OLPC Aus­tralia had a strong pres­ence at linux​.conf​.au 2012 in Bal­larat, two weeks ago.

I gave a talk in the main key­note room about our edu­ca­tional pro­gramme, in which I explained our mis­sion and how we intend to achieve it.

Even if you saw my talk at OSDC 2011, I recom­mend that you watch this one. It is much improved and con­tains new and updated mater­ial. The You­Tube ver­sion is above, but a higher qual­ity ver­sion is avail­able for down­load from Linux Aus­tralia.

The ref­er­ences for this talk are on our devel­op­ment wiki.

Here’s a bet­ter ver­sion of the video I played near the begin­ning of my talk:

I should start by point­ing out out that OLPC is by no means a niche or minor pro­ject. XO laptops are in the hands of 8000 chil­dren in Aus­tralia, across 130 remote com­munit­ies. Around the world, over 2.5 mil­lion chil­dren, across nearly 50 coun­tries, have an XO.

Invest­ment in our Children’s Future

The key point of my talk is that OLPC Aus­tralia have a com­pre­hens­ive edu­ca­tion pro­gramme that highly val­ues teacher empower­ment and com­munity engagement.

The invest­ment to provide a con­nec­ted learn­ing device to every one of the 300 000 chil­dren in remote Aus­tralia is less than 0.1% of the annual edu­ca­tion and con­nectiv­ity budgets.

For low socio-​​economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD per child. Spon­sor­ships, primar­ily from cor­por­ates, allow us to sub­sid­ise most of the expense (you too can donate to make a dif­fer­ence). Also keep in mind that this is a total cost of own­er­ship, cov­er­ing the essen­tials like teacher train­ing, sup­port and spare parts, as well as the XO and char­ging rack.

While our prin­cipal focus is on remote, low socio-​​economic status schools, our pro­gramme is avail­able to any school in Aus­tralia. Yes, that means schools in the cites as well. The invest­ment for non-​​subsidised schools to join the same pro­gramme is only $380 AUD per child.

Com­pre­hens­ive Edu­ca­tion Programme

We have a respons­ib­il­ity to invest in our children’s edu­ca­tion — it is not just another mar­ket. As a not-​​for-​​profit, we have the free­dom and the desire to make this hap­pen. We have no interest in vendor lock-​​in; build­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity is an essen­tial part of our mis­sion. We have no incent­ive to build a depend­ency on us, and every incent­ive to ensure that schools and com­munit­ies can help them­selves and each other.

We only provide XOs to teach­ers who have been suf­fi­ciently enabled. Their train­ing pre­pares them to con­struct­ively use XOs in their les­sons, and is form­ally recog­nised as part of their pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment. Bey­ond the min­imum 15-​​hour XO-​​certified course, a teacher may choose to undergo a fur­ther 5–10 hours to earn XO-​​expert status. This pre­pares them to be able to train other teach­ers, using OLPC Aus­tralia resources. Again, we are redu­cing depend­ency on us.

Train­ing is con­duc­ted online, after the teacher signs up to our pro­gramme and they receive their XO. This scales well to let us effect­ively train many teach­ers spread across the coun­try. Par­ti­cipants in our pro­gramme are encour­aged to par­ti­cip­ate in our online com­munity to share resources and assist one another.

We also want to recog­nise and encour­age chil­dren who have shown enthu­si­asm and aptitude, with our XO-​​champion and XO-​​mechanic cer­ti­fic­a­tions. Not only does this pro­mote sus­tain­ab­il­ity in the school and give invalu­able skills to the child, it rein­forces our core prin­ciple of Child Own­er­ship. Teacher aides, par­ents, eld­ers and other non-​​teacher adults have the XO-​​basics (formerly known as XO-​​local) course designed for them. We want the child’s learn­ing exper­i­ence to extend to the home envir­on­ment and bey­ond, and not be con­strained by the walls of the classroom.

There’s a reason why I’m wear­ing a t-​​shirt that says “No, I won’t fix your com­puter.” We’re on a mis­sion to develop a pro­gramme that is self-​​sustaining. We’ve set high goals for ourselves, and we are determ­ined to meet them. We won’t get there overnight, but we’re well on our way. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is about respect. We are tak­ing the time to show them the ropes, help­ing them to own it, and devel­op­ing our tech­no­logy to make it easy. We fun­da­ment­ally dis­agree with the atti­tude that ordin­ary people are not cap­able enough to take con­trol of their own futures. Vendor lock-​​in is com­pletely con­tra­dict­ory to our mis­sion. Our schools are not just con­sumers; they are pro­du­cers too.

