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Tech for Teaching Tech

Learning to code is perhaps the most obvious gateway for introducing an open-source based freedom-software solution into a school. The people involved are likely to be the teachers most familiar with I.T. and might have at least heard of the concept of freedom software or at least open source. When I am thinking about how to get Free (Libre) Open Source Software principles taught and practised in schools, then, code for teaching coding is one of the easier routes that comes to mind.

Hedy (https://hedy.org/) teaches coding, from zero to real Python in 15 levels. It is open source, including its lesson plans. I now self-host it for my young children. It's great. Check it out!

However, this article is not about that, but about where to start, how to introduce the idea in the first place, in a world where the children, the parents, the teachers, and likely even the school's governors and advisors know only YouTube and Microsoft.

Reaching the Mind-Set

The situation at my children's primary school (ages 4 to 11) is, I think, virtually no awareness at all of the gulf between proprietary tech business models and the values and principles of using technology that we ourselves can control.

Here is one of the issues they deal with daily: playing a video to entertain the youngest children, or to teach something about volcanoes to the older ones, as far as I can tell they often turn to YouTube... and then after a few minutes comes the advert. The teacher clicks the button to cut short the advert and resume the intended video. (I learnt this from a young child.)

Now, I am guessing the teacher thinks their only alternatives are either to search for a suitable video on an “official” educational videos provider (perhaps expecting they won't likely find the one they want there because “it's on YT”), or to ask the school to pay for a special YT subscription for teachers.

Whereas I am thinking, choose your videos at lesson planning time, then ask if there's some I.T. support for playing those videos on some other “web site” (which should be controlled by the school and could well be made with open-source software).

Now, I am the techie type. My conversational skill goes along the lines of: “Didn't you know there is open source freedom software for doing all these things... It's great... I can build some... What do you mean you haven't been trained on that, you don't have such alternatives, and you don't even really understand what I'm talking about?”

It's easy for us (techies) to come up with things we want the teacher to do better/differently, especially technical solutions like copying/playing videos a different way, but today my issue is about the initial approach. I'm afraid to talk to a teacher because they're working so hard to just manage to teach at all, it feels too rude to even mention that seeing a bit of the beginning of an advert is anything to complain about.

If I suggest that it really bothers me that my child sees bits of adverts... I can't take myself seriously, I can't honestly say that. We discuss at home what adverts are trying to do, and why, and what the alternatives are. That's not what bothers me. My child will be fine with that. If I were in an open tech advice team for the school, I would certainly be ready with ad blockers, self-hosted media players, all kinds of technical options, but that's for later.

My real goal is I want the school as a whole to learn how technology can be opened, studied, modified and controlled by ordinary people.

Maybe it would be useful to approach a school teacher, gently, just asking what they think of the situation and what they might wish for if they could have something different, and letting them know I/we are not criticising them but just interested in the wider issue of adapting technology to suit our values. Maybe that way I/we could start some awareness that alternatives are possible. Maybe that way I/we could make contact with someone in more of a position of power to change the tech that is being used. Somewhere, maybe, some “IT support” person or remote department is hiding. Maybe they exist and are approachable. (Or maybe the school's IT literacy and awareness comes only through Google/MS marketing channels. Ugh... that sadly seems entirely possible.)

I recently plucked up some courage and tried emailing the head teacher, asking who I could talk to about IT decision making and procurement, explaining why I'm interested. I'm advised by friendly supporters that I should speak to them in person instead, I'm much more likely to get a response that way.

Ada & Zangemann

There is a book, a children's story, that really “nails it”. It gets to the heart of how owning her skateboard (in this case) means wresting control of it away from its maker (Zangemann) by reprogramming it so that it obeys only Ada.

Ada & Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream

This September (2023) “Ada & Zangemann” became available in English, originally being in German, and I bought a copy. It's great! I want every library and school to have it! (I can lend one copy but I am not willing to donate lots.)

Maybe my child would like to bring Ada & Zangemann in to school and ask the teacher to read it. Sometimes in the younger years they read a child's favourite book for the whole class. Is that too pushy? Maybe not. Or I could show it to the computer skills teacher and ask what they think of it.

How Can We Help?

I would like to circle back to the reason why I mentioned this issue (YT and ads). Not because it's the one particular issue I care about, but because it's an indication of the level of awareness of open/freedom tech.

