Why schools need to adopt open source software – Now

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David Thornburg provides a very good explanation on how proprietary software is crippling our ability to use information and communications technologies effectively for education. My own experience with the DRM not letting me play a legally rented movie shows the absurdity of our present commercial situation. It’s why I’ve switched from Microsoft and Dell crippleware to the open source VLC Player.

Thornburg shows how proprietary software vendors are treating all of their customers like criminals and making, “NO, you cannot do what you want to do, even if it is legal”, as the default use mode:

How much of our energy is spent overcoming obstacles instead of enjoying or building creative works? There is little doubt that vendors of “protected” software must hate their customers. They want to look at our computers remotely, make surprise visits for license checks, and otherwise treat us as people who should be marched away in shackles. And, tragically, we buy into this nonsense by spending money with the very people who treat us like dirt.

Enter Linux and OSS. Imagine a software world where the answer is YES, not NO. Yes, you CAN give a copy of your presentation software to a child who wants to finish a project at home. Yes, you CAN play DVD’s from any region in the world on your computer. Yes, you CAN tweak a program to add a new feature, or even fix a bug yourself. Yes, you CAN use an operating system that takes less than a class period to boot up. Yes, you CAN have all your software updated automatically for free. Yes, you CAN make older computers behave like energetic teens by eliminating the software bloat associated with Windows. Yes, you CAN save enough money to bring even more technology into the hands of children. Yes, you CAN be part of a global community of educators who see technology as a tool of empowerment for ALL children, rich or poor.

Check out the many options at Make the Move or Software for Starving Students. I just installed Linux Ubuntu on one of our computers and it worked like a charm. There is a bit of a learning curve on the different model that Linux uses, such as the Package Manager, but if you have a teenager in the house it shouldn’t take long to figure it out ;-)

It’s the system, stupid

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Research has shown that if a good person is put in an unethical environment, the environment will dominate over the individual.

This quote, from Peter Dean, sums up the need for system change to make lasting change – addressing causes not just symptoms.

Gary Stager, in The Pulse, discusses the well-known Milgram Experiments, conducted in the 1960’s to see how far people would go in administering electric shocks to learners. These experiments were recently replicated by ABC News and Stager picks up the direct link to public education [please read the whole article]:

One of the subjects in the television program was a 7th grade teacher who explained that she didn’t stop shocking the learner because as a teacher she had learned when a student’s complaints were phony. I thought to myself, “Has she electrocuted many students?”

The teacher asked the researcher, “There isn’t going to be any lawsuit from this medical facility, right?” When told that the teacher was not liable, she replied, “That’s what I needed to know.” It is however worth noting that this was after she induced the maximum shock and the learner demanded that the experiment be terminated.

This is why we need to change the entire system – constraining curriculum; compulsory testing; useless homework; irrelevant subjects; classrooms cut off from the world; systemic bullying; etc. More or better teachers won’t help; we need to change the system.

Reading iWoz

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I’m currently reading Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz. Wozniak was the co-founder of Apple Computers and is an engineer by profession. It’s not my usual reading, but he will be at our local university in two weeks, as part of the Wilford Jonah Lecture Series.

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The other reviews of the book are quite mixed but what I’ve found interesting about his early years is the importance of positive reinforcement and the key roles of a few people at critical times. One or two teachers, as well as his father, provided the right amount of encouragement at the right time. Wozniak went on to become what many claim to be “the inventor” of the personal computer.

As Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

Update:

After reading the book, I find that it is a personal account of how Woz learned about computers, electronics and engineering. The book is partially about Apple Computers, but I would not call this a business book. Woz says he wrote the book to set the record straight on several statements that appear in the press or other published books. He also seems to have written this book as inspiration for young people who may wish to become inventors.

I found the book interesting, but not overly inspirational, but then I’m not a fan of autobiographies. I would recommend it for computer engineers, techies or high school students who may be looking at their options in life.

Informal Learning Workshop – Ottawa

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I’ll be conducting a day-long workshop on informal learning in Ottawa on 30 January 2007. The event is sponsored by CSTD and members get a discount. Please feel free to contact me about the workshop and add any questions or issues that you would like to discuss. I’ll be arriving in Ottawa the afternoon of the 29th if anyone wants to get together before the event, and I’ll probably be staying at the same hotel. Participants also get a copy of Jay’s book on Informal Learning (a great read).

Public Domain Day

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From CopyrightWatch.ca:

Take these examples: Billy Bishop’s Winged warfare : hunting the Huns in the air; Ernest Bilodeau’s Autour du lac Saint-Jean; C.A. Chant’s Our wonderful universe; the Earl of Bessborough’s A week on the Jupiter River, Anticosti Island; Maurice Lalonde’s Notes historiques sur Mont-Laurier, Nominingue et Kiamika; and Mina Benson Hubbard’s A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador are all in the public domain in Canada as of this morning.

Yet a March 15, 1939 letter from Billy Bishop to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King; the papers of Ernest Bilodeau; C.A. Chant’s astronomical notebooks; Lord Bessborough’s letters and documents pertaining to his tenure as Governor-General of Canada; Maurice Lalonde’s political correspondence; and Mina Benson Hubbard’s exploration diaries; will all be protected from unfettered use by Canadians for another 42 years.

Note that through most of our collective history, copyright has been the anomaly and the public domain has been the default.