As explained by Jonathan Nalder (a highly recom­men­ded read!), there are two primary notions guid­ing our pro­gramme. The first is that the nom­inal $80 invest­ment per child is just enough for a school to take the pro­gramme ser­i­ously and make them a stake­holder, greatly improv­ing the chances for suc­cess. The second is that this is a schools-​​centric pro­gramme, driven from grass­roots demand rather than being a régime imposed from above. Schools that par­ti­cip­ate genu­inely want the pro­gramme to succeed.

Tech­no­logy as an Enabler

Enabling this edu­ca­tional pro­gramme is the clever devel­op­ment and use of tech­no­logy. That’s where I (as Engin­eer­ing Man­ager at OLPC Aus­tralia) come in. For tech­no­logy to be truly intrinsic to edu­ca­tion, there must be no spe­cial­ist expert­ise required. Teach­ers aren’t IT pro­fes­sion­als, and nor should they be expec­ted to be. In short, we are using com­puters to teach, not teach­ing com­puters.

The key prin­ciples of the Engin­eer­ing Depart­ment are:

• Tech­no­logy is an integ­ral and seam­less part of the learn­ing exper­i­ence – the pen and paper of the 21^st century.
• To elim­in­ate depend­ence on tech­nical expert­ise, through the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of sus­tain­able technologies.
• Empower­ing chil­dren to be con­tent pro­du­cers and col­lab­or­at­ors, not just con­tent consumers.
• Open plat­form to allow learn­ing from mis­takes… and easy recovery.

OLPC have done a mar­vel­lous job in their design of the XO laptop, giv­ing us a fant­astic plat­form to build upon. I think that our engin­eer­ing pro­jects in Aus­tralia have been quite innov­at­ive in help­ing to cover the ‘last mile’ to the school. One thing I’m espe­cially proud of is our instance on open­ness. We turn tra­di­tional sys­tems admin­is­tra­tion prac­tice on its head to com­pletely empower the end-​​user. Tech­no­logy that is deployed in cor­por­ate or edu­ca­tional set­tings is typ­ic­ally locked down to make admin­is­tra­tion and sup­port easier. This takes con­trol com­pletely away from the end-​​user. They are severely lim­ited on what they can do, and if some­thing doesn’t work as they expect then they are totally at the mercy of the admins to fix it.

In an edu­ca­tional set­ting this is dis­astrous — it severely lim­its what our chil­dren can learn. We learn most from our mis­takes, so let’s provide an envir­on­ment in which chil­dren are able to safely make mis­takes and recover from them. The soft­ware is quite res­ist­ant to fail­ure, both at the tech­nical level (being based on Fedora Linux) and at the user inter­face level (Sugar). If all goes wrong, rein­stalling the oper­at­ing sys­tem and restor­ing a journal (Sugar user files) backup is a trivial endeav­our. The XO hard­ware is also renowned for its rug­ged­ness and repair­ab­il­ity. Less well-​​known are the amaz­ing dia­gnostics tools, provid­ing quick and easy indic­a­tion that a com­pon­ent should be repaired/​replaced. We provide a com­pletely unlocked envir­on­ment, with full access to the root user and the firm­ware. Some may call that dan­ger­ous, but I call that empower­ment. If a child starts hack­ing on an XO, we want to hire that kid

Eval­u­ation

My talk fea­tures the case study of Doomadgee State School, in far-​​north Queens­land. Doomadgee have very enthu­si­ast­ic­ally taken on board the OLPC Aus­tralia pro­gramme. Every one of the 350 chil­dren aged 4–14 have been issued with an XO, as part of a com­pre­hens­ive pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and sup­port pro­gramme. Since com­men­cing in late 2010, the per­cent­age of Year 3 pupils at or above national min­imum stand­ards in numer­acy has leapt from 31% in 2010 to 95% in 2011. Other scores have also increased. Think what you may about NAPLAN, but nev­er­the­less that is a stag­ger­ing improvement.