It shows us that asking the teachers to use, for example, a free (libre) school information system like AlekSIS for example, is way too big a jump. I suspect the teachers (including the head teacher) would not comprehend why that might be a good idea. They need basic introductory level education about the difference between the goals and values of proprietary vs. open/libre systems.

I have been wondering for a long time what I can best do to help.

As an open-source dev, the first thing that came to my mind was, I could pick an open ed-tech software project and work on enhancements to it.

Then I began to think, what we really need is not so much to build the software (we know we can build it, and many parts already exist), but what we need more is people to go and demonstrate the existing software, show teachers what's possible, explain why it gives them the power to control their environment to suit their needs and values. That way we build a demand for the open tech, and have the possibility of the schools (and governments and charities) beginning to pay for developing the tech.

I have been wondering whether there are members of free-software organisations (FSFE, CEDO, OpenEdTech, and many more) who might go into school teacher-training days and deliver a presentation about why FLOSS matters. Does anyone do that? Might anyone have prepared a presentation already that could be suitable if the opportunity were presented? Because that is something that I think we need, that is beyond what I could manage to do myself.

And then I realised what I have been looking for is a group of people who share a common goal. Who can work together. And that is why I am pleased to have discovered CEDO, along with OpenEdTech, FSFE, and others.

I am inspired by open tech projects such as Öppna skolplattformen, Hermannpost (English tr.), AlekSIS and more.

It seems to me there is a lot of open tech existing that is aimed at higher education (such as Moodle and many other computer-based learning technologies). For younger children there are lots of small projects aimed at providing a computer-based lesson in a particular subject (learn maths, learn spelling, and so on). For in-person lessons there are lots of open/free resources (videos, pages to print on paper for any subject, activity ideas).

And then there are of course all the IT tools that we IT-literate people know about: ad blockers, self-hosted video platforms, alternative open-source ways to do almost everything without involving MS/Google.

And I'm coming back to... how do we introduce these to the teachers and the school administrators?

Other Ways to Help

While I'm thinking... Other topics I want to mention when I've more time...

• I ordered the FSFE's pack of stickers and posters. I highly recommend it. You can ask for specific topics if you like; I asked for thier selection. It includes some Ada & Zangemann stickers and lots of good FSFE campaign cards and posters (Public Money: Public Code; Free Your Android; lots more). So if anyone (local) asks me, I'm more ready. But still shy to take them to anybody.

• Translation/promotion. I often read about inspiring projects such as those I mentioned, and I would like to share them more widely. To help, I would like to make translations into English (and encourage others to translate to their languages). While readers can use for example Firefox's built-in translation (try it if you haven't), there are still big advantages to publishing a translation (accuracy, convenience). I published a translation myself for Hermannpost but I expect almost nobody knows. (The original author didn't respond to my email about it.) It would be much more efficient if we worked together. Could “we” organise that?

• I wonder if we could try to tap into “maker spaces” or “hack spaces” where there are lots of people interested in having control over their own hardware, to see if we can interest them in bringing open software for their community as well.

• We should link up with other campaigning groups. One I have been meaning to contact is Privacy International in the UK as I read they have a special interest in ed-tech.

• I keep considering to donate a little money to the many organisations supporting open ed tech. Donating money is something I do from time to time, but isn't really right for me now as I don't have a steady well-paid job and I am working in other ways to help them. Really I want to indicate my support. I try to sign up for accounts and newsletters and the like, to show them that I'm interested.

• How do “we” (communities like us) get involved in setting up service providers for all the open-tech that we want schools to use, so the schools can pick “that product/service” for “that price” and know there is support included, and know it is approved/trusted by the relevant authorities so it's “safe and simple” for the school?

• “Fair Digital Education Coalition” (CEDO), based in the Netherlands — petition and CEDO-EU discussion room
• EU project in progress, Open Digital Competences Training for School Educators — “The courses created within this project aim exactly to the training of school educators on the Open Digital Competences”
• Open EdTech association “Designing an open world of quality lifelong learning”
• My list of Open EdTech Resources — links to news stories, rationale for open edtech such as at EFF/FSFE/GNU, groups such as CEDO, existing aligned projects small and large, ...
• My mid-2023 article, Codename Ed: for a wholesome future aligned with educational values

Find more articles tagged... #openEdTech #EdTech #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach

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Federated communication for public authorities

Communicate confidently and respectfully with the public

Congratulations to GNU/Linux.ch and FSFE-CH for this initiative! I love what you're doing here. I think maybe I want to get involved.

