Software Freedom Day report

Last year we held Software Freedom Day at my school, Grant High School. This year we held it at Penola High School - another FOSS oriented school in our region about 50km away.

I think that many of the SFD events across the globe happen in capital cities. Ours is regional and in a country where we have some large distances.

WE had about 50 visitors with a good percentage of those travelling 30km or more. Of those there were a number that travelled 100 km or more. I think that maybe the biggest might have been from Kingston which is about 130km.

This provides evidence to the success of the emails that Jason from Penola (Event team leader for 2008) sent out to schools and also to the work that Robert did in drumming up interest in the radio and paper news media. Nice work.

Schools can be regarded as societies agent for conformity. They are also societies change agent where we want people to conform to new directions or values. Making schools aware of the choices that they have regarding FOSS is really important in that context.

A feature of the event was the number of school teachers who came and travelled some distances for. When I talk to teachers about FOSS I invariably get HUGE agreement on the philosophical reasons why we want students to have access to this stuff. They are BIG on access and equity and invariably ask why so much money is paid for other software when there is this stuff available that they can just give to the kids. People from the broader community ask the same question but often in the context of why so much public money is spent on software that may not be necessary, as they look around the computer lab classroom that then event is run in.

I think that there will be a number of new schools who will be giving away the OpenEducation Disc to students soon as a consequence of our work on the day.

I did notice that none of the ICT coaches in the region showed up and so perhaps we need to target these sorts of people who carry some regional influence next time with special invitations.

The people who came, often also asked "Why haven't I heard about this before?". They sounded almost like they had been cheated out of something. This was a question asked by teachers as much as other visitors. In response I generally asked them the question "how do you find out about what you can put on a computer?" Many came to the conclusion that it was through sales people and so they were able to draw conclusions from their answer fairly easily.

From some I got the question 'So what is in it for you?'. Being a teacher I could rant about the access and equity thing for students and how I wanted to create an environment where students could continue with their learning outside of school unencumbered. They invariably saw the sense in that and felt comfortable with the explanation.

The other thing that I heard a lot was thankyou. I felt that these words were very geniune and sincere. Thanks for putting on this event and thanks for showing me this stuff. Thanks for giving me these options.

Last year, being the event organiser, I did not get to feel and observe these things as I was too wrapped up with making the event happen. My sincere thanks to Jason for being the event organiser this year.

Education Revolution

Labour has won the election and so it would be reasonable to think that their election promise of 'education revolution' by ensuring that every Australian student in Years 9 to 12 has access to their own school computer will be implemented.

I like Bill Kerr's comments about this not being a revolution.

No surprises from our pollies here. Their thinking is entirely quantitative - more computers, faster broadband, more information. There is not the glimmer of a hint that computers might be used to transform education in a qualitative sense, to create new sorts of powerful learning experiences that are much harder to create without computers.

I'm not aware of a single Australian politician who understands this issue.

There are all sorts of logistical issues with the Labour plan including the physical space to put computers as well as the power, network and human resource requirements to run them.

The revolution aspect is what really interests me and I am remembering some on my past posts, the latest of which was Talk of revolution which also references previous and connected posts to this topic.

Schools are not well positioned for the revolution that is being talked about in these posts. Rightly or wrongly, we have schools embedded in our culture and so I will assume for the foreseeable future they continue to play a part in this game. Soon we will have lots more access to computers and more important connected via the internet with fatter pipes which could help facilitate the sort of revolution being talked about.

I wonder what the characteristics of a school would need to be to optimise on the this sort of revolution?

• Small
• Organised on the basis of students not subjects
• Good access to specialised facilities - drama, music, materials technology, art, HPE
• Useful links with relevant community groups and businesses
• Excellent access to information resources
• Focus on information processing rather than acquisition of knowledge
• Capacity to improvise on the fly - significant use of words like 'lets try/play with this'
  

Talk of revolution

It seems that both the Liberal and the Labour governments have an educational vision for our country that looks like the rear of the dog in front of them.

Professor David Loader in this 17 minute interview about Schools for the 21st Century makes this point. The interview starts at about the 15 minute mark in this 'Life Matters' program. His title of Professor indicates that he is well recognised in the profession. He has been a school principal and teacher and is aged in his mid sixties so his experience is extensive. He is advocating a revolution in education, an idea that I am wanting to entertain.

He talks about loosing the cyber-generation if we don't. His ideas have the potential for disrupting power in our society and placing it back into the hands of small flexible, dynamic units.

He challenges the idea of class groupings, the hierarchical structure of schools, and the need for school Principals and formal leadership structures. He talks about having parents more involved and with much greater responsibility. He talks about perhaps adopting a paradigm of a shopping center or somethings else to replace the current model.

While listening to this interview I made a number of connections with some of my previous posts and reading.

Sardines and the Whales
He acknowledged that he was swimming in a different direction to most like the sardines that get the school to change direction. The other relationship is that I believe that he thinks that the current education system is like a whale and he is proposing that the revolution of education results in it becoming a school of agile sardines.

Geetha Narayanan
Geetha Narayanan's presentation titled “A Dangerous but Powerful Idea - Counter Acceleration and Speed with Slowness and Wholeness” published in The Knowledge Tree. Geetha thinks that school reform is impossible. She thinks that schools need to be broken up into small units as one part of the revolution of education globally. This needs to be coupled with a range of other changes.

Geetha made reference to the “Lifelong Kindergarten Research Lab” which involves the use of Scratch which I documented here and here. The principles underpinning their Computer Clubhouse are worthy of attention.

1. supporting learning through design experiences
2. helping youth build on their own interests
3. creating an emergent learning community, and
4. working always in a climate of trust and respect.

She states

The Project Vision hypothesis breaks the form of schools, moving from that of a cathedral and/or large corporate monolith into small places eg. shop fronts. They are not purpose built but occupy spaces/crevices that integrate with, and operate, at various levels of scale in a city. The structural form advocated is that of community learning centres and ateliers or studios, not that of the contemporary modern schools

Only one laughing
If educators or ignorant and uninvolved with the tools that students are using, then they are also going to be blind to where things seem to be heading and why there needs to be change.

David Loader briefly discussed the education policies of both major political parties (Liberal and Labour) as we approach the federal election. Nothing inspiring there. He argues that both of these parties are caught in the past and are too far back in the pack to see anything but the rear of the lead dog. What vision.