In fed­eral par­lia­ment, Robert Oakeshott MP has been very sup­port­ive of our mission:

Most import­antly of all, quite simply, One Laptop per Child Aus­tralia deliv­ers res­ults in learn­ing from the 5,000 stu­dents already engaged, show­ing impress­ive improve­ments in clos­ing the gap gen­er­ally and lift­ing access and par­ti­cip­a­tion rates in particular.

We are also engaged in lon­git­ud­inal research, work­ing closely with respec­ted research­ers to have a com­pre­hens­ive eval­u­ation of our pro­gramme. We will release more inform­a­tion on this as the eval­u­ation pro­cess matures.

Join our mission

Schools can register their interest in our pro­gramme on our Edu­ca­tion site.

Our Pro­spectus provides a high-​​level overview.

For a detailed ana­lysis, see our Policy Doc­u­ment.

If you would like to get involved in our tech­nical devel­op­ment, visit our devel­op­ment site.

Cred­its

Many thanks to col­leagues Ran­gan Srikhanta (CEO) and Tracy Richard­son (Edu­ca­tion Man­ager) for some of the inform­a­tion and graph­ics used in this article.

OLPC Aus­tralia have been awar­ded a Bronze Lion at this year’s Cannes Lions Inter­na­tional Advert­ising Fest­ival, the advert­ising coun­ter­part of the Cannes Film Festival.

I think this is fant­astic recog­ni­tion for a Free Soft­ware pro­ject, espe­cially one that is focused on assist­ing chil­dren in some of the most remote parts of the world. I feel hon­oured to have been part of this success.

We’re happy for people to get involved to help us in our mis­sion. If you’d like to par­ti­cip­ate, espe­cially (for me) in the tech­nical field, please get in touch with me or con­tact OLPC Aus­tralia through our Web site.

In hon­our of OLPC Aus­tralia’s second anniversary, we have pro­duced a video reveal­ing some of the suc­cess we have achieved.

Feel free to spread it far and wide

SBS tele­vi­sion recently screened a doc­u­ment­ary about Yves Behar, the per­son behind the dis­tinct­ive indus­trial design of the OLPC XO laptop. It’s a fas­cin­at­ing insight into the mind and influ­ences behind one of the most influ­en­tial design­ers around. The doc­u­ment­ary was ori­gin­ally aired in Novem­ber 2008, so it is a little dated. For example, Yves talks about the “XOXO” XO-​​2, which has since been replaced with the XO-​​3. Nev­er­the­less, it is well worth watching.

You can view the full ver­sion at the SBS Web site. The sec­tion on OLPC starts at 14:48.

UPDATE: if you are hav­ing trouble view­ing the video, try this one instead. The atten­tion to detail and qual­ity is astound­ing. Yves rightly points out that products seen in lesser eco­nom­ic­ally developed coun­tries are nor­mally second hand or second rate. The design is rugged and func­tional. It provides scope for per­son­al­isa­tion. What was most inter­est­ing to me is Yves’ com­ment­ary on the key­board. Its one-​​piece design means that the let­ters can be prin­ted in one silk­screen­ing pro­cess. This makes it feas­ible to trans­late into lan­guages that would be uneco­nom­ical with a stand­ard key­board design.

The video of my talk at linux​.conf​.au is online. You can watch/​download it online.

Over­all, I think it went quite well. A per­sonal cri­ti­cism is that I need to ser­i­ously cut back on my use of ‘um’ and ‘ah’ sounds. Sug­ges­tions on com­bat­ing this prob­lem and/​or gen­er­ally improv­ing my speak­ing skills are welcome.

Speak­ing of talks, I found this one by Sir Ken Robin­son to be espe­cially illu­min­at­ing. It’s sum­mary of how and why tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion meth­ods are fail­ing us, and what we can do about it. I think it goes some way towards explain­ing the kind of think­ing behind OLPC.

An intriguing offer came through to the SLUG-​​chat mail­ing list a few weeks ago: an Aus­tralian ver­sion of Beauty and the Geek is in the works, and they’re look­ing for geeks.

I’ll be hon­est and admit that I’m a fan of the US ver­sion of the show. The ‘geeks’ feel like humor­ous cari­ca­tures of some of my own traits, and I sup­pose I find bimbo stu­pid­ity funny in a way (although at other times I just roll my eyes).