I'm a FLOSS dev and thinker, and recently blogged about how we need to be doing exactly this kind of campaign. I'm delighted that you are! Though I'm no PR expert I have some ideas. In my Social Media Links for A People-Centred Community, the messaging I made up begins,

You! You, university! You, sports club! You, local library, city council, school, church, youth group! Your social media links could look like this:

Join us in our own spaces! — [Mastodon] – [Pixelfed] – [Friendica] – [PeerTube] ... — [Blog] – [Fediverse] – [Matrix] ... We are also on commercial media: — [G] [A] [F] [A] [M] ...

It shows visually the desired emphasis on values, and suggests the organisation should include an footnote or pop-up pointing out to their visitors why they recommend channels that match the organisation's values, in contrast to the dratted Big Tech.

Now, it really helps that the fine people at GNU/Linux.ch and FSFE-CH have created a site along these lines. Now it's been done once, it makes it a whole lot easier to adapt and grow the idea. Targeting one specific sector is a smart move: readers in that sector feel it's more “personal” to them.

So, next, can we adapt the idea for other target sectors?

Let's make... “fedi-uni”, “fedi-sport”, “fedi-library”, “fedi-city”, “fedi-school”, “fedi-church”, “fedi-youth” campaign pages?

And share them.

I think I want to connect, maybe get involved. I have reached out to them.

Related:

• Social Media Links for A People-Centred Community

#fediverse #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach #openEdTech

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This is how we explain to children the importance of software freedom!

Ada & Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream

I've been waiting for this ever since I heard about it last year. Now available in the UK, I bought mine from Hive Books .

“In this hopeful story Ada and her friends join a movement that started back in 1983. Their courageous adventure of software freedom and learning how technology works is a wonderful way to introduce young people everywhere to the joys of tinkering!” —Zoë Kooyman, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation

How powerful! What great makers and engineers we can inspire! Let's get a copy into every library and every school!

UPDATE: Look! David Revoy, awesome software-freedom artist famous for Pepper&Carrot, drew this impression of Ada — great to print as a poster or (dimmed) as a screen wallpaper — creative-commons licensed CC-BY-SA. Hi-res downloads, licence, etc.

Grown-ups: read Cory Doctorow's book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (ebook, audiobook, USA); or from Hive (hardback, UK). “When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls. The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction... Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate.”

#awesomeFOSS #outreach #openEdTech #openHardware

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Whichever way the petition goes, the media focus there will on Google pushing their Big Tech, likely framed as “generosity”, which we recognise as an anti-pattern. It would be good if we could avoid wasting our energy engaging directly with this news story but instead, riding the wave of it, promote our own story.

Could we write a story something like this?

“

Having placed all of their eggs in Google's gift basket of once shiny Chromebooks, now rusting away, some schools react by begging the Big Tech for an extension. Meanwhile the [Codename: Ed Foundation?] is preparing to show school leaders a more wholesome future aligned with educational values, with the launch of *[Codename: Ed Suite?]*

What is this project? [Codename: Ed Suite?] is a sustainable and independently supported platform for students and teachers. The solution comprises non-proprietary education software systems, chosen by each school according to its needs from a diverse catalogue, and running on commodity hardware.

Non-proprietary educational technologies, known collectively as Open EdTech, are tools that provide learning support functions in the classroom. At the same time, whereas proprietary products which incentivised to push their users into behaviours that maximise their vendors' profits, Open EdTech stands in contrast to serve a higher purpose. Use of Open EdTech instead fosters a learning environment that encourages young people to discover how they themselves can play a part in choosing, building and modifying the technology around them. From this in turn they learn to recognise how wielding this agency over their tools leads progressively to their technology becoming aligning to serving their own needs and interests, and those of their peers and society. With these new skills and ways of thinking as inventors, engineers and scientists, young people develop an outlook of taking charge of their environment, standing them in good stead both in the humanities and in technical vocations.

