User:Jasujt

Hi, I am James Tremblay aka SLEducator,

Several years ago, I met a teacher who engaged my imagination as any great teacher does, He found my personal interest and exploited it. I was desperate to build a great network and have it cost as little as possible and he was of the same mindset. I learned from him of several “open source” tools that could do just that , he introduced me to k-12 ltsp, openoffice and Moodle. After that, I went on a quest to find as much information as I could about “free and open software” and it's effects on both budgets and a great curriculum. A few years ago that quest lead me to question Novell about supporting open source in academia and they blessed me by allowing me to establish the http://en.opensuse.org/Education project. With that my friends and I have collected over 100 titles specifically geared towards classroom teaching and education management.

I have been a Novell CNE since 1994 and I have been installing networks in schools since 1996. I was hired by an IBM reseller to install a product called “SchoolVista”, then in 1998, I was offered a position as network manager at a fairly large Boston area school district. Five years latter, I was offered the Director of Technology position near my home in Newmarket, NH. It's funny how a man who said at graduation “ I never want to step inside a High School again” would spend most of his adult life working and “teaching” in one.

My hope is that I can “make a difference” in the way schools manage and pay to manage student information as well as how they assess their own progress. Working with openSUSE I think that I might just be able to do that.

The Community here at openSuSE has delivered a wonderful set of tools for education highlighted by the "Linux is for Education" distribution and repository. I invite all educators and parents interested in computer based eduction to take a look at this wonderful offering.