How­ever, I dis­like that the out­come of each series is that the geeks bend over back­wards to learn to be ‘cool’ while the bim­bos simply ‘learn’ to tol­er­ate the geeks. On the epis­odes that visit the con­test­ants a few months after their ten­ure at ‘the man­sion’, the geeks have clearly changed them­selves but the bim­bos have mostly rever­ted to their pre­vi­ous state.

I’m prob­ably biased, but it seems lop-​​sided. It rein­forces the view (at least in West­ern cul­tures) that it’s okay to be an idiot but con­versely it is unac­cept­able to be socially awkward.

We see this pos­i­tion pushed across pop­u­lar media. The other prime offender at the moment that I can think of is the sit­com, The Big Bang The­ory. In that show, a bimbo with loose val­ues is por­trayed as ‘nor­mal’ while a group of intel­li­gent males are openly ridiculed.

Again, I’ll admit that I watch that show from time to time, and I do find it enter­tain­ing. I have the capa­city to laugh at myself and traits that I can identify with. At the same time, it still irks me that this is what people are being fed, not just by this pro­gramme but by the mass media in general.

What does the FOSS com­munity think?

I don’t get it. In a com­munity where open­ness is prized, some have seen it fit to cri­ti­cise that very tenet. In the world of FOSS, bug track­ers are laid open for all to see (and con­trib­ute to), and mail­ing lists are a hive of dis­cus­sion and innovation.

So why is it such a bad thing when we openly dis­cuss the nature of our com­munity, and the gov­ernance thereof? Kevin Rudd was widely praised for his prom­ises to pro­mote open gov­ern­ment (we’re still wait­ing, Kevin).

To put any uncer­tainty to rest: Linux Aus­tralia is in great shape. We just had yet another suc­cess­ful linux​.conf​.au and have built up a sub­stan­tial pot of sav­ings, all in the face of a global fin­an­cial melt­down. We are indeed in an envi­able pos­i­tion, and we could not have done it had we not stayed true to our beliefs. Linux Aus­tralia is defined by its com­munity sup­port and participation.

Can we do bet­ter? Of course we can. What I’ve tried to artic­u­late is that the best means of doing that is by scal­ing our com­munity. To use a code ana­logy, I effect­ively pos­ted a pub­lic bug report and invited the com­munity to help find solu­tions. You don’t see that level of trans­par­ency from many other organ­isa­tions, and I for one am very proud of that.

The FOSS com­munity in Aus­tralia will con­tinue to grow and thrive — any­body who went to linux​.conf​.au should be con­vinced of that. The bazaar feel is stronger than ever, and Linux Aus­tralia will con­tinue to hold a vital role in stim­u­lat­ing and facil­it­at­ing that devel­op­ment. But to do so in a man­ner that best suits the community’s interests requires some delib­er­a­tion, plan­ning and com­mu­nic­a­tion with the very com­munity that it seeks to assist. What’s wrong with that?

If only my local MP was as in touch with his constituents…

LotD: OpenAus­tralia, open source good­ness applied to gov­ern­ment

It looks like I’ve opened up a can of worms. Last week I bemoaned about the low voter par­ti­cip­a­tion in Linux Aus­tralia (LA) elec­tions. I spent con­sid­er­able energy at linux​.conf​.au (LCA) in Hobart pub­li­cising the issue and can­vassing opin­ion from com­munity mem­bers. This cul­min­ated in a light­ning talk titled ‘YOU PEOPLE SUCK’*, where I angrily chas­tised the com­munity for not par­ti­cip­at­ing in Linux Aus­tralia. The fury was in jest, but the call to arms was not.

It seems now that the media has grabbed a hold of the mat­ter. Frankly, I’m glad that this issue has been brought to the fore. It has been a cata­lyst for con­tem­pla­tion and debate, which in my opin­ion is the hall­mark of an open com­munity. In my chats with vari­ous people over the mat­ter, a few reas­ons crop up. These aren’t all neces­sar­ily true, but if they are believed by a sub­stan­tial sec­tion of our com­munity, they’d might as well be.

• I don’t want to pay anything

Mem­ber­ship of Linux Aus­tralia is free, as in beard! LA makes a tidy profit from LCA and sponsorships.

