Taking sharing to the classroom
Frederick Noronha
Frederick Noronha
The case for Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) in schools
Schools the world over increasingly seek to harness the benefits of
deploying software in the classroom. To educate their students about
its potential, to improve the upcoming generation's knowledge and
overall efficiency, or to allow them to better wield a vital tool of
tomorrow's “knowledge economy”.
What role, if any, can Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) play
in bringing closer the promised benefits of this new world?
FOSS in schools has its critics who have voiced their concern about
its perceived (more so in earlier times, but less now) difficulty of
use; the fact that it is proprietorial software which still dominates
the marketplace and even the syllabi; and FOSS users' difficulty to
find support easily. Often, teachers and parents are more familiar
with proprietorial software. Besides resistance to change, there is
also a problem of not knowing where to get started with FOSS.
These issues can be addressed in diverse ways. As FOSS becomes easier
to use, more visible, and support skills are easy to build specially
in regions like South Asia, there are growing reasons for FOSS to be
adopted in the classroom. FOSS's potential needs to be better
understood.
WHY FOSS, OPEN CONTENT
Using FOSS is increasingly seen as an issue that goes beyond just
costs or affordability. Even though it is important that this form of
sharable software doesn't cost huge sums of money to buy and install.
And you are not pushed into costly, almost-compulsory software
upgrades.
Richard M. Stallman, the founding-father of the Free Software
Movement, argues that schools should exclusively use free software,
for a range of reasons. Other arguments have also come up, like the
view that FOSS is "stable, secure, feature rich, and easy to learn. It
is also free."1 Or that proprietorial software "products are
expensive, and require sacrifices in our school budgets to deploy."
A Free and Open Source Awareness Campaign2 in Schools held in Nepal
from November 2006-March 2007 gave even more crucial reasons for
advocating FOSS in schools. These included offering users the freedom
to control their own computers and to cooperate with others, resulting
in cash savings and permitting students to “learn how software works”.
In addition, FOSS spells a wide choice and easy availability of tools.
It ensures that there are no blocks due to price-barriers or
permission-barriers. Students are encouraged to study software at a
deeper level. Adequate availability of affordable software encourages
creativity.
Most free software and open source software packages can be freely
downloaded over the internet, or are often available for purchase, at
a reasonable price, on a CD. Some of these are also made available
with FOSS magazines. In South Asia, India has a regularly-published
FOSS magazine.3
Free Software gives you access to the tools the user needs in
abundance. For instance, the Debian 'distro'4 (or distribution, i.e. a
set of FOSS programs) comes with over 187335 different software
packages.
Edubuntu6 is doing a very impressive job of collating educational
software and putting them all in one place.
Edubuntu is a member of the Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux distributions
which is designed for use in classrooms. Wikipedia points out that
Edubuntu has been developed in collaboration with teachers and
technologists in multiple nations.
Adds the Wikipedia, “Edubuntu is built on top of the Ubuntu base, and
incorporates the LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) thin client
architecture, as well as education-specific applications, aimed at the
6-18 years age group.”
So are other free software projects like DebianEdu.7 DebianEdu
describes itself as “a project about utilising Debian to make the best
distribution for educational purposes”.
Skolelinux8 is the name of the custom Debian distribution which is
produced by the DebianEdu project. It is also named Debian-Edu.
Skolelinux is a free software project founded in Norway, now
supporting all languages present in Debian. Debian Jr.9 calls itself
“Debian for children from 1 to 99 (years of age)”. Its goal is to
“make Debian an OS (operating system) that children from all ages will
want to use”, with a focus initially on eight-year-olds, and then
spreading its focus from the 7-12 range.
OFSET10, or the Organisation for Free Software in Education and
Teaching, is an organisation whose goal is to promote the development
of free software for the educational system and teaching. By law
rooted in France, it sees itself as a multi-cultural entity with
founding members all over the world, run with the Net as its main
medium of communication amongst its administration council.
OFSET, the France-headquartered group, has tools which could be used
in a wide range of contexts. Some were specifically for the world of
education -- like Dr. Geo and GCompris.
The KDE Education Project11 says it is “developing high-quality
educational software for the K Desktop Environment.” It touches on
languages, mathematics, science, teaching tools, early development and
miscellaneous categories.
FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL
There are so many FOSS tools for varying levels of education, and just
to illustrate take a look at what's available for the primary level.
Some of the tools available as part of KDE's education project are:
Kanagram anagram game; the classical hangman game KHangMan; the
program to help revise Latin called Klatin; Klettres that aims to
learn the alphabet and then read some syllables in different
languages; Kverbos to study Spanish verb forms; KVocTrain vocabulary
trainer; and Parley, a vocabularly trainer too.
