The venue was heavenly. The Crowne Plaza in the Hunter Valley - useful conference spaces, a strangely huge pool, a golf course. Good food, comfy accommodation.
This conference has been going for some years now, and is organised directly by the community it serves. It's my favourite kind of event.
It was very well supported by vendors who keenly recognise the power of the network this community of IT managers represent. Decision makers and influencers in schools free to make their own decisions. Ranging from classroom pracititioners managing IT infrastructure to network architects and managers supporting the learning and administration needs of their organisations, and a full spectrum of variety between and beyond those roles.
All grappling with budgets, policy, curriculum and the shifting reality of learning by learners with very different expectations of what's ahead of them and unknown pathways into the future than those experienced a generation ago.
When I was in high school, there was no World Wide Web. It's now my business. So is the global platform for change more commonly known as the open source community. When Linus announced his little hobby project I was at Uni too. Now, Linux is everywhere.
So, I'll admit to being a bit surprised and disheartened by the silence when I asked if anyone contemplating 1:1 learning projects was looking at Linux laptops. No one? Why? No support, too geeky. Too hard.
What a shame. We really do still have a lot of work to do.
To counter this perception we need to offer unparalleled services and support. We need to be accountable. We know the products are good, and the freedom is intoxicating, but that's not cutting through the uncomfortable truth that Open Source Software is all too easily dismissed inside institutes of learning. Yes, it's also true that too often Education technology lags the real world. Yes. That's wrong. So whilst the world's largest software company, Oracle, is also the world's largest user of Linux, we still have to counter fear, uncertainty and doubt, and a lack of support from the medium sized IT integration firms making a business out of servicing schools.
Left reeling like I'd been punched I turned to the community and asked them to tell me why we bother with FOSS in schools. Here's some of the responses:
"open source and foss help lower the cost entry barrier for schools to get tools to assist their education." @aimee_maree
"Because technology should enhance and enable learning, not control and constrict. Because I want my children to learn that sharing and collaboration are a force for good. What my mum taught me..."@normnz
"Schools are about authentic learning experiences, not just another monolithic enterprise to cable and network." @rgesthuizen
Again the New Zealanders are showing us up. Check out this report on a survey of IT vendor support for FOSS solutions. We need this in Australia. OSIA? Where are you? The New Zealand open source society organised a vendor capability survey. Here are the results:
http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2010/public-sector-remix-it-vendor-capability-survey-results
And we need a school like Albany Senior High School in Auckland to step up and showcase the reality of what an opensource school looks like.
Mark Osborne - Deputy Principal prepared this presentation on the school.
http://prezi.com/zzq-og71mz8n/the-open-source-school/
This is his blog:
http://theopensourceschool.blogspot.com/
When I asked four IT managers sitting nearby if they had Linux servers, they all said yes. When I asked the audience in my session who had open source in their schools, with one exception they all put up their hands.
Are you using Open Source in an Australian school? How? Where? Please tell your story.
Peter Ruwoldt's presentation:
http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=180214
Ian Ralph's presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/kattekrab/foss-at-sceggs
My Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/kattekrab/aisman10
