Free and Open Source Software in K12 Schools

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Free and Open Source Software in K-12 Schools
Steve Hargadon
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Getting to Know You

• Start with a wiki...
• Who is here, and who has how much experience with
  FLOSS?
• What does Free and Open Source software mean to
  you?
• What programs have you tried and were they
  successful?
• What questions do you have?
• What concerns do you have?
• How many of you have used Linux? (Oh, yeah?)

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Movies
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FLOSS
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Wait a Minute...

• European Commission Study on the Economic
  impact of open source software on innovation and
  the competitiveness of the Information and
  Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU
• a large share of private and public organisations
  report some use of FLOSS in most application
  domains.
• The existing base of quality FLOSS applications
  with reasonable quality control and distribution
  would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to
  reproduce internally.
• FLOSS-related services could reach a 32 share of
  all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related
  share of the economy could reach 4 of European
  GDP by 2010.
• FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36 in
  software RD investment

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Wait Another Minute...

• BECTA Open Source Software in Schools A study
  of the spectrum of use and related ICT
  infrastructure costs, May 2005
• project schools had 2030 OSS programs relevant
  to the curriculum... There was a perception that
  open source productivity software was easier or
  simpler to use than the non-OSS equivalents.
• the annual total cost per PC was less for nearly
  all the OSS schools at both primary and secondary
  school levels. For OSS schools, cost per PC at
  primary school level was half that of non-OSS
  schools, and cost per PC at secondary school
  level was around 20 less than that of the
  non-OSS schools.
• Concern about support... )

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What is FLOSS?

• Free/Libre/Open-Source Software
• Freedoms
• Free as in beer (primary association)
• Free as in speech or freedom (primary value)
• Not free as in to get you addicted
• Freedom --gt Standardization --gt Innovation
  Growth
• Internet
• Analogy of an automobile
• Eric Raymond Cathedral Bazaar. Chaos? Or
  democratic and free market style?
• Richard Stallman
• Hackers
• Education roots
• Copyleft
• License protects free status

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Big Changes

• Microsoft and Novell Agreement
• Web 2.0
• Foundations of Web 2.0 from FLOSS
• How FLOSS informs Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 Gives Us a Better Understanding of
• Working for Free
• Wikipedia / Wikis
• YouTube
• MySpace
• Collaboration
• It was different a year ago...

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Richard Stallman's Four Freedoms

• 0. The freedom to run the program, for any
  purpose.
• 1. The freedom to study how the program works,
  and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source
  code is a precondition for this.
• 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can
  help your neighbor.
• 3. The freedom to improve the program, and
  release your improvements to the public, so that
  the whole community benefits.

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Common Questions

• Who does this and why (motivation)?
• Altruism
• Pragmatism
• Fulfillment
• How do you get support?
• What is Linux?

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What is Linux

• History, GNU (recursive acronym)
• Windows, Linux, and FLOSS
• Linux is FLOSS, but FLOSS is more than Linux
• Tux the penguin
• Linus Torvalds

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Reasons for Using FLOSS in Schools FLOSS in
Education

• It provides you with functionality you would not
  otherwise have (high acceptance)
• Moodle, GIMP
• It provides you with similar functionality that
  you already have, but it saves you money, has
  better features, or gives you freedom from
  lock-in (medium acceptance)
• It's not about the money (shallow, can be
  matched)
• OpenOffice Firefox
• It allows you to customize solutions (medium to
  low acceptance)
• It allows you to reuse older computer hardware
  (low acceptance)
• 100,000 computers/day
• LTSP / Linux Thin Client
• It allows you to share programs with students
  (low acceptance?)

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Programs Infrastructure Administrative

• Current
• Linux
• MySQL
• Apache
• Knoppix
• SchoolTool
• K12LTSP
• Upcoming
• Asterisk

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Programs - Classroom

• Too many to list...
• OpenOffice (this presentation in Impress)
• The GIMP (Plano story)
• Firefox (Add-ons)
• Gaim (Multi-platform IM)
• Scribus (Desktop Publishing)
• Inkscape (Vector graphisc editor)
• TuxPaint
• Audacity (my podcasts)
• Filezilla (FTP client)
• Celestia (
• Ubuntu (OS)

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Programs - Programming

• Python
• PHP
• MySQL

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Reasons for Using FLOSS in Schools FLOSS as
Education

• You believe in it or in the value set (low
  acceptance)
• Like recycling
• Concern about corporate influence in education
• To provide real skills / tools for students (low
  acceptance)
• Teens age when some want to learn everything
• Internet / networking / web
• LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• Programming
• Python
• Creativity
• Audacity The Gimp
• Collaborative software building
• Participate in an existing project
• Local application of technology
• Web 2.0
• Exciting openness and mashups, but can't see
  code
• Need programmers to build

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Quote

• In computer training courses, free and open
  source software teaches you three times...once
  when you use the code, once when you investigate
  what it does and how it does it, and once when
  you improve it to make it better (particularly
  for the older students). It also allows students
  to create their own computer labs, and to
  investigate everything from embedded systems to
  supercomputers. --Maddog Hall

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The Collaborative Culture

• Programming
• Web 2.0 / Read-Write Web
• Wikipedia and wikis
• Blogging
• Tagging
• Metadata
• Consumer as co-creator
• American Idol 1

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Barriers to FLOSS in Schools, Part 1

• Open Source is a grassroots effort of the highly
  motivated
• Often expect the same of others
• Comfortable at grassrootstry to work through
  teachers
• Teachers too busy
• Pre-existing lesson plans
• Software not any easieractually can be harder
• Early success / adopters not representative

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Barriers to FLOSS in Schools, Part 2

• District decision-making
• Pre-existing training
• high-stakes money game no sales team / funding
• Explain Apache
• Different support model
• Computer Science Teacher
• New training needed
• Mentality educate, not train
• 9X rule change is hard
• Is this model accurate?

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Context of the Problem

• Is the emperor wearing clothes?
• The problem is not just FLOSS in schools. It's
  computers in schools. In the state of Indiana
  they estimate that they have spent 1 billion on
  computer technology in the last ten years, but
  the average student in Indiana gets 35
  minutes/week on a computer.
• 80 of teachers use a computer to prepare
  lessons 20 integrate the computer into their
  lessons (Cuban)
• Lack of agreed-upon philosophical driver or
  vision, not just for computers...
• Gates Foundation work
• How is FLOSS a part of the answer here?

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Approaches

• Students
• Solve problems / desperate situations
• Private / religious schools
• Time
• Already happening. Desktop most visible, but
  America's back-office is adopting FLOSS
• More Linux/FLOSS-trained techs
• Balance

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Different Tasks, Different Solutions
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Resource

• www.SteveHargadon.com
• K12OpenSource.com (look at page)
• EdTechLive.com interviews