• I don’t know any­thing about LA
• I don’t see how LA is rel­ev­ant to me
• I don’t see LA doing anything

These three are prob­ably the most dis­turb­ing. LA must strive to mar­ket itself bet­ter and to prove its worth in the com­munity. We’ve come a long way, but I do see some areas where we could improve. For instance, I’ve found over the years that many LCA attendees don’t under­stand the rela­tion­ship between LA and LCA. LCA is an LA event, and we shouldn’t let any­one for­get it. Other areas where we could improve include sup­port for local groups, par­tic­u­larly LUGs. Vari­ous pro­jects have been in the works for a while now, but unfor­tu­nately we’ve all been con­strained by Real Life. We should be bet­ter util­ising that fam­ous open source scalab­il­ity to fix these problems.

• LA is too opaque
• I’m not good enough to participate

The sen­ti­ments above are com­plete ana­thema to a work­ing demo­cracy, and they should be dis­patched with accord­ingly. Yes it’s (gen­er­ally) true that the open source world is a mer­ito­cracy, but that should not dis­suade any cas­ual per­son from hav­ing their input.

• I don’t know any of the candidates
• I don’t have any spe­cific objec­tions or pref­er­ences regard­ing the candidates

The former is a reflec­tion of our diverse and geo­graph­ic­ally dis­trib­uted com­munity. The lat­ter might have some cros­sover with apathy, but gen­er­ally it’s an expres­sion that none of the can­did­ates are offens­ive enough to vote against (the black­list approach to vot­ing) or pref­er­en­tial enough to vote for. Enthu­si­asms can go both ways — an unpop­u­lar group of can­did­ates might be enough to mobil­ise an increased num­ber of votes against them.

• I can’t make it to the AGM, and so can­not vote
• I thought I was already a mem­ber after sub­scrib­ing to the mail­ing lists
• I thought I was already a mem­ber after regis­ter­ing for linux​.conf​.au
• The vot­ing form is dif­fi­cult to find
• The vot­ing sys­tem is confusing

These come down to the design and com­mu­nic­a­tion sur­round­ing our Web prop­er­ties. We use Mem­berDB as our online mem­ber­ships and vot­ing sys­tem, and hence there is no need to phys­ic­ally present your­self to vote (do it in your undies for all I care; just make sure the web­cam is off). Each mail­ing list has a Mail­man login, the Web site has another, and Mem­berDB has yet one more. LCA each year tends to have its own soft­ware infra­struc­ture entirely. The vot­ing form does indeed require much dig­ging to reach. There’s plenty of scope here for streamlining.

• I didn’t know the elec­tion was on
• The vot­ing period is too short
• My regis­tra­tion wasn’t approved (in time)
• I signed up dur­ing the vot­ing period

The points above are mostly to do with pro­cess and pro­ced­ure. Elec­tions need to be pub­li­cised bet­ter. One per­son said to me that they were expect­ing a big ‘VOTE’ but­ton on the front page of linux​.org​.au, link­ing dir­ectly to the bal­lot form. Maybe another Coun­cil mem­ber can cor­rect me on this, but I gather it’s unof­fi­cial policy not to accept new mem­ber­ships dur­ing the vot­ing pro­cess. Given that Mem­berDB is designed to approx­im­ate the Aus­tralian elect­oral pro­cess, this should come as no sur­prise. How­ever, this is not stated any­where in pub­lic. Also, since new mem­ber­ships must be manu­ally con­firmed (a pre­cau­tion to stop spam and mul­tiple sign-​​ups) there will be an appre­ciable lag in the approvals pro­cess. Don’t expect the Coun­cil to have any time to accept new sign-​​ups dur­ing or close to LCA.

I am yet to hear the old ‘one vote doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence’ excuse, but just in case, you can read here on why this atti­tude is not helpful.

I’d be inter­ested to hear if you have any other reas­ons (and pro­posed solu­tions) for not regis­ter­ing with Linux Aus­tralia and vot­ing in the elec­tions. I’d recom­mend that you take part in the dis­cus­sion on the linux-​​aus mail­ing list, oth­er­wise you can post a com­ment here or con­tact me dir­ectly if you’d prefer some privacy.

