rikgoldman

Revision 34 as of 2010-12-29 16:09:27

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Web site

http://9while9.com

IRC

ghoulmann on irc.freenode.net

On TurnKey Linux

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/users/rikgoldman

Brief Vita

I'm currently a teacher of Literature and advanced technology at a nonpublic independent school. Before teaching high school, I taught literature and composition to undergraduate students at a college and a university.

My professional experience in information technology started in 1994 as I took on webmaster responsibilities for a nonprofit organization. Soon after, I began designing and deploying databases, first for nonprofit media outlets, then for my department in graduate school through 1997.

In 1997 I took on webmaster responsibilities for the college of arts and sciences at my university, and I ultimately became system administrator for our Center for Literary Computing, where I administered Solaris and Irix machines. I was very proud to have integrated Macs, Windows PCs, and the two servers using smb.

I subsequently designed and maintained the department website at the college where I taught, until taking a position as Instructional Technologist for the college. While working in this capacity, I became increasingly frustrated with closed source solutions and with the vendor lock that resulted from it.

I began experimenting with Linux distributions in 1996. In 2005, I began relying solely on Ubuntu on my spare boxes. After I began teaching advanced technology, my students built a new machine for me; at this point I began using Ubuntu on my main computer. I subsequently moved all my home machines to Ubuntu.

Technology Instruction

In my role as an information systems management instructor, I've worked together with teams of high school students to contribute to the FOSS community. We worked together to build virtual appliances based on Ubuntu in general, and specifically on TurnKey Linux distributions.

In November 2010 we placed bronze in TurnKey Linux's international development contest, which recognized our contributions to TKL, and gave us an opportunity to celebrate that three of our appliances had been adopted by TKL and would be incorporated into their appliance library. As we've been reminded by developers, our contributions are not only to TurnKey Linux, but to the individual projects as well. After UDS 2010, we committed ourselves to the SchoolServer in a Box project discussed at UDS. Together, we've worked to create TKLPatches for as many of the appliances as possible on the blueprint. Although my work is predominantly with high school students, I also mentored a colleague, Sabre Goldman, as she worked to create an appliance for the Sahana Foundation's Agasti project.

Together with a team of students, I'm working on contributing to the Sahana Foundation's Eden project; we're working toward livecd/installers that will install a TurnKey Linux Ubuntu Lucid distribution with Eden preconfigured, as defined on their blueprint.

As a result of the success the students have had with advanced technology, my computer lab, which has 6 machines, was shifted to run entirely open-source software. Each computer runs Lucid from a custom distribution students made with remasterys; in addition, students administer 4 Lucid virtual machines, a Debian VM, a Linux Mint vm, and a Fedora VM.

Appliance Contributions

  • Ampache: A free and open-source web-based streaming media and media management solution.

  • Elgg: A free and open-source web-based social networking technology.

  • LimeSurvey: A web-based, free and open-source survey construction and deployment application.

  • IEP-IPP: A free and open-source individual education plan solution.

  • Mahara: A free and open-source e-portfolio, resume manager, and social networking tool.

  • OpenSIS (community edition): A free and open-source student information system.

  • Sahana Agasti: A free and open-source disaster management and recovery solution.

  • Sahana Eden: A free and open-source crisis/disaster, environment, and resource management web-based application (in progress).

Documentation

In addition to documenting appliances on our projects' home at http://9while9.com, I've tried to contribute documentation to the FOSS community at every opportunity. I've contributed documentation for Ampache, TurnKey Linux's TKLPatch, and for the Sahana Eden development environment I've completed (usage notes and build notes).

Near and Long Term

In the near term I look forward to working with a mentor and my students to package Sahana's Agasti for Ubuntu and Debian. Longer term, I anticipate working with the same mentor to package web2py and then Sahana Eden. Ultimately, I'd like to contribute in the role of MOTU, where I think my skillset can be of the most powerful service. In the meantime, I'm learning PHP and MySQL so I can commit skills to the Ampache project. I'd also like to contribute to Sahana Eden using the Python skills I'm developing through coursework.

Community

  • Chelsea School Uses Ubuntu to Create VMampache: Blog post on contributions to Ampache and Ubuntu by MOTU Charlie Smotherman.

  • GNU High School: Blog post on contributions to TurnKey Linux and teaching the open-source community, by Liraz Siri, TurnKey Linux co-founder.

  • Meet Rik Goldman:Interview about contributing to TurnKey Linux with a team of students, by Liraz Siri, TurnKey Linux co-founder.

  • Ampache as Instructional Technology: Our work is mentioned in an interview with Ampache lead developer Karl Vollmer here and on Wikipedia here.

  • MANSEF: Provoking dialog about the role of FOSS in education in Stepping Stones - a publication of Maryland Association of Nonpublic Special Education Facilities. Appears on page 10 of the May 2010 issue; on page 6 of the November, 2010 issue.

Recommendations

Carsten Schmitz - lead from the LimeSurvey project writes:

Rick Goldman has been pushing the LimeSurvey community by packaging LimeSurvey for numerous VM platforms. Also he is actively opting for an Ubuntu blueprint for educational purposes which includes LimeSurvey. We would be really happy if Rick could further promote the use of LimeSurvey by creating a native Ubuntu package for it - something that's been on the waiting list of many Ubuntu users for a long time! I am looking forward to work with Rick to achieve this goal and I want to thank for his continuous support of the huge LimeSurvey community. Thanks, Rick! - 28/12/2010

Charlie Smotherman - Ubuntu MOTU Developer, Debian Contributor writes:

When I met Rik in Ampache's IRC channel and learned about what his special needs students had done in creating VMAmpache, and how they use it in their course work I was so impressed it motivated me to blog about it on Planet Ubuntu. From what Rik shared with me this simple little blog post gave VMAmpache some needed exposure, not to mention it gave his student a sense of pride that someone in the Ubuntu development community was actually interested in what they had created. This of course motivated them to learn more about Ubuntu and FOSS in general. It is my understanding that most of his students are now using Ubuntu as their primary OS at home and at school.

In my humble opinion we need more teachers like Rik, he has shown his students how creative you can be with FOSS software, along with the benefits of being part of a larger community of like minded people.

Rik has approached me recently and ask if I would mentor him and his students on the finer details of packaging applications for Ubuntu and Debian namely Sahana Eden, Sahana Agasti, and Web2py, to be included into the Ubuntu/Debian archives proper. I am a retired Intensive Care Registered Nurse, in which teaching was a large part of my former job so of course I said yes.

In my humble opinion as a Ubuntu MOTU developer Rik is very motivated. He has been very active in the Ampache, Turnkey, Edubuntu communities and has aspiration of becoming a MOTU developer. For these reasons I believe Rik should be granted Ubuntu Membership. Hopefully with a little help Rik will be able to educate and motivate his students to be knowledgeable Ubuntu/Debian developers one day.