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Knowledge Should Be Free

Published by Robert Pogson May 21st, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 1 Comment

When a father teaches his son how to “hunt” or a mother teaches her children how to get along with people, there is no price attached to the transaction. The same goes for all knowledge. The world is a better place when people know more. That’s one of the reasons I love FLOSS(Free/Libre Open Source Software) because you are allowed to know anything and everything about the software. No one keeps secrets in FLOSS.

With FLOSS, one acquires with a licence the right to use, examine, modify and copy the software. That’s knowledge for $0. That’s knowledge with no strings attached. That’s how IT should be.

Educators know this too and with the low operational cost of educational transactions on-line, it’s the right way to do education as well. Some major universities are collaborating to offer some courses on-line for $0, making the world a better place, one educated person at a time.

see Harvard, MIT to partner in $60 million initiative to offer free online classes to all – Metro Desk – Local news updates from The Boston Globe

- Robert Pogson

Mind-sets in Software

Published by Robert Pogson April 22nd, 2012 in Linux in Education, Teaching and technology. 26 Comments

Some personal history about software:

first software written by me in Fortran II-d on IBM 1620 (BCD computer made with germanium transistors and magnetic core memory), fall 1968,
first use of GNU/Linux by me, fall 2000, and
first realization that FLOSS was the right way to do IT, fall 2003.

My early career in IT was about number-crunching, using computers as programmable calculators on various data-sets related to science and technology. As a physicist, I began to write software to automate data-collection as well. I applied what I knew to personal activities like photography and ballistics and building my first house with “the little woman”.

My latest career was teaching and it was natural to use IT to collect and analyze data on the performance of students but also to use IT for teaching and later to teach students how to do IT for their lives. Before I used GNU/Linux I owned a variety of PCs, some home-built but I used DOS and Lose 3.1 on them. After a few years I was using Lose ’95 in a classroom and the damned machines were frequently crashing, just like Bill Gates’ experience (He laughed. I didn’t.). I switched to Caldera GNU/Linux and was suddenly and dramatically free of crashes.

I used GNU/Linux ever since in my classrooms wherever and whenever I could “get away” with it. That was the usual case. In 2003, however, things changed again. I was not only to teach computer-subjects to students but I had my first computer lab with 1:1 student:PC ratio. We started with Lose ’98 but I soon used my personal computer to run the whole lab by LTSP! The students and I were amazed to see 30 students running all their applications on one ordinary PC running GNU/Linux and not crashing. It was faster, too. Then, when I actually taught Computer Science, it dawned on me, that FLOSS was the right way to do IT.

Teaching/learning is identical to the FLOSS process of writing software/learning to write software. It’s the right way to do IT. Instead of having students watch, learn and write software as assignments. I gave them open-ended projects that could grow. I challenged them to explore different strategies, software designs and to share all their work with each other. Just like Metcalfe’s Law (the power of a network varies as the square of the number of nodes…) the power of a class of students using FLOSS this way is huge. Brilliant ideas emerge from classes of ordinary students. Students learn to analyze any problem into chunks of reasonable size. They learn what doesn’t work, what works better and to choose what works best in writing and using software. It’s a natural fit and brings the real world into the classroom making everything fit. The subject matter includes the students. It is not something artificial imposed on them.

We had some fun times over the years with FLOSS. Whether it was writing tic-tac-toe as a class or having contests to install LAMP quicker than the other guy, everything was easy and the students did most of the work. I lead, followed or got out of their way. Even students who were scheduled against their will to be in my class found interesting stuff to do. Nothing was sacred. We designed and built PCs, software, and networks of PCs, quicker, faster, and cheaper using FLOSS. It has been and continues to be a great adventure.

What set this off was another writer’s revelation of how he learned the exciting concept of changing things that it FLOSS. see Phil Shapiro – OpenSource.org – “The day my mind became open sourced”
It’s a good read and conveys the message clearly. FLOSS is the right way to do IT. It’s something the trolls who comment here have not learned. They haven’t really understood or valued the process. FLOSS is not something dark and evil inside a black box. FLOSS is a living thing interacting with its environment. Non-FREE software is another thing entirely. Some of the greatest frauds of my lifetime have been perpetrated by the likes of M$, seeking to put people and their PCs into sealed boxes so they can collect money for granting people the freedom they already have to run, examine, modify and distribute software.

I recommend Debian GNU/Linux. Not only is it Free Software but the organization is very open and the APT package manager allows managing any number of PCs and servers much easier.

- Robert Pogson

Christmas Was Good For GNU/Linux In Kenya

Published by Robert Pogson April 18th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 0 Comments

There was a major increase in share for GNU/Linux in Kenya over Christmas. Whether this is due to shopping for Christmas or some roll-out by government/business, it is huge, more than doubling in a short time and being several times the size of African share according to NetApplications:

Last year, Kenya decided to increase use of GNU/Linux in schools based on cost. Perhaps that plan is bearing fruit. Unfortunately, their Task Force Report recommends 1 PC per 15 students, not nearly enough.