I won’t pre­tend to have all the answers, or pos­sess some magic map of where we should be going. I’m just another com­munity mem­ber like any­one else, who is inter­ested in see­ing us move for­wards. Please con­sider assist­ing LA to address these problems.

LotD: blue​hack​ers​.org

* yes, caps are mandatory

Donna Ben­jamin roun­ded a small group of us together to write a let­ter to Julia Gil­lard, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter for Edu­ca­tion. The res­ult was widely syn­dic­ated, hope­fully build­ing some mind­share in the pro­cess. The Edu­ca­tion Expo proved to me more than any­thing else that FOSS is quickly becom­ing accept­able to the gen­eral pub­lic — the trick is in how you pro­mote it.

So where to from here? How can we cap­it­al­ise upon the gains we have made?

Per­haps our greatest single weak­ness is the per­ceived lack of pro­fes­sional sup­port. I think OSIA should be doing more to address this (note: I’m not imply­ing that OSIA isn’t tak­ing this ser­i­ously). Here’s an e-​​mail I wrote to the osia-​​discuss mail­ing list (which is unfor­tu­nately subscriber-​​only):

The best thing OSIA can do is fight the pop­u­lar notion that there’s no
pro­fes­sional sup­port avail­able for FOSS. We can beat the TCO and Free­dom
drums as hard as we want, but few organ­isa­tions are will­ing to entrust their
com­put­ing to ‘com­munity’ support.

I man­aged the Linux Aus­tralia stand at the Edu­ca­tion Expo a few weeks ago, and
my impres­sion is that FOSS is on the cusp of main­stream acceptance:

http://​www​.dhanap​a​lan​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​6​/​2​9​/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​e​x​p​o​-​r​e​p​o​rt/

Schools are cry­ing out for ways to get bet­ter value for their dol­lar, but they
aren’t going to even think about FOSS if they can’t get pro­fes­sional support.

If I run the stand again next year, I’d like to see some involve­ment from
OSIA. At the very least, we should have avail­able some leaf­lets show­ing that
yes indeed there is qual­ity, paid sup­port for FOSS.

Also note that FOSS isn’t Linux. We got the most interest in the
OpenE­duca­tionDisc, a com­pil­a­tion of FOSS for Windows.

On the com­munity side, we can con­tinue to make FOSS more accept­able to school admin­is­tra­tions, bur­eau­crats and politi­cians. Here’s my idea:

My sug­ges­tion is for us to build a Web site focused on open edu­ca­tion in
Aus­tralia. We already have the per­fect vehicle: http://​opene​duca​tion​.org​.au.
How­ever, at present it’s just a messy wiki more suit­able for our own
brain­storm­ing than for being a public-​​facing resource.

The wiki should of course remain, but I pro­pose that we build a proper,
present­able Web site that is dir­ectly access­ible via the
http://​opene​duca​tion​.org​.au address.

Why do this when we already have http://​linux​.org​.au/​e​d​u​c​a​t​ion? Open Edu­ca­tion
is much big­ger than Linux, and cer­tainly should not be anchored to it. Here’s
a short list of what it can include:

• FOSS
• (GNU/)Linux OS — on servers
• (GNU/)Linux OS — on clients/​desktops
• open stand­ards
• open languages/​libraries/​APIs
• free content/​culture
• open learn­ing
• open cur­riculum

To be hon­est, I fear that we might be only hurt­ing ourselves by tying open
edu­ca­tion to a com­pletely Free com­put­ing envir­on­ment. That might be a worthy
aim, but few insti­tu­tions are going to switch over all in one go. By offer­ing
a migra­tion path (or paths), a school can migrate more com­fort­ably at its own
pace. We ought to be provid­ing real choice, not just a bin­ary ‘with us or
with the terrists’.

FOSS (Fire­fox, Open​Of​fice​.org, Scribus, etc.) can run on oper­at­ing sys­tems
other than Linux. To use the recent Edu­ca­tion Expo as an example, we got a
lot of buy-​​in through the OpenE­duca­tionDisc, a com­pil­a­tion of FOSS for
Windows.

Also note how I split Linux cli­ents from serv­ers. Linux’s place in the server
realm is very solid, but con­vin­cing an insti­tu­tion to accept a Linux cli­ent
solu­tion is tougher. And by ‘cli­ent’, I mean either tra­di­tional desktops or
thin cli­ents. The lat­ter are often cost-​​effective and rep­res­ent a real
strength of Linux, but are often over­looked or even have reg­u­la­tions work­ing
against their adop­tion. On the server side, we have some great edu­ca­tional
tools such as Moodle and LAMS.

