Of Penguins, Pencils, and Laptops:

Is Education Finally Ready for Open Source?

The Bronx, NY - January 2007

 

One of my podcasting co-hosts, Mark Gura, and I have been discussing the $100 laptop project for several months on popular our weekly series, Podcast for Teachers, Techpod (www.podcastforteachers.org). If you happen not to be familiar with the $100 laptop project, this has been spearheaded by Nicholas Negroponte formerly of MIT.

It is now called the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) because the basic purpose is to provide low cost, durable laptop computers to the children of developing countries. (See www.laptop.org) The prototype of these laptops have gone through wide variations, and brought much criticism over the past year or so and they are never meant to be the “does everything” computer. More pictures of the first prototypes can be seen here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pictures

These are basic models and yet quite revolutionary in several ways. For one, they are very small, have alternate power sources, such as hand powered, can be linked together to form an intranet (wireless broadband that can mesh network) and most of all do not suffer from what the founder dubs “Microsoft bloat.” In the dedicated efforts to keep the cost so very low, the software that is used is open source, which requires a much smaller installation footprint and hardware operation requirements.

Other details in brief:

Linux-based operating system, a dual-mode display, a 500MHz processor, 128MB of DRAM and 500MB of Flash memory. No hard drive, four USB ports and the wireless broadband that creates a mesh network.

In episodes 67 and 68 of Podcast for Teachers Techpod we discuss the merging of another one of my favorite technology trends with the OLPC phenomenon- open source development and software. Open source development occurs when groups of people openly share source code in the development of the programming languages, operating systems, or another application. The purpose is that the community will be able to test and work collaboratively world-wide on the project with many minds and perspectives available that might not otherwise be able to meet and work together. It truly is a community and thereby the content and the product remains “open” that is free for use. Very often a Creative Commons code license is used is to describe use and attribution of the software.

Probably the most famous current example is the operating system Linux (identified with by its mascot of the penguin aka Tux).Related to Linux which has scores of programmers working on it around the world, there are also other Linux-like operating systems available also including Apache, Ubantu, Linspire and more.

For the education sector open source software has been way behind in adoption as schools have stayed mainstreamed primarily on pcs and small number on macs in the younger grades. However, having visited a few educational technology conferences the past two years I have seen a different trend finally being paid interest and the OLPC project could push it even much further again! Let me explain.

At ed tech conference we are seeing an experience in hands-on demonstrations of Linux or Ubantu network labs which are bossily “dumb terminals” hooked up to a server and all gaining internet access and applications from the server.

Hands on experience thru the sessions demonstrate no great loss ion function in this configuration whereas the cost for this lap is a small fraction of a conventional school lap. This is be cause of two major factors 1, the hardware are not stand alone pcs and 2 the operating systems are open source. Hardware costs and upgrade costs greatly reduce and software licensing and upgrades are nonexistent

The open source software is no longer just for the tech heads- this is point and click similar to most other programs. And there are thousands of open source programs freely available for us to meet business, education, graphic, music composition, media design, application needs to name just a few

As some K-12 Superintendents are bringing in open source networks (they call them Open Technologies) into their schools we are seeing the march of the penguins, pencils and laptops strut their stuff for education

As more and more people catch the vision of $1000 laptop and realize they don’t need high-end computers for all they student classrooms and instead they could even provide computers to go home with children; it will be open source software penguins leading that march as well.

It’s been a long day coming for our educational system to see that this is a much more economically way to serve the teachers and students and thereby be able to serve ALL of them.

An important aside- very much worth the read and exploration- Negroponte is so open source he is no publishing a wiki where he is openly displaying the technical production notes, tech requirements, software, participating countries, photos of the prototypes and much much more. Talk a look and you can even ask questions by leaving a comment for the project. http://wiki.laptop.org/

Bringing such tools into the hands of multitudes of schools and students around the world, near and far, can really change who the voices will be who will be in the global conversations in just a few months and in our global political future. Providing such a tool and entry to the outside world for not just students, but also for their families, for that is part of the purpose, can build a growing wave of social change through many forms of literacy and understanding. When the walls of Equity and Access are broken down in even in this small ways, the opportunities are many for people to rise in to new possibilities.

Penguins, open source, education and $100 laptop has much great potential for the children of the world, adults and nations. This project will be an interesting one to watch unfold in its many different forms it is now spreading into.

For more information you may contact me at: kpking@bxmedia.net

Dr. Kathleen P. King is a professor and director of the RETC for Professional Development at Fordham University in New York City. She is also the co-host of Podcast for Teachers a podcast featuring lively conversations about technology and education with leaders in the field, and "Adventures in Transformative Learning", a podcast about lifelong learning. She has also been an educational and technical consultant since 1990. The emphasis of her work is Changing Lives and Learning through Outreach.

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