The adoption of FOSS in educational institutions is related to multiple factors: value systems that underpin our decision-making, technical capacity of staff and faculty, awareness of FOSS options, and the degree to which marketing is allowed to influence technology planning. This lesson reviews these issues, while underscoring the potential benefits of FOSS adoption.
The lesson addresses these topics:
- FOSS Values and Schools
- What are the Benefits of FOSS Adoption?
- A FOSS School Exemplar
Advanced Organizer
During the lesson, look for answers to the following questions:
- Does FOSS adoption or rejection really reflect on a schools underlying values?
- What are the meaningful ways that FOSS can benefit schools?
- If these benefits are possible, what do schools choose proprietary software so often?
- Does teaching to proprietary software equate to teaching a dependency?
Walk-through
1. Read the following discussion
Schools and educators tend to identify with a common set of values. Indeed, many strategic planning processes begin with an examination of the values that an organization wishes to embody, support, and represent. A quick web search for “school values” will turn up values statements from a variety of schools alongside their vision and/or mission statements. Values such as equity, collaboration, community, equal opportunity, and participation occur frequently. It is easy to see how FOSS adoption promotes these values. Enabling every student to use current software at home and at school promotes equal opportunity. The collaborative nature of building software in cooperation with a worldwide group of like-minded individuals builds communities around software projects. It also demonstrates how a complex process can be tackled by working together and lending your talents to the group effort. The opportunity to contribute non-programming talents; through documentation, graphic design, bug-hunting, online support, translations, and feature-design promote participation from anyone with interest, skills and motivation.
It is difficult to address the issue of proprietary software in schools without an examination of the values that underlie our educational system. In his essay on “Why should open source software be used in schools?“, T. Vessels states that “The advances in all of the arts and sciences, indeed the sum total of human knowledge, is the result of the open sharing of ideas, theories, studies and research.” Educators tend to espouse openness, knowledge sharing , and building upon what we know to create new knowledge. Yet, our schools hesitate in embracing FOSS – a concrete embodiment of these core educational values.
Why the hesitation? I believe a large part is lack of understanding. Educators are busy people, and FOSS is not a topic one generally becomes familiar with unless someone sparks interest by introducing the issue. Many, if not most, educators confuse free-of-cost services (Facebook, Prezi) with FOSS. They assume that cost is the only issue at stake, or perhaps the only immediate concern. There are two major problems with this thinking. First, are the questions of where the user’s data is stored, who owns it, and whether users are able to extract and/or reuse it. Second, chasing the latest for-free technology service fails to support similar FOSS projects that could provide long-term stability, dependability, and re-usability. A great advocate for FOSS in education, the National Center for Open Source and Education, recently closed its doors, citing educator apathy on these issues as a prime cause.
Consider:
- How does one re-use a Prezi presentation if/when the for-free service disappears or begins charging untenable fees
- Alternatively, how can I use and support a related FOSS project so that we all benefit from long-term solutions?
There are other factors causing educators to focus on for-free/proprietary services and software. Educators receive a constant stream of marketing information about technology products from profit-motivated companies that want a slice of schools’ budgets. Marketing and slick advertising campaigns are not typically part of FOSS communities. Finally, proprietary products frequently have newer features than their FOSS counterparts. Some new features are fluff and bloat disguised as improvements – others are useful features, which FOSS projects will likely implement in time. A short-sighted response is to expend budgets in pursuit of the latest technology that will supposedly improve education. A longer-term perspective will weigh new features against the prospects of fiscal sustainability, equity, and vendor control.
For discussion:
- Can our students use the technologies we choose outside of school?
- What happens if a price increase becomes untenable or the vendor drops a product we embraced?
2. Read The Open Schoolhouse (the “Source Manuscript” is a downloadable PDF)
- Introduction (pp. 3-6)
- Chapter One – A Brief Open Source Lesson (pp. 9-11, specifically)
- Closed Source Software
- Software Subscription Squeeze
The Open Schoolhouse chronicles a recent one-to-one computing project undertaken in a US School System. The author describes the rationale, processes, tools, and challenges of implementing a fully open-source solution. Pay attention to the enumerated powers bestowed on commercial entities when schools choose closed source (pricing, dependency, and control).
3. Read Benefits of Open-Source Software in Education
Benefits of Open-Source Software in Education has been compiled from several sources. The possibilities detailed therein include pedagogical, financial, and pragmatic benefits.
4. Read in Free Software, Free Society
- Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (pp. 34-35)
In addition to arguments about saving money and moral behavior (equated to sharing with others), Stallman cites schools’ social mission and refusal to teach dependence. I find this argument compelling, because I have seen the behavior he describes of corporations – giving away software licenses to schools to ensure that students become future customers. In many cases, these give-aways are couched as grants or donations.
5. Read New Zealand school ditches Microsoft and goes totally open source
New Zealand school ditches Microsoft and goes totally open source is about Albany Senior High School, a school that decided that FOSS represented the values they wanted to promote in their school. ASHS opted to go completely open-source when it opened in 2010, despite a district mandate to use Microsoft software. Look for ideas here on why the school did this, and how they accomplished it. Note from the photo caption that the school is presenting at a conference alongside staff from Open Systems Specialists, a company providing support for a range of FOSS. There are support partners available worldwide to augment the skills and capacities of technical staff. (The UHM College of Education maintains support contracts with 5 separate FOSS-based companies, but pays no license fees for the software.)
Tying this back to our introduction and school value statements, the vision and values for ASHS that lead to “fully open source” are outlined in this blog post.
Assignments
Blog post #3
Consider how you would go about planning a FOSS implementation like that at Albany Senior High, if your supervisor asked you to lead such a project. How would you
- build consensus among faculty and staff,
- delineate a technology plan,
- execute the plan and ensure success?
Describe the challenges you think you would face. What types of pushback and/or support might you encounter from students? From parents? From faculty?
This is a complex issue with no clear answer. Your post should demonstrate that you thoroughly read the articles, and reference your own experiences and contexts when possible.
Additional Material
- Free Software in Education News (HTML) – a blog that chronicles news about FOSS in education
- FOSS Benefits for Education (HTML)
