OpenSource

OS Software & Content

This New Business of Learning

by

The New Brunswick learning industry is getting together in a couple of weeks to discuss several business opportunities. I won’t be there due to other commitments, but that’s what happens when you’re a free agent – you can’t be in two places at one time. I’m adding my comments before the meeting and I think that Godfrey Parkin’s recent post is a good place to start:

Corporate learning has to follow the Google’s “search & connect” model instead of the General Motors “produce and sell” model. Training purists sneer at “just-in-time” help systems, insisting that people need to know how to do things themselves. They undervalue collaborative learning networks, regarding them as somehow cheating. They fervently believe that adult learners must be led, child-like, through pre-determined learning paths mapped out and controlled by a central authority. They gauge the worth of an employee by his or her ability to survive on a corporate desert island, bereft of books, colleagues, mentors, databases, systems, or communication.

Jon Husband recently sent me a paper that synthesised some of the major forces of change in our digital lives. These include greater Internet access; the two-way web as the operating system; and the influence of open source business and development models. Taken together, they are giving individuals much more control and creating millions of separate markets. We’re all individuals and we all have access to the world’s information and can connect with pretty well anyone we want (think long tail). The basis of all business models has changed. The basis for the training business is changing too.

I have already talked about Google as the best learning platform around. No LMS can compete with it. Open source is also changing business models (witness Google again, or IBM or Novell), including service companies. A learning services firm has to stay ahead of the curve because even services can become rules-based and modular, making them ripe for competition from areas where wages are lower.

Lately, I heard that the current enterprise software development model is fundamentally flawed. I think that the same is true of many business principles that are taken for granted. That’s why everyone is looking for the next big thing. The key, in my opinion, is looking at the world with fresh eyes and listening with fresh ears. I wish good vision and hearing to my colleagues.

Open CD

by

If you want to learn more about using open source applications, but don’t know your way around places like SourceForge or don’t want to spend a lot of time doing research, then checkout the OpenCD project. You can download the whole CD or individual programs including standards like Firefox and OpenOffice as well as others that I plan on testing such as GIMP. According to the website:

The OpenCD project aims to introduce users of MS-Windows to the benefits of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). We include only the highest quality programs, which have been carefully tested for stability and which we consider appropriate for a broad audience. We provide a description and screen-shots of each program, so you can get an idea of what it does before installing. All these applications install and un-install cleanly, so you can be comfortable testing them with the knowledge that they will not adversely affect your system. The programs on the disc are all distributed under an Open Source License (OSI approved), which allows you to freely use and distribute them. You may even change the programs using the source code, which we make available, and distribute your own modified versions, provided you then in turn make the source code available, and give appropriate credit to past contributors.

This is an excellent place to start and you can find out why OpenOffice is making such inroads from a recent post by Stephen Walli.

[I’m currently working on a project in Montreal so posting is light this week.]

Real Time Collaboration Tools (cheap)

by

As broadband becomes ubiquitous, synchronous (real time) web applications for learning and business are getting easier to implement. However, many of these systems are still quite expensive. Luigi Canali de Rossi (Robin Good) has an excellent video presentation that covers low-cost web collaboration tools such as voice over IP, web conferencing, screen sharing, document sharing, etc. This is worth 37 minutes of your time, especially if you intend to spend money in this area.

Creative Commons Media

by

Do you believe that private property extends to digital media? Did you know that much copyrighted popular media was appropriated from past works that are now in the public domain. Isaac Newton said that , "If I have seen further [then other men] then it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". We owe much to our common past and shouldn’t forget that we are currently creating the past from which our children will have to be creative.

I remember a conversation about copyright I had in Tunisia a couple of years ago. An IT manager was discussing software licenses and how he was not bothered by using non-licensed software from major North American vendors. He could not understand how these companies could claim software intellectual property rights when the concept of zero, necessary for computing, came from the Arab world and no North American company had ever paid for this IP. So why start charging now?

The open source movement is about making source code freely available, while the Creative Commons (CC) is an organisation that allows individual creators to share their work but still retain certain rights. CC makes it easy to understand copyright and to use licenses that have been vetted by legal counsel in many countries.

So if you don’t have time to read the book then check out these videos that explain the CC concepts much better that I can.

Blogs & Wikis for Learning

by

There was a fair amount of interest in our presentation at the CSTD Symposium on Mancomm’s use of wikis with healthcare professionals. The MASIE Center has recently published this commentary on the impact of blogs and wikis on learning;

  • Instructor Blogs to offer a more dynamic and personal perspective on the teacher’s expertise and view of the context.
  • Wiki Handouts that are launched by the instructor or instructional designer and then evolved by the various learners in the classroom or on-line programs.
  • RSS Feeds from Blogs and Wikis that are linked to Compliance subjects. As the content changes, the learner receives a RSS feed linking them back to the Blog to receive an update and even take a Compliance Re-Check.
  • Context Rich Wikis which are used as ways of making the role of SubjectMatter Experts easier and more time efficient.