Far from being produced and controlled by a single company, Open EdTech comprises components developed by specialist organisations of all kinds. The FOSS model of development and licensing guarantees freedom from lock-in. Schools can have these products managed, maintained, further developed and adapted by any willing supplier whom they choose, local or international, commercial or voluntary, public or private sector or academic. Commodity tablet or laptop hardware is sourced from multiple vendors, enabling choice of custom or off-the-shelf designs, and flexible options for low cost replacement or repair.

What is this Foundation? The [Codename: Ed Foundation?] ... co-ordinates the supply and management of Open EdTech products and services, for the benefit of all kinds of educational institutions everywhere. Its role is assistive, not controlling. ...

”

I wanted to make three points with this post. Listed from most immediate to most important:

1. Taking advantage of news/political situations arising, like this one, to put out a message drawing attention to our goals, being more likely to be read and shared at this time (along with any other standard marketing techniques, which I mostly don't ever think about).

2. Having a go at expressing our vision concisely, in the form of a news flash, focusing the outsider's attention on what's possible and why. Imagining what we want, and describing it as if it already exists, I think is a powerful exercise towards making it possible.

3. I think the key thing we need is a central banner under which we can unite. Together we can better pool resources for making an impact when showing politicians and government what is possible and explaining why it's wholesome and valuable. There are great open ed tech projects and people in many countries, already aligned with our goals, some aware of one another and some not. We need to be reaching out to them and creating for ourselves a central-ish home, sharing a branding, slogans, meetings, outreach resources, technical resources, links to one another's people and projects, and so on.

I would love to be part of such a group, a movement, and to have a role in building that.

Resources:

• My list of Open EdTech Resources — links to news stories, rationale for open edtech such as at EFF/FSFE/GNU, groups such as CEDO, existing aligned projects small and large, ...
• Open EdTech association “Designing an open world of quality lifelong learning”

#openEdTech #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach

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Join us in our own spaces! — [Mastodon] – [Pixelfed] – [Friendica] – [PeerTube] ... — [Blog] – [Fediverse] – [Matrix] ... We are also on commercial media: — [G] [A] [F] [A] [M] ...

with an explanatory footnote or pop-up:

Note: * Our primary social and discussion spaces belong to us. They are under our own control. In these spaces our organisation's values and rules apply: for example on membership eligibility, acceptable topics, age limits, real name requirements, historical archiving, data privacy, spamming, and other matters. * Accounts we hold on commercial services are subject to each respective service's control and terms and conditions, and as such are not under our control and do not necessarily comply with our own values and rules.

I want us to create a campaign of outreach, which we can show to organisations, which clearly and persuasively shows why and how they can have their own social and discussion spaces, and why they should elevate their own above commercial ones in their own outreach materials.

Many organisations currently promote only commercial social media. Typically they show a list of icons of the biggest commercial media. Some operate one or more self-owned social media, but where they show a list of options do not show any distinction between their own and the others. The software that organisations use to create their website often adds another bias by making it easy to show and link to big commercial (and mainly older) social media, and harder to include the icons and links to self-owned (as well as newer commercial) channels.

If I were to begin in grass-roots style, I might simply write to some organisations local to me. However, we could get the message across much more effectively if we work together.

• We should put some effort into refining the wording, the presentation.
• We need an artist's help with mock-ups.
• We should invent a name, a branding, and a web site that we direct people to read about the proposition.
• We should link it to related campaign issues such as privacy, autonomy, owning one's tools, free software, local economy.
• We should investigate personalising the message: “this screen-shot shows your current web site; what do you think of this mock-up?”.
• Of course we must direct the recipient to sources of support, ranging from learning more about the issue to how to obtain self-owned social media.

Then we should find ways of contacting a large number of relevant recipients.

Who could co-ordinate something like this? I am not a campaigns organiser. I would love to find people who can take on a project like this. Could you help?

Update 2024-04-30

Here is how the most excellent Framasoft does it:

Update 2024-04-30

Here is an idea. Replace silo icons with images of their owner.

(FB) (X-tw) (Inst) –> faces of (Zuck) (Musk) (Zuck)

This is an open letter. Please use, adapt, study, improve, and share it. I hereby license it CC-BY-SA.

Related:

• FediGov: Social Media Links for Government Websites

#fediverse #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach #openEdTech

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I wish our children could grow up making their digital footprints in their own digital gardens. In the current system our children visit shopping malls run by the Big Tech companies whose business model is to find every way to maximise profit from their “users”.

