K12 Open Technologies

Today I was referred to this excellent article by a high school senior from Plano Independent School District in Texas, entitled Open Minds with Open Source (page 46, should your browser not automatically take you there.) It was written by Alex Hirsch, son of Plano ISD's Jim Hirsch, who is a long time open-technologies advocate and former board chair of CoSN. I was particularly taken with his perspectives on open content and invasive copyright enforcement in our digital age...

Last Friday I had the pleasure of hosting a round table on the topic of open source software in education at Technology and Learning's Tech Forum West in Long Beach, CA. Our lively discussion included K-20 classroom teachers and IT people from both education and industry. Topics truly ran the gamut of open source, including desktop applications, security, deployment, perception, web applications like Moodle, and ultra-mobile devices like the Asus EeePC.

It's a little noisy, but I hope you enjoy the recorded discussion and, more importantly, will share your thoughts on the topic!

[ Download - audio/mp3 ]

Cross-posted from Absence of Limitations blog

One of the most helpful non-technical configurations that IT administrators can do is to take all free clip art they can get ahold of, assemble it and categorize it, and give it to every user to make OpenOffice.org more fun and more usable. This is especially beneficial in schools.

Below is a list of a few of my favorite open source applications for the
desktop. Most are available for any platform, and many are available on
the OpenDisc for Windows systems (which you can download here.) It's important to keep in
mind that these applications:

• Are free
• Can be given to students to install and use at home
• Offer educators the opportunity to introduce new technologies in their educational environement
• Provide essential skills that are transferrable to applications of similar types in the commercial world

One of the benefits of open source software is that anyone can
download the source code, throw together a feature or two, and make
it available to anyone who wants it. This sounds great, and is great,
but until recently I'm not sure how much it happened on an individual
level. I know I don't remember writing up any cool new features.

The Extensions capability changes this, though. Visit
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/
and you're in a Disneyland of cool features, ranging from nice little
add-ons to immensely helpful. If you're evaluating OpenOffice.org, or
have been running it for years, you don't have the whole picture
without investigating the extensions.

I've described a few of my favorites in this blog entry, but
you're going to want to at least read the names of all of them.

How can a great specification that is desperately needed by K-12 schools by definition not have any certified solutions?

Switching to an open source product like OpenOffice.org is a less well-traveled path than products that have been around longer, or are more widely used. No plan can take everything into account, but I have found five basic principles for a good transition.

On Feb. 15, I had the opportunity to partcipate in an excellent discussion on Creative Commons, Open Content, and Copyright, hosted by Steve Hargadon for the new Classroom 2.0 Live Discussions series. The panelists for the discussion included...

ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) has posted a feature article from the February/March issue of Learning and Leading with Technology entitled "Social Networking for the K-12 Set," written by yours truly (free download through March 2008.) In the article, I discuss the potential of social networking tools, the development of the SUSD Teacher and Student Community sites, and the impact that their use has had on our education environment.

This article also offers an example of a successful open- source based education technology project in every respect...

Lawrence Lessig is perhaps the most prolific proponent of open content and copyright reform in the nation. He is the former CEO and continuing board member of the Creative Commons organization. His talks are always inspiring, thought provoking, and controversial, yet, in my view, foundational to our understanding of content and freedom in the digital age.

I particularly enjoyed this video...