hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1907.txt

Episode: 1907
Title: HPR1907: Charlie Reisinger and Penn Manor
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1907/hpr1907.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 11:01:30

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This in HPR episode 197 entitled Charly Ridinger and Pen Manor and in part of the series,
Interviews.
It is posted by Klaatu and in about six minutes long, the summary is Klaatu Interviews Charly
Ridinger of Pen Manor School District.
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Hi everyone, this is Klaatu, I'm at the All Things Open conference with Charly I forget his
last name.
Risinger or Charly Risinger?
Okay, so you work at Pen Manor School District, I guess, is what that is.
You were talking in your lightning talk about a program that you're running for students.
Would you tell me a little bit something about that?
Sure, happy to.
So Pen Manor School District is the name of the district.
We are a public school district in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
You find us about an hour and a half west of Philadelphia.
We have a high school of approximately 1700 kids and middle school about 800 kids.
And over the past few years, we have been rolling out a one-to-one laptop program.
It means that every student receives a school purchase school issued laptop and unlike many
one-to-one programs around the country, around the world, instead of using proprietary software,
we are exclusively running Linux and Open Source.
Wow, okay.
And how are they taking to this?
The students, I mean?
Well, it's been fantastic, actually.
You know, there was a great deal of upfront fear, some hesitancy, some apprehension about
rolling out unlock devices because the norm in schools is typically, you know, command and control,
locking units down, restricting what students can do with those devices.
You know, with the support of our teachers' administration, we decided that if this is truly
about our kids, it's a learning initiative first, and the best way for us to achieve the
goal of enhancing education is to give them a full laptop computer with unrestricted access.
So, I'm wondering about the other side of the equation right now, like, how were the, I mean, I know,
okay, so the students were a little bit apprehensive.
What about the teachers, like, were they concerned that they might not know enough to help the students
and that sort of thing, or how did it go over with not the students, but the everyone else?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So, any part of any technology initiative requires any school technology initiative requires considerable professional development.
You're going to have that element no matter what device you choose in a school.
You know, you think about any new software project, hardware project, any new program, you need to train your people.
So, we invested rather heavily in providing training for our teachers.
They had multiple days of professional development, where we walked them through the laptop, the tools,
really tried to get them comfortable with navigating the interface, and also exposing,
and showing them, giving them a chance to play with the new capabilities they would have in the machines.
So, again, I think professional development is really key.
And I'm fortunate to work in a district that has really great staff, that are happy to roll with new initiatives,
in many ways they're fearless, in embracing new technology.
And I think, you know, because of that, that's really helped to make the program very successful.
Okay, so aside from the fact, I don't know, maybe you're just an open source nut,
and you just, you know, wanted to force this on everyone.
Why do you think this is important to, like, why do you think it's important to the students to learn this kind of stuff?
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
So, we, in many ways, like, many school districts, we start with open source and free software,
because free as in cost.
Right.
As a school district, you know, it's ridiculous what many districts are paying to Microsoft and Apple.
Right.
So, and we just didn't have the funds.
In fact, I would dare say, when we began talking about this at the school board level,
I was very clear to them that if you want to go down this route, as a district we wanted to go this route,
an open source by reducing the software costs, it could make the program happen for us.
So, not only just the free aspect, it really accelerated our ability to purchase more devices for students.
So, for us, the free cost piece really translates into educational reach.
We could reach far more students than if we had some type of proprietary technology and the cost associated with that.
But beyond that, you know, I think there's also the, truly the freedom of giving kids the option to explore their devices
without restriction.
And I think that's critical.
I think that goes hand in hand with learning, right?
And creating some of the environment we're in prompt to learning can occur when the kids take those devices home.
And they have time to play and experiment and look at a command line and get gritty with it.
What happens when they just break their computer, you know, like when they experiment too much and they can't get it to boot.
Yeah, they do.
Well, I think, yeah, and sometimes that does happen.
A story that I have as a kid came to me, or actually multiple times, students have come to us where they've just completely messed up the entire work.
Yeah, that's alright though.
Because, you know, we have an imaging system in a few minutes and three minutes we can re-image the machine.
They're back in business.
I want them to play and make mistakes because that's how you learn.
Yeah, yeah.
It's fantastic.
Thank you so much for the interview.
Thank you for your talk.
And where can people find out more about what you're doing?
Great.
But you can follow me on Twitter.
I'm Charlie, three, C-H-A-R-L-I-E, number three.
Or go to the PennManner technology blog that's technology.pennmanner.net.
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