This is my list of Open EdTech resources that I see as helpful toward my goals.

Education Technology here includes a wide range of technology used in education, including school information systems management, communication with parents, and delivery of teaching, and the devices used by teachers and pupils. The curriculum of IT lessons is adjacent and has some overlap.

Open Education Technology is based on open principles including open standards, open data, open source software, and open models of development, procurement and business.

This page lists resources relating to Open EdTech advocacy, development, news, etc.

The focus here is on general adoption of education technology, rather than specific pieces of software or specific functions. Specific instances may be included as examples. The focus may be biased to the UK, although most of the issues involved are international.

Open EdTech Advocacy, Campaigns, Petitions

• [Dutch based] Coalition Fair Digital Education (CEDO/CFDE) — “to realise a fair digital education system based on free software”:
  • #CEDO-EU:matrix.org matrix chat | @CEDO@mastodon.nl on Mastodon/fediverse
  • petition Free children from the digital stranglehold | manifesto (PDF) “for a different policy in the Netherlands for the digital, online aspects of education”; Belgian/French at educode.be; French at Halte au contrôle numérique
  • presentation at MCH2022
  • ISOC.nl Working Group announced
• FSFE on education (search) — Free Software Foundation Europe's campaigns and resources on free software in education
• GNU: Why Educational Institutions Should Use and Teach Free Software — old and still relevant manifesto
• Privacy International: EdTech needs Schooling — recorded talk — EdTech is specialism of PI campaigns mgr Kaitlyn
• [German] Teckids, SchulFrei — teaching kids real FOSS; Matrix; related to AlekSIS
• Human Rights Watch campaign: “How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?” — “Students Not Products” — Children’s Rights Violations by Governments That Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic
• Lernen wie die Profis [Swiss/German] a Zürich based campaign group of FSFE, includes a list of FOSS useful for schools
• [German] Schools section at digitalcourage.de — including Network for Free School Software — with slogans, graphics, introductory resources on these issues, aimed at children, parents, teachers.

Open EdTech Development: Software Platforms

“Platform” here means, loosely, a software and/or service designed to have multiple different functionalities plugged in to it.

Big, established platforms:

• Moodle (mainly for teaching/learning)
• Nextcloud (mainly for “office” applications)
• Big Blue Button (mainly for “live” video-conference teaching)
• Odoo (mainly for business management applications)

Upcoming and interesting platforms:

• Open EdTech — “designing a global Next-Gen educational platform that is 100% free and open source”, a new organisation started by Moodle CEO Martin Dougiamas
• [German] dBildungscloud and predecessor HPI School Cloud — “over a million students”
• [German] SchulNetzConzept (interview) — based around Nextcloud — “Several hundred thousand students”
• AlekSIS, the Free School Information System (at FOSDEM 2022, code) — related to Schul-Frei, TecKids
• OERu technology / OERu-tools — FOSS systems for delivery of Open Educational Resources
• XNET in Spain; especially their DD: a tool for the Democratic Digitalisation of Education
• Unsere digitale Schule [German] and description in English

Open EdTech Development: Applications

• [German] HermannPost — adapted Matrix server and Fluffychat app for their school's needs
• [Swedish] Öppna skolplattformen FOSS app replacement for official school app (code, witter)
• [USA] A school wellbeing communication app — “student communication with school therapists and coaches” (Matrix-based, in development, no public info AFAIK)

Open EdTech in the News

News collections. (And perhaps, exceptionally, some individual articles.)

• Privacy International: EdTech: Surveillance Tracker
• Sphere Transgression Watch

Why it matters: what's wrong with giving Them our (children's) data?

• Popular K-12 Tool Edmodo Shuts Down — includes what can happen to the data when a company shuts down.

EdTech and Government

• UKAuthority search:schools
• PubHubs.net and Public Spaces

Related Articles

• My mid-2023 article, Codename Ed: for a wholesome future aligned with educational values

#openEdTech #EdTech #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach

Follow/Feedback/Contact: RSS feed · Fedi follow this blog: @julian​@wrily.foad.me.uk · matrix me · Fedi follow me · email me · julian.foad.me.uk Donate: via Liberapay All posts © Julian Foad and licensed CC-BY-ND except quotes, translations, or where stated otherwise