== FSOSS 2007 – Report (rough draft)==

On Thursday October 25th, 2007 I attended the Free Software and Open Source Symposium at Seneca College. This involved a lot of rushing around since there was absolutely no time in between talks to travel to the next talk. Immediately following the opening keynote speech I rushed to “Developing a Linux Administration Course for Beginners” with Mike LeVan from Transylvania University in Kentucky.

Mike is the Associate Professor of Math at the university and he was a very comfortable and well organized speaker. He started off the presentation by asking Why Linux? Why should we be teaching open source? Why is it important? To Mike, it appears that the importance lies in the way that open source can take you away from more conventional and potentially problematic business models. His example was WalMart – sure things are affordable but when you look under the hood there are some unsavoury practices. In a classroom situation, explaining to students how using Linux is a great way to move away from corporations and monopolies can often spark their interest since college students are often learning for the first time to re-examine previously uncontested beliefs about how things are. Another great way to get a student’s interest in Linux would be to have examples where they are already using it and perhaps not aware. Pointing out a cell phone or website where Linux is already in use is a good way to show students the practical application.

The next point is distribution. What flavour of Linux you choose is also dependent on the type of class – Slackware can be great for teaching complete customization all the way up to Ubuntu which is more than likely the easiest Linux to use. Live CDs can be a great option for letting students try a variety of flavours without having to install.

Concluding his talk Mike shows us http://linux-classroom.info which is a site he is working on to create an online textbook with modules for teaching this course. It is based on Moodle and has lab assignments and scripts already, hopefully soon it will be live and educators can benefit from his work.

Interestingly, the next talk I want to report on also focuses on education and open source software but it goes in a totally different direction. Where Mike is building up an open source course online Mark Surman is working on just the opposite. As part of his talk on “Open Sourcing Education in South Africa” Mark explains to us that while South Africa is arguably the “wealthiest” region in Africa, most areas of the country are still not connected to the internet and so in looking at ways to bring open source and education to the people of South Africa, the results have been pointing to physical texts instead of websites.

Mark mentioned that MIT has open courseware where people are free to download and learn with full course material in a wide variety of topics. This is creating a peer to peer university. He is extremely optimistic that all this openess is leading to a prevalence of open culture including business and government. What kind of changes will we see in education in this generation who are growing up with Facebook and the expectation of collaboration? A new pedagogy that can’t even be imagined is coming whether we want it or not.

While both speakers are adamant about the availability of course material being online and in repositories, Mark Surman also comes across as believing in open source as a method of creation, not just an end product. His perspective is on the collaborative nature of developing class materials where Mike’s aim was more on the availability of access and less on the creation of course material. However, I think that Mike is also interested in working on developing his introductory course with other educators to make a course that would work across a wider variety of audiences.

Mark Surman believes in people getting the opportunity to learn math and science. He believes in the importance of having the analytical skills that this learning can give. His talk was very much about making sure that our standard practices of making things “accessible” by using the internet and open source repositories are not the only methods of getting information to the masses. We can take the process of open source, the community aspect, the collaboration, and turn it into physical tools as well.

The talks today, both focusing on education, have inspired me to think differently about learning as well as teaching. As someone who is excited to be a teacher in the future, I found both talks to be riveting and optimistic about a future where learning is something that can be engaged in whatever way works for the student. To be that flexible is admirable. To be able to teach the same material to students in Kentucky as the students in Cape Town would be a dream come true. Using whatever methods are at hand.

The picture of open source that I had before today’s talks was one of community and energetic collaboration but what has been added to that was the prospect of this spirit moving into government structure and the current business models. If this kind of change is possible in those areas then I am excited for that day to come.

Another talk I attended today went to great lengths to try and dilute the meaning of open source. The speakers attempted to propose that the term “open source” is open to interpretation and that we should be willing to let it mean different things to different people. To each their own? I’m not sure I totally agree with that. The Open Source Initiative has 10 rules that create a definition of open source as they promote it. I agree with their definition and feel that the open source that I want to see in education and beyond is one that follows that model as closely as possible. It would be a shame to see the term “open source” lose its meaning and to become something that just means feedback is encouraged or bugs can be opened. Open Source should be something like what Organic tries to be – something you can count on.

This is not to say that business and open source cannot or should not mingle. I would like to see more businesses try and use the open source models and build upon the knowledge base that already exists. It’s going to take more than just steering the ship in a new direction, I believe it might take building a new ship, perhaps a hybrid?

What attracts me to open source is that there is room for learning, teaching, arguing, sharing, helping others, working hard on projects that you believe in and bring a part of something that is bigger than your own interest. Today I walked away from the symposium full of confidence that there is something for me in open source. Even though the projects that I will work on don’t exist yet, the framework is there for me to get started on them. The community exists. There are some really smart people who care a lot about this stuff and will keep it alive while at the same time passing along their enthusiasm and knowledge using tools that get more and more accessible each day.