Judy Wilson Linuxbz Corozal Town Belize
This is the home page for the Linuxbz team working on SFD. In conjuntion with SFD, we are having an open house at the new CCC (Corozal Community College) Xavier/Fletcher Computer Labs at CCC. Linuxbz is our business name and linux.bz the site where we promote open source. This is our flier for SFD06.
My husband, Jan Wilson, has been learning, using and promoting open source since 1997. He was the lab administrator at Corozal Community College and Corozal Junior College for nine years, and retired in 2004. We hosted the first country wide open source workshop in 1997. With the help of the OAS (Organization of American States) and BTL (Belize Telecommunication Limited), all expenses were paid for the all the computer teachers in Belize to come to Corozal Community College to be introduced to Linux. Brian Candler, a British VSO, lead the workshop.
Since that time, Jan has been leading introductory and advanced workshops on Linux in the country of Belize. Previously the high school and junior college lab was one and the same, and Linux and LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) has been used in that lab since 2000. The administator, Jose Mai, was very supportive of the open source project.
There is a new building with two new labs for the high school, inaugrated in February, 2006. Kareem Young has been a protege of ours since he was a student in high school, and is presently the leader of Information Technology Services at the Corozal Community/Junior Colleges. He is committed to carrying on the open source legacy, with the support of his principal, Endevora Jorgenson. The labs are using Ubuntu on the servers and on the desktops with some packages from Edubuntu.
In April of 2006, in a project where Kareem Young spearheaded the Belize efforts, Linux.bz helped sponsor and participated in the First Free Software Congress in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico (1er Congreso de Software Libre). The next month, the school sponsored a trip for Kareem Young and Nydia Correa (the junior college lab administrator) for the 6th Annual Debian Conference in Oaxtepec, Mexico. Jan and Judy Wilson also participated. When Mark Shuttleworth was available to have breakfast with the Belize team on the last day we were there, it was the highlight of the trip! He seemed to appreciate our efforts in Belize, and when we arrived home and found out about Software Freedom Day, we decided it was a great way to support the movement.