- Robert Pogson

Intel Studybook Striptease

Published by Robert Pogson April 13th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 3 Comments

Around the world, Intel and others are touting a new tablet designed for education. It’s specs include a new Atom processor, 7 inch screen and education-specific software. The OS is listed as “7″/Android Honeycomb.

With a bit of searching I found an Indian site that listed more details:
“Intel Studybook runs under Windows 7 or Android, and users will have to choose one or the other as this is not a dual-boot system.
…
Intel StudyBook Tablet Price In USA : $200
Intel StudyBook Tablet Price In UK : € 152
Intel StudyBook Tablet Price IN India : Rs 10000″

That’s interesting. Are they going to sell the tablet for the same price for either OS? Will we see identical hardware offered showing the price difference? There are a lot of competitive tablets in this size. Wintel bundling is coming undone. M$ was terrified when PCs started to fall under $1K. They must be hiding under their desks now.

- Robert Pogson

Technology Plans for Schools: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Published by Robert Pogson April 8th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 19 Comments

While digging for information about use of GNU/Linux I stumble upon various educational and technology plans for schools. Some are pretty good, while others are horrible. The bad ones go something like this:

What do we want to do with computers? The answer is usually, “more of the same”.
Make a list of toys: networking, servers, OS, PCs, software and work up a budget.
Oops! We can’t afford much…

The really ugly plans get to the last stage after a year or so of implementing the plan and $millions may have been spent but the full quota of toys is not obtained and there just aren’t enough computers available to make a difference. The reasonably good plans start with a realization that money is scarce and a well-defined target of getting the most IT for the least money brings them to GNU/Linux and donated hardware. It often turns out to be a superior solution to all new stuff that is not affordable. Continue reading ‘Technology Plans for Schools: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’

- Robert Pogson

IT in Education

Published by Robert Pogson March 26th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 23 Comments

A theme of mine for a decade has been using IT more fully in education to make education more effective and efficient. Big points in the list include:

using FLOSS and GNU/Linux on desktops,
using thin clients,
using servers,
in-school databases and web applications to bring the strengths of the web to a school without clogging the connection to the Internet, and
judging all purchases and acquisitions by price/performance.

According to IDC, some of these points are connecting in Australia where, “The Education sector contributes 5.9% of ICT spending in the total Australia market, representing $2,782.2 million in 2012. IDC expects ICT spending within the education sector will grow to $3,162.4 million by 2015, or 2.1% (CAGR) between 2010 and 2015. In 2011 hardware continues to account for the majority of education sector spending (41.7%).

Additional survey results show that the top three organisational priorities within the Education sector are: migrating to new hardware/software platforms, aligning IT/IS with business direction and developing effective business cases for IT investment. These priorities reflect the focus across the sector on putting the right infrastructure and platforms in place to deliver a new kind of reality in the delivery of education.”

It’s all good. As long as they look at price/performance, a lot of good things will happen in education there. I have been in schools that did not even have a server on the LAN let alone realize what a server could do for them. Indexed collections of documents, good web applications to accept and to maintain collections of knowledge, lessons, data, and leveraging the same characteristics that make FaceBook popular on the web to education are too important to miss. Rather than have everything in the cloud accessed by expensive Internet connections, it makes sense to have one or more servers in a school to give those benefits locally. The cross-fertilization that takes place in an academic community is priceless when everyone contributes and is valued for their contributions.

I recommend Debian GNU/Linux for the infrastructure of IT in schools. Debian’s first priority is to provide software that works well. There is no profit motive or desire to lock-in to interfere with educational objectives. It’s all about IT that works.

- Robert Pogson

Barriers to Migration to FLOSS

Published by Robert Pogson February 18th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 27 Comments

Judging by some of the comments to my blog posts, one would expect that lack of applications would be the prime reason for not migrating to FLOSS but it seems the real world sees things differently. A survey in 2010 found these reasons:

Shocking, eh? Lack of functionality is in third place with 16% of respondents. Hey! Only 1% claimed that satisfaction with non-Free software was holding them back! I’ll buy that!

The biggie is lack of knowledge. That does not surprise me as most of the bosses I have had were quite incompetent at choosing IT. They almost always asked someone else and, if that person knows little or nothing about FLOSS, you get what you get. 26% of organizations found no barrier at all. That suggests that if we can fix the “knowledge” part, the other barriers would only affect 48% of organizations. I think “knowing FLOSS” would fix some of those “company policies”, too. In my experience going to FLOSS does free up a lot of resources, so we are down to ~20% of organizations with real rather than imagined barriers to migration.

I did a bit of fixing knowledge by exposing students and staff of K-12 schools to GNU/Linux. We sure freed up resources by bringing “dead” machines back to life and getting better and more reliable service from our PCs. Only a few schools have an official policy against FLOSS. Many just don’t know.