These examples are for more traditional training models, where you have an instructor and students. In our case (mental health community of practice) the wiki was used for a diverse group of physically separated professionals to post and share common practices that were not available in any published manuals or procedures. So far this group, many of whom had no computer experience, has created +600 wiki pages.

As for blogs, there are many applications for informal learning, such as this post which is a follow-up to our face-to-face presentation in Fredericton on Monday. For instance, blogs can be used to post presentation material so that learners can determine if the material is suitable for their needs and can act as a medium for questions in advance so that the facilitator can customize the scheduled F2F meeting to meet learner needs. I encourage anyone to use this blog as a follow-up to what was presented and let’s see where the conversation and learning goes.

Linking to subject matter experts (SME) is made easier with blogs and wikis, as one Canadian military officer told me at the conference that they are trying to connect the best SME with their soldiers in training. This could mean a synchronous web session between soldiers in New Brunswick and the expert currently serving in Sudan or Afghanistan. Blogs and wikis can be the glue that holds the learning conversation together between time zones.

CEOS Halifax

by

I just came back from the Conference on Engaging Open Source in Halifax. Good to see some fellow bloggers, like Steve and Iain, but probably the most informative session was from Robert Charpentier of Defence R&D in Valcartier QC. Robert and his colleagues have recently released a report entitled Free and Open Source Software Overview and Preliminary Guidelines for the Government of Canada. This is a must-read report if you work in or with the federal government. Robert told me that Ontario and Quebec are moving in the same direction as the federal government; to include FOSS in all procurement considerations. This is a big deal and I encourage the open source communities to examine the report and ensure a seat at the procurement tables. There will be many opportunities for the training & education sector here as well, if you understand the requirements and know the subject area (hint).

The best piece of information during this conference came from Robert. He said that the OS collaborative development process is very effective, and their analysis of 287 technical reports showed that bug fixes for proprietary software take an average of 10 days while bug fixes for open source software take an average of only one day. The OS community is much more effective and efficient than any proprietary counterpart.

There were a lot more data in all of the presentations but my clear understanding after the day is that open source is not a fringe movement when it is accepted by Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell, the Government of Canada and the EU. If these behemoths get it, then I really don’t see any more of a need to make the case for open source. The OS cluetrain has left the station.

UK Tries to Keep Learning Open

by

From Silicon.com we get news of this pending report from the British education sector:

The UK government’s ICT agency, the British Educational Communications and Technology Association (BECTA), is poised to publish a study that found primary schools could halve computer costs if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from companies such as Microsoft, according to the Times Educational Supplement.

I noted this report a few days ago and bookmarked BECTA, anxiously awaiting its release. If you read the Silicon.com article a bit more you see that the counterattack has begun:

Stephen Uden, group manager of education relations for Microsoft, wrote: "Competition in the software market is good for customers because it ensures that they get a good deal as it drives choice and innovation.

"There are some 5,000 third party applications available to run on Microsoft Windows operating system but only a handful of applications supported by the open source community. We offer free support and training materials to help teachers and students make the most of their technology."

Of course MS does not discuss the cost of upgrading your applications, the operating system or the database – all at the whim of the proprietary software vendor. The fact is that open source software for all learning applications is cheaper. I say all, because these applications are not mission critical, so even if the open source application only does 80% of what the costly software does, then it’s still good enough. However, in many cases the open source version is even better than its proprietary counterpart. Take for instance OpenOffice, which can save a slide presentation as a PDF or even a Flash file (with no extra software), making it a great tool for school projects. You can install as many versions of OOo as you want on all of your school computers and students’ home computers for free. Beat that.

Update: The report, "Open Source Software in Schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs" is now available as a PDF. The conclusions are favourable towards open source, but not overly enthusiastic.

Ladies & Gentlemen, the Advertisers have left the room

by

Last year I thought that the new medium (AKA Web 2.0) was in the processs of making marketing and advertising obsolete, stating that, Amazon is proving that marketing ain’t what it used to be, and the new Medium has obsolesced the darlings of the broadcast model – marketing & advertising. I also saw indications of open source marketing. Perhaps I was a bit off about marketing (for now), but this recent event, sponsored by Absolut is a good indicator of the obsolescence of advertising:

The only thing missing was the one element that has been present for the launch of a major spirits brands since marketing was invented. Last week, Absolut made marketing history when it launched without a cent being spent on traditional advertising.

The drink company opted instead to lease its own bar, brand it and stage a major photography exhibition there.

Absolut’s strategy flies in the face of marketing convention; an average of $3 million is spent on advertising to launch a brand.

Hang on to your hats [and business models] folks, because there is a lot more of this in store.

