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

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

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...

Jay Pfaffman, an instructional technology professor from the University of Tenessee recently wrote an excellent piece which appeared on the LinuxInsider site entitled, It's Time to Consider Open Source Software. As can be expected, this generated a fair amount of debate and comment on the CETPA (California Education Technology Professionals Association) listserv, which revealed a surprisingly prevalent perspective that using open source software somehow equates to "switching" or replacing existing applications only.