allowing them to have the option for a better quality free piece of software would be most beneficial not only to myself but to the education sector here in Washington and hopefully this will begin a spark across the nation to make the switch needed to make Linux a main competing operating system. I figured out the cost for the lab of course, considering each Raspberry Pi is roughly $25 if I were to purchase 20 of them it would cost me $500 to build the lab. I believe I would start small with only 5 Raspberry Pi's to begin teaching the class and expose them to wider range of tools and accessories that people will need to succeed in today's world. The goal should be that they shouldn't have to pay any money for software that does basic tasks such as: 1) Word Processing 2) Media Playback Software 3) Programming Tools 4) Internet Software I would like to see how far I can get with this idea that I have and hopefully gain some traction as the world needs to start evolving it's standards to the Linux Operating System. After all it's not like the service I'm using now wasn't built with a Linux backbone behind it right? Till next time we meet, Aaron Jones