Learning from FOSS expo for Govt Hr. Sec School students at Tamil Nadu Science City,Chennai

TamilNadu Science City, Chennai arranged for a expo to Goverment Hr. Sec School students to get know about Linux OS and educational software's.The event was started with Tamil thaai vazhthu and followed by Dr.P.IyamPerumal,Vice Chairmen,Science City,Chennai inagrated the  event and he explained the importance of the FOSS in education and followed by Mr.Shriramadass, NRCFOSS-Associate talked about FOSS and its important in education.

Around 60 students were attended the event from Chennai corporation and Govt. Hr. Sec. Schools. we have grouped the students and in each group 5 students with one laptop running on Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora Linux OS's per group with educational softwares pre-installed in it.

The following topics were covered during the demo sessions

• About free open source software
  


• Linux OS distributions - Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora
  


• Desktops - KDE and Gnome
  


• Tamil Typing - IOK onscreen, XKB-Tamil Unicode method
  


• Education software's


• Physics - Kstars, Stellarium
  


• Chemistry - Kalzium
  


• Maths - Dr.Geo


• English - Kanagaram, Khangman

The students actively learned as much as possible and asked more doubts. We explained well about all the software's with hands on demo. They observed well.

we have prepared hard copy of the documents related to educational software's were distributed to the teachers of the Govt Hr. Sec. Schools along with Ubuntu-9.04 DVD

Finally we asked few questions from the demo sessions and gave them Ubuntu pens who ever answered correctly and also we asked the students to give summary  talk about the session, a student named Selvi.Gulori from Velachery govt Hr. Sec School won the Kattatra menporul Book Translated by  Shriramadass.
Event was inaugurated by Prof Devadoss, Chairman, Tamilnadu
Astronomy Society and Dr Iemperumal, Vice Chairman, Science City.

The event was coordinated by

• Mr.ShriRamadass, NRCFOSS Associate and Ubuntu Tamil Team co-ordinator


• Mr.Bharathi Subramaniam, ILUG-C co-ordinator


• Mr. Thangamani Arun, Ubuntu Tamil Team Leader

Thanks To:
Dr Ananta Krishanan for granting permission.
Hema, Science City, for helping in organizing.
Sowmiya and Rajesh for providing 2 laptops.
Raman and Thyagu for the ideas and advices.