Wildlife Photograph Archive

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I volunteer as Director of Education at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute (AWI), which is located just outside our town of Sackville:

The AWI is unique among wildlife rescue programs in Atlantic Canada in using rehabilitation to identify and highlight key environmental health issues for public attention and response.

Learning by doing is central to the mission. Wildlife rehabilitation work is a kind of ecological sampling. It helps identify environmental change. Habitat loss, toxicity, and wildlife-borne diseases can all be better understood if we document and study wildlife afflicted by these conditions.

During the past year I started an AWI photo gallery on Flickr as a shared resource of wildlife pictures. We use these photos in our educational programs. I have since created a group photo pool called Atlantic Wildlife Network. Our aim is to have an open database of wildlife pictures that can be used for educational activities. We hope to get pictures of North American animals at different stages of development and from various angles in their natural habitats. We’ll also continue to add pictures of the hundreds of animals that pass through AWI annually.

If you have pictures that you would be willing to share, then please check out the photo pool. Membership is open. I would suggest using a Creative Commons license, such as Public Domain, Attribution-ShareAlike, or Attribution-Non-Commercial. This would make it easy to share and use the pictures without having to check with each copyright holder. Note that Flickr allows you to mark individual photographs with separate licenses.

Please feel free to use those photographs already posted. Thanks & happy new year :-)

And there is now an AWI Photo Blog with more pictures.

Who is Time’s person of the year?

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I’m sure that everyone who hasn’t been in an eggnog-induced coma has heard that Time’s person of the year is – You; or those people who control the information revolution:

And we didn’t just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

Before we get too complacent with “our” status as person of the year, here’s the view from someone in the education field- infomancy:

When it comes to “me” as a professional, the place where I spend the majority of my waking hours is rather not “we.” Or, perhaps it is a bit too “we” – but the “we” that schools have created to mean “us in the corner twiddling our thumbs and pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist.” See, for me, Facebook is forbidden. Second Life is shut down. Amazon reviews are avoided. Podcasts are against policy. Blogs are…well…banned just might not be strong enough of a word. The word that springs to mind is demonized. So how, then, could Time possibly have meant “me” when they named “you” as the person of the year?

As I look at Time’s description, I notice that I may not qualify as person of the year either:

  1. Made a Facebook profile? – No
  2. Made a Second Life Avatar? – No
  3. Reviewed books at Amazon? – No
  4. Recorded a podcast? – Does recording a Skypecast count?
  5. Blogged about my candidate losing? – Nope
  6. Wrote a song about getting dumped? Never written a song and happily married.
  7. Camcordered a bombing run? No, I’ve learned to avoid military operations, especially as a civilian
  8. Built open source software? No, I just try to use the stuff.

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to find my 15 minutes of fame some other way. I assume this means that I can’t put a cool person-of-the-year badge on my site; dang!

Popular posts in 2006

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This year saw blogging enter the mainstream and I’ve noticed that I no longer have to explain it to most people. I changed platforms (from Drupal to WordPress), which has made comment spam management much easier. There is no doubt that e-mail spam is a major problem today and now comment & trackback spam have claimed their places of infamy (as much as 93%) on Web 2.0.

The good news is that blogs are frequently cited in the mass media. The bad news is that most teachers in our area don’t have a clue about blogs, the two-way web or how to incorporate these into their teaching. Plus ça change …

This blog has had a constant increase in readership this year [thank you] with several posts getting significant views and comments. I just checked the stats and these are the most popular posts on this site in the past year, as determined by number of viewers. They’re listed in chronological order.

  1. Teachers’ Roles in Learning & Problem-solving (Nov 2005)
  2. Learners as contributors – the end of the industrial model (Jan 2006)
  3. The relevance of the learning profession (Jun 2006)
  4. Informal learning and performance technology (Jul 2006)
  5. Blackboard patents the LMS, but does it matter? (Jul 2006)
  6. Blackboard Sues D2L over LMS Patent (Aug 2006)
  7. My PKM System (Aug 2006)
  8. Aliant Connection Speed – the saga continues (Sep 2006)
  9. Small schools, loosely joined (Sep 2006)
  10. SmartDraw 2007 (Oct 2006)

A pause for the Solstice

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Time to recharge my batteries, focus on our family and stop blogging for a while. Thanks to all the folks who came by here this year and especially those who left comments, as it’s the continuing conversations that keep me going. All the best for Christmas, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa or whatever you may be celebrating at this time of year.

Here’s a photo, by Rockcliffe View, of what I wished the Tantramar Marshes looked more like this year, but alas we have no snow (yet).

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Myths, Research & Sharing

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Once again, Will Thalheimer nails what is passed off as corporate research as actually the propagation of a myth (meme?), asking:

Is it plagiarism if you steal a lie?

The culprit in this case is Forrester Research. The previous culprit was NTL. Will is doing the field a great favour by holding us to high standards of research and citation.

My own experience is that a lot of corporate research is fluff that is sold for very high prices. Many researchers, like Will or Stephen, or practitioners like Jay, make their work available for free, in order to encourage peer collaboration. The free information and research is just as good, if not better, than the “research” that is sold as fancy white papers to large, unsuspecting organisations. I find that it’s worth your while to pay for research that is contextual to your particular circumstances or to hire a researcher to look specifically at your field or region. Generic research, sold in +$1,000, one-size-fits-all packages, is probably not worth it.
Caveat emptor