- Robert Pogson

OLPC in Australia

Published by Robert Pogson January 27th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 17 Comments

Thanks to reader oiaohm for providing a link to the following video presentation on the One Laptop Per Child implementation in Australia. Key points:

remote locations require a programme like OLPC to bring in IT to education
focus is on younger students and using IT to teach, not teaching IT
just dumping in the technology does not work
teachers, schools and communities need to be prepared/gotten on board to bring success
students are a huge asset
educational results are dramatic
it’s GNU/Linux and they provide both Sugar and GNOME

This documentary is about a programme to bring the XO notebooks to hundreds of thousands of students over the next five years. TCO is about $380 with the local school paying only $80 for training/support. $300 is paid by corporate sponsors such as banks/ISPs in Australia. see http://dev.laptop.org.au/

Note on the presenter’s T-shirt:“No, I will not fix your computer.”

- Robert Pogson

Solution Finds A Problem

Published by Robert Pogson January 25th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 6 Comments

The Chromebook, essentially a browser built into a thin-ish client, has not been wildly successful in the marketplace because many people find it limiting compared to thick clients but there are exceptions. Education has some unique requirements:

Young people are young and inexperienced so a limited environment is a perfect way to protect them from themselves as well as a lot of other dangers in an anything-goes environment.
Schools and educators are not IT experts but need to serve in the place of parents when children are at school.
Students don’t need the latest version of every feature-bloated app. In fact, it’s much easier to teach the important principles of IT using stripped-down minimal software. The important uses of IT in education are efficiently finding, creating, modifying, storing and presenting information. A thin client can do those things better than a thick client because servers can be beefier than thick clients and still fit the budget (and just about everything is in RAM except users’ data).
Oh, yes. Thin clients like Chromebooks cost less to acquire and cost less to maintain simply because they have fewer parts.
Students have wide ranges of ability and a client system that is simpler will be usable by just about every one.
Schools can set up their own servers or web portals as start-pages and make every web application and database in the school system easy to find.
Using thin clients means schools have fewer machines to configure/maintain/upgrade. That costs much less, performs more reliably and is much more secure.

Google has expressed surprise that Chromebooks are popular with schools. I’m not surprised. I’ve been there and done that. Thin clients work in education. A bonus for everyone is that the software is based on Linux so it works for the users/owners and not M$ which provides software to schools to lock-in students and keep revenue flowing, something that is not part of an educational system’s mandate.

- Robert Pogson

OLPC Gets it Right, Finally

Published by Robert Pogson January 7th, 2012 in Linux in Education and technology. 15 Comments

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) was a fine concept but plagued with errors and distractions. The major distraction was having Wintel involved in any way. The prime motivation of Wintel is to make money for Wintel partners not to educate the world. Now OLPC are doing it right:

no more x86; switching to 1gHz ARM, an economical and efficient solution for material cost, capital cost and energy consumption, and
GNU/Linux, the right way to do IT or Android/Linux. GNU/Linux is more efficient than Android/Linux because it’s mostly native code.

On top of the technology which should be appropriate any place on Earth, OLPC is still innovating about how IT can be used in education. That’s huge. Much of the world lacks education and IT. OLPC can foster both.

see OLPC’s XO-3 tablet to debut at CES

- Robert Pogson

Toronto Globe and Mail Seeks Nominees for Technologically Innovative Teachers

Published by Robert Pogson November 11th, 2011 in Linux in Education and technology. 0 Comments

I nominated myself, and GNU/Linux, of course…

see Nominate a tech innovator in the classroom

- Robert Pogson

DIY IT

Published by Robert Pogson November 9th, 2011 in Linux in Education and technology. 5 Comments

The world needs information technology and can makes its own. It does not depend on M$ to provide it. I tell everyone that GNU/Linux is a cooperative product of the world and it works. Every need gets filled. Everyone gets the IT they need.

Too often, trolls, apologists and astroturfers proclaim that such cooperation is “broken” and cannot work for some silly reasons. The truth is out there. Consider education. Teacher, students and schools need content to focus minds. The price of textbooks lately has risen to the point where alternatives are being sought. As a computer teacher I never needed textbooks as the web provided abundance. Now this technology is spreading to other subject areas and one jurisdiction had teachers cooperatively generate content, for pay, for 1/10 the cost of textbooks. On top of the savings, the content can adapt to local circumstances and evolve with the curriculum without having to chuck the whole set of textbooks, ever. This is way more efficient.

Repeatedly commentators repeat tirelessly that such-and-such an application being only available on that other OS requires that other OS. It’s not true. In GNU/Linux, many organizations are large and diverse enough to supply whatever application they need in-house. If they lack the expertise to actually produce software they can hire programmers to develop software to specifications cheaper than they can buy licences for non-Free software. In my own work, I have never needed to pay for software since I switched to GNU/Linux. I found what I needed in repositories or wrote my own. On the other hand I have repeatedly seen schools’ investment in licences vanish as new releases have to be bought for one reason or another.

I recommend Debian GNU/Linux. It has a huge repository and a long history of delivering quality Free Software for ~~free~~ $0.

- Robert Pogson

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My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.