In class, fighting the proprietorial tide

GNU/Linux in education? If you thought you had heard enough on that front, here's some more. And rightly so. This is indeed an important field that needs to be worked on. Reports from Mongolia, Nepal and Pakistant throw up some interesting links.

Kamal Raj Subedi of Nepal spoke about the Project Ganesha from the Himalayan kingdom, now known as the Digital Bridges project. These links take you to what's written on the web about this project. But more direct (and official) links could be got here and here.

Davaa Tuul, a Mongolian lady who is executive director of the Japan Mongolian Information Technology Association, spoke about the Sakura Project. This project describes itself as bridging the digital divide between rural areas and the capital city of this landlocked Central Asian country sandwitched between Russia and china.

Wikipedia says: "...the 18th largest country in the world by area, Mongolia has very little arable land ...much of its area is grassland, with mountains in the north and west and the Gobi Desert in the south. Little over 30 percent of the population are nomadic or semi-nomadic Tibetan Buddhists of the Mongol ethnicity. Over fifty per cent of the population reside in capital city Ulaanbaatar."

Meanwhile, Dr M Anwar-ur-Rehman Pasha of Pakistan spoke about the Free/Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan. It recently held its first National Free and Open Source Software Awareness Campaign.