 

Higher Ed Social Software Project

by

Brian Lamb at UBC has just received some funding for the development of weblogs for higher education. The project includes UVic and BCIT as partners, and Brian states;

What did we propose to do? Nothing less than creating and sharing a framework for social software applications for BC’s higher education institutions. In less grandiose terms, we have proposed to create a set of policy recommendations, tutorials, templates, and multimedia resources that can be reused by a school that wants to support weblogging and wiki use (and possibly other social software tools) for its own community. We also hope to foster a community-centered model for sharing expertise amongst practitioners attempting to develop their own projects.
We intend the project to be platform-agnostic: we will definitely be using Movable Type and Drupal, but do our best to ensure that resources we create are not tied in with any one system.

This is very refreshing to see such an initiative that includes the use of open source software, connects various systems and does not tie these academic institutions into a long-term relationship with a given technology vendor. The group now has the choice of private sector partners, without being handcuffed to any particular system. It’s about time, and it’s wonderful to see this happening in Canada :-)

Open Source: More than a Commodity

by

I’ve been a bystander following the GRICS controversy in Québec and learning as I go. The latest installment is an open letter written to Le Devior newspaper by Louis Desjardins, past-president of the Board of a secondary school on Montréal’s south shore. Michel Dumais has reprinted the entire letter, and there is much of interest.

For instance, I now discover that GRICS may be a non-profit but it is governed by all the school districts in la Belle Province – what some might call a monopoly. GRICS is also committed to the Microsoft platform for all of its application development, forcing schools to upgrade to newer and costlier MS systems instead of opting for cheaper, open standard systems like Linux. As Desjardins puts it, GRICS has created its own cage of MS products from which it cannot escape. The main thrust of Desjardins’ letter is in addressing GRICS’ recent press release stating that GRICS would use open source applications when deemed suitable.

La première erreur que comment la GRICS est de considérer les logiciels libres comme un simple produit. C’est inexact. Aucun logiciel propriétaire ne peut etre redistribué, modifié, étudié, évolonté, amélioré ou partagé. Les logiciels libres n’encourent aucuns frais de licence. Ils sont bien plus que tout simplement économiques : quoi de plus simple que d’utiliser un logiciel libre dans toute une classe, toute une école, toute une commission scolaire, en toute égalité? Sans avoir faire approuver un budget au préalable et identifier le petit nombre de postes sur lesquels on l’installera. On peut installer les logiciels libres partout, sans mot de passe ni numéro de série, sans contrainte lire la peur de la copie, à la perte de revenus de licences, au piratage.

Une autre erreur est d’envisager qu’on puisse se servir des logiciels libres comme d’un simple objet de consommation. Il n’y a pas de consommateur ici. Il y a des partenaires, des membres d’une communauté, des utilisateurs et des développeurs. Concrètement, cela veut dire qu’à partir du moment ou la GRICS croit que les logiciels libres ont une place dans les écoles, elle doit aussi assumer sa responsabilité à  l’égard de la communauté du libre et l’aider à  progresser. Cela s’appelle partager et c’est une valeur qui est au coeur de l’approche libre. Il se trouve que le partage est aussi une valeur chère au monde de l’éducation, comme il a si bien exprimé M. Jacques Daigneault, président de l’Association des utilisateurs de l’ordinateur au primaire-secondaire (AQUOPS) dans sa récente et remarquable lettre ouverte, toujours disponible sur le site web de l’organisme : www.aquops.qc.ca. my translation:

The first error that GRICS makes is in considering open source as a simple product. This is not correct. No proprietary software can be redistributed, modified, studied at your leisure, improved nor shared. There are no licensing costs with open source software. Open source software is more than just cheap: what is simpler than using open source software in a class, an entire school, or a school district, which is completely legal? Without having to go through any budgeting processes, and identifying each machine, we can just go ahead and install it. We can install open source software everywhere, without passwords and serial numbers, without fear of copying, loss of license revenue or of pirating.The other error is to view open source as a simple consumable product. There is no consumer here. There are partners, members of the community, users and developers. Concretely, from the moment that GRICS believes that open source has a place in schools, it must take reponsibility within the open source community and help it to progress. This is called sharing, and it is the value at the heart of the open source movement. We find that sharing is a value dear to the world of education as was well-explained by Mr Jacques Daigneault, president of the Association of Computer Users for Primary and Secondary School, available [in French] on www.aquops.qc.ca.

I watch these happenings in Quebec and wonder about the situation in other provinces, including New Brunswick. As Desjardins says, open source is a value system, not just cheaper products. Learning and education are about sharing. Unfortunately, I see our own province continuing to pay significant licensing fees for proprietary software, even though there are open source alternatives. Embracing open source creates a commons for sharing and innovation. I have already suggested this to our government, but to no avail :-(