GCompris12 is an educational software suite comprising of over 100
activities for children aged 2 to 10. GCompris includes software on
computer discovery, algebra, science, geography, games, reading, and
others (learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector
drawing, cartoon making).
Childsplay13 is a suite of educational games for young children, like
gcompris. Tux Paint14 is a free, award winning drawing program for
children ages 3 to 12. It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound
effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who helps guide children as
they use the program. JILetters15 assists young children with learning
the Western alphabet through visual and auditory means. It lets
children memorise letters from visual cues.
And this is only a small part of what's available. There are dozens of
other projects, at the higher levels of education too.
FOR TEACHERS
There are tools for educators like teacher's CdToolbox16, a
CD-ROM/DVD-ROM with plenty of free sofwares interesting for teachers
and others. Cbt Combo17 is a combination authoring and playback
program for courses of instruction. Keduca18 is a test tool. Open
Admin19 for Schools administration program stores a wide range of
student and other information (demographics, attendance, discipline,
report cards, fees system, etc).
School Admin Project20 is a Web-based application to provide an
interface to a school's registration process. Likewise, OpenKiosk21 is
an open-source multi-platform kiosk system. Then there's
Site@School22, a Content Management System (CMS) to manage and
maintain the website of a primary school. Other programs are
SchoolTool23, MainBrain School24, and open BIBLIO25 (a school library
administration tool).
FROM SOUTH ASIA
Initiatives have come in from other regions of South Asia too.
NepaLinux is an initiative to create a localised GNU/Linux
distribution in the Nepali language. From November 2006 to March 2007,
a Free and Open Source Awareness Campaign in Schools was held in
Nepal. In November 2007, Bryan Berry26 wrote via the FOSSNepal list,
to say programmers were wanted to “develop children's learning
activities for the One Laptop Per Child XO using Squeak Smalltalk and
Etoys.”
In Bangladesh, the school based telecenter project of RI SOL has
launched internet-enabled telecenters in two madrasas, in Khulna and
Dhaka.
In Sri Lanka, Dr Shahani Markus Weerawarana, chief technology officer
of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, said the ICT Agency is “currently in
the process of collaborating with the Ministry of Education and I am
actively seeking to [inform] the policy makers on what is happening
around the world regarding FOSS in schools.”
From Pakistan, Sufyan Kakakhel27 points to work being done by the OLPC
(One Laptop Per Child) initiative. OLPC Inc (One Laptop Per Child
project of the MIT) has the office of Director Education for Asia
Region in Islamabad. India too has taken on work with GNU/Linux in
schools, its most ambitious project being in the southern state of
Kerala, where impressive work has been done.
CONCLUSIONS
We can see more than just hints of the varied and many possibilities
that FOSS opens up for schools in South Asia. There is clearly a
profusion of tools available, which needs to be adequately exploited.
As of now, however, the lack of easy-to-access FOSS skills could cause
a setback in the spread of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in
South Asia.
The lack of widespread awareness of these tools among educators, and
importantly those drafting the curricula, remains a matter for
concern. But there is clearly a need to give FOSS a close look in our
classrooms.
USEFUL LINKS
* A quick tour of a Linux classroom: http://k12ltsp.org/classroom.html
* Schools Alliance http://www.openschoolsalliance.org
* Comics are being used to encourage school students and teachers
to learn computing and FOSS. See an example here:
http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/82/Hai_Ti_Comics_SchoolNet_Namibia.pdf
* Edubuntu: http://www.edubuntu.org/
* Eduforge: http://eduforge.org/
* FLOSS4Edu: http://wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu
* FOSS Education (Wikibooks) http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FOSS_Education
* Free (Libre) Open Source Software (FLOSS) holds a tremendous
potential for K-12 education. http://www.k12opensource.com
* Free and Open Source Software in K-12 Education.
http://blog.k12opensource.com/
* Games: Tux Games http://www.tuxgames.com/ and Linux Games
* Kerala logs Microsoft out of schools
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/02microsoft.htm
* Linux For Kids http://www.linuxforkids.org/
* Linux in Schools Project: http://k12linux.org
* Live CD-ROM of free software for schools: OFSET
http://www.ofset.org/freeduc-cd/
* Using Linux With Kids, From 3 to 7, an introduction
http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/cltc/cltc_pb-02.html
* Why should open source software be used in schools?
http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html
--
Frederick Noronha :: +91-832-2409490
Writing, editing, alt.publishing, photography, journalism
Books from Goa: http://tiny.cc/goabooks