Open stand­ards obvi­ously include things like file formats and pro­to­cols, which
will become even more rel­ev­ant as we see more applic­a­tions (pro­pri­et­ary or
oth­er­wise) pick up stand­ard­ised meth­ods of inform­a­tion exchange such as ODF
and PDF. This should also ease the integ­ra­tion of FOSS into pre-​​existing
envir­on­ments. It also can include lan­guages and all things related. Why are
schools still teach­ing Visual Basic when they could be teach­ing Python?

The final three points all link together. Most not­ably, they are not depend­ent
upon tech­no­logy at all. Your aver­age teacher isn’t a tech­no­lo­gist, and
shouldn’t have to be. Know­ledge can be shared and organ­ised openly just like
code. Wiki­pe­dia has proven that great things can be built if ordin­ary people
are given easy to use tools.

Where to from this point? I sug­gest that we work towards get­ting a CMS run­ning
at opene​duca​tion​.org​.au. We’ll have to agree upon a design and the mes­sage
that we want to pur­vey. Con­tent cre­ation should be sep­ar­ate from tech­nical
abil­ity, so the CMS should be simple enough for any­body to contribute.

Here is some inspir­a­tion from the UK:

• http://​www​.openschoolsal​li​ance​.org/
• http://​schoolforge​.org​.uk/

The UK edu­ca­tion sec­tor appears to be much fur­ther ahead of us in terms of
embra­cing open­ness, and I think we can take some les­sons from their efforts.

To cla­rify one thing in the above, I wrote the text for http://​linux​.org​.au/​e​d​u​c​a​t​ion, but I never felt com­fort­able with it being there. So much of open edu­ca­tion has noth­ing to do with Linux and Linux Aus­tralia shouldn’t be divert­ing its focus to dwell on it dir­ectly. With a more inde­pend­ent Web pres­ence (in col­lab­or­a­tion with Linux Aus­tralia), I feel that we can be much more effective.

LotD:   Open sourcing Aus­tralia: OpenAus​tralia​.org goes live

Bill Gates was inter­viewed by the BBC’s Money Pro­gramme. As he pre­pares to sig­ni­fic­antly reduce his dir­ect work for Microsoft Cor­por­a­tion, Bill reflects upon what got him star­ted in the first place and what kept him ahead of the ‘com­pet­i­tion’. The video provides a brief glimpse into the char­ac­ter that foun­ded and guided Microsoft. Regard­less of whether you love him or hate him, he is indeed a fas­cin­at­ing character.

Skip ahead to the 40 second mark, to the seg­ment titled “How the teen­age Gates and his friend Paul Allen got access to a com­puter”. The story accord­ing to Gates was that he and his friends were allowed to hack on a company’s com­puter “like mon­keys” at night to find bugs. He spent hours read­ing manu­als and exper­i­ment­ing to fig­ure out this “fas­cin­at­ing puzzle”. How­ever, they were stuck at the “tinker­ing” stage until they stumbled across the source code in a rub­bish bin. It was only then could the mon­keys evolve.

I don’t think the pro­du­cers of the show real­ised the sig­ni­fic­ance of this admis­sion, since they quickly cut to another seg­ment. Read­ing between the lines, Gates is essen­tially con­fess­ing that he would not have pro­gressed had he and Paul Allen not found the source code. Without this know­ledge, and without this oppor­tun­ity to under­stand and exper­i­ment with how the intern­als of a com­puter worked, Gates and Allen would have been severely con­strained in their abil­ity to found a soft­ware com­pany and develop products

I would go so far as to say that Microsoft owes its very exist­ence to this access to source code.

To any­one with a passing famili­ar­ity to how things worked back then, this comes as no sur­prise. Source code was expec­ted to be free, and this in turn nur­tured a gen­er­a­tion of com­puter hack­ers. But whereas Richard Stall­man saw the amaz­ing poten­tial of this free­dom and wanted to pre­serve it for all, Bill Gates appears to have per­ceived it as an advant­age for him­self that he must deny to others.

LotD:  Gates memo shows user frustration