Student Views and Reviews: Sun on Campus

It is that time of the year again -- time to head back to school!  I've been seeing a lot of blogs talking about OSUM campus events recently, which shows that students are getting back into the swing of things.

Here are a few reports of successful, recent OSUM-lead on-campus events:

Prakhar Bansal, an OSUM Leader at IMS Engineering College, Ghaziabad, India recently blogged about a PHP workshop he organized for 31 students at his college.  Prakhar coordinated for two lecturers to both introduce the students to PHP, briefing them on basic terminology before teaching them how to create a Web page.  Prakhar noted that in addition to learning the basic commands of PHP including declaring variables, loops, and control statements, the students learned about the many benefits to be had by joining OSUM.

Pradeep Panigrahi, a student at the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, India blogged about the OSUM Introductory meeting he conducted at NIT at the end of August for freshman and second-year students.  Pradeep reported that the event was a success, with more students in attendance than expected.  Among the topics on the agenda were the benefits of FOSS, the OSUM community, and the NIT JSR OSUM group and their plans for upcoming technical seminars.  He noted that his next event is Software Freedom Day (September 19) so any students in the NIT area should make sure to sign up and attend!

Finally, Kevin Li, a Sun Campus Ambassador and OSUM Leader at the South China University of Technology blogged about an incredibly successful OSUM Freshmen Welcome event held on September 6.  Kevin reported that 300 freshmen came to the event, and more than 150 joined the SCUT OSUM group at the event-- amazing! The freshmen were able to watch demonstrations by OSUM SCUT member Feng Zihao, who showed his JavaFX and SunSPOT demo. Kevin also arranged for other OSUM members to talk about a future in IT and introduced the group to OSUM as well as the Sun SAI program.

I am glad to see that several OSUM groups are already holding events, and am sure even more are ramping up for Software Freedom Day on September 19.  Keep up the hard work!