Open Source and the Classroom

I'm excited this week to hear a speaker on using open source in the classroom. I was also excited to see that included in the article sent out this week is a list of many open source applications, their purpose and commercial counterparts which might be used in the classroom. This list includes Nvu something I discussed here just last week. Other software from the list has been mentioned on my personal blog over the years.

Obviously I'm a big proponent of open source software, but I am not just a user. I am also a developer. Although much of the software I write is of limited use to others I do attempt to release it under an open source license when I am able to and this has allowed me to meet many interesting people and help people in ways that, even I, have not expected. In fact you can see one of my more popular contributions to the open source community on this SourceForge project.

This is not to say that I don't think there are any problems with open source software. As evidenced by these recent articles posted by popular computer pundit John C. Dvorak there are some who believe that there are significant problems with open source software. I encourage you to read through some of the comments to those postings yourself and come up with your own questions and conclusions. As for my part, I think you'll see in my comments there that I generally believe open source software can and does work but that people such as Marc make unfair and unequal comparisons with some commercial software and support. Below I will include one of my comments as an example:

Marc, I still think you’re missing points and inaccurately comparing open source and commercial software.

First, I think you’re generally comparing open source server type applications e.g. Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. with commercial end-user applications e.g. MS Office. This is a misleading comparison because many Windows server applications are at last as confusing and difficult to get running as Linux ones. I’ve done a fair amount of work in Windows data centers and have to say that many commercial applications used by corporate IT are a complete bear to work with. Thus I think this is an unfair and misleading argument, most commercial software, at least when compared to open source software that does the same thing and when talking about server type services is NOT just a point and click install.

Second, I think you continue to berate the support and documentation available for open source software and while there is a problem with free support and documentation of open source software there are alternatives if you’re willing to spend a little money. For example, you can easily hire developers to add features or fix bugs. There are also lots of consulting companies, mine included, which can and do write documentation for open source software and/or troubleshoot and provide solutions just as any technical support from a commercial software vendor might do. The faslehood here is that you can get something for nothing. If you intend to use open source software in a company or other critical environment you should either hire a developer on staff who knows the software and can support it or look into purchasing a support contract for the software from an outside company. Many people who use open source software “because it’s free” end up disappointed in many cases and I would argue that’s because they selected it for the wrong reason or didn’t understand what they were getting into. Just because it’s open source doesn’t mean you won’t have to spend any money on it if you want to run it at peak performance in a mission critical environment.

A free website editor

Once upon a time the Netscape Corporation offered a website editor bundled with their browser. Over time that editor grew old an outdated and most people eventually moved on to newer tools such as (the expensive) Dreamweaver. Eventually Netscape essentially closed shop and spun all of their products off to the non-profit Mozilla foundation now known as the creator of Firefox. In any event they did some additional work on the Netscape Composer product which eventually became a part of the Mozilla suite but which never seemed to catch on.

Around 2003 the Linspire Linux company wanted to make a web site editor available in Linux and because the Mozilla code had been converted and was available on Linux they decided to support the improvement of the Composer product and make that available. At the end we ended up with a new free website editor called Nvu. Nvu was great, it offered many of the same features and ease of use found in Dreamweaver for free and was available for Linux, Windows and Mac. The only problem is that the funding was not sustained after an initial release and the developer stopped work on the project and is now working on writing an entirely new editor for Mozilla which appears quite promising but is coming quite slowly and could be several years away.

Thanks to the open source nature of Nvu other developers were able to step in and continue fixing bugs and problems in the software as well as minor feature improvements. Unfortunatly for licensing reasons they had to pick a new name so all new releases are offered under the KompoZer name. KompoZer is still being maintained as a free web editor and for people not looking to use the really advanced features of Dreamweaver I would argue it is possibly the best graphical webpage editor available today. It's fairly simple for novice users to grasp the creation and editing of pages with this tool, though you do still need to have some understanding of how to upload pages and linking structures.

KompoZer is a great tool for use in the classroom precisely because it is free. You can install it without charge on all of the computers in your lab or classroom, students should be able to grasp it fairly quickly and of course students with computers at home can download it and use it for free at home as well. This is a significant benefit for use in education over commercial software such as Dreamweaver. As an added benefit the fact that it operates in a similar manner to Dreamweaver means that if you eventually grow out of it and need some advanced feature in Dreamweaver chances are you'll feel right at home and be able to easily make the transition.

More on technological literacy and constructivism

As I read the article this week "If I Teach This Way Am I Doing My Job?" by Sprague and Dede I was struck by both the narrow definition of technological literacy which seems to be employed by educational technologists as well as the idealistic view of the constructivist classroom. My first concern about the narrow definition of technology and technological literacy comes up early in the article and is something that the field of technology education has been fighting almost since its inception, that is the belief that technology is mostly about computers, gadgets and electronics. This is certainly not the case.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes technology as being practical or industrial arts and science. Technology is more than "a tool to help students solve problems" it is a veritable force in the world. Clearly technology includes much more than computers and electronics extending to topics such as machinery, transportation, power & energy, hydraulics, biotech, structures, etc. These as well as many other topics which would fall under the banner of technology are encountered on a daily basis and yet understood by comparatively few people. This could be described as technological illiteracy in that is a world increasingly shaped by technology. Therefore the goal of technological literacy should be more than students being able to solve problems using technology, it should include understanding technology as well as solving problems about technology.

I am also somewhat concerned about the idealistic view of the constructivist classroom presented in the two vignettes later in the article. Unfortunately, I feel that the restrictions of teaching in the real world would prevent the idealistic constructivist classroom from working as described in the article. In the real world teachers can have classes where large numbers of students are entirely disinterested in learning, where class size is continually increasing, where standards and curriculum dictate what material must be covered and the length of time it must be covered in and where budgets and efficiency determine what changes can be made. In this hostile environment it is difficult, if not impossible to implement a truly constructivist teaching strategy. Though I agree that constructing ones own knowledge is perhaps the best way to learn it requires the topic to be interesting and engaging to the learner and a lot of freedom for them to explore. Although it may be the best it is not at all efficient. I learn much of the material that I am known to be well versed in (especially my expertise in science and technology) in a constructivist manner seeking out sources on my own and finding connections between topics. While I may end up with a superior understanding compared to someone who has been traditionally taught they probably learned what they do know in a considerably shorter amount of time. When we are constrained by time and efficiency concerns or a predetermined curriculum constructivist learning becomes less successful.

Reflecting on e-text and e-design

As I was reading the article "Hypertext and the Changing Roles of Readers" by Nancy Patterson for class this week I got to thinking about electronic text in general. There are some things which I receive electronically which I will almost always print and then read the printed version and yet at other times I read quite lengthy texts online. Why is it that I exhibit this behavior? It doesn't seem to just be me either as many of my colleagues and students act in similar ways.

Take for example the articles we read for class this week, I printed all of them off before reading them. Here there's at least one simple explanation. Two of the files, distributed in PDF format, were originally clearly designed for paper reading. Most noticeably they contained text in columns. I don't know about you but when I see text in columns it's screaming to be printed. It's far too easy to loose your place (and train of thought) in the text when you spend all your time scrolling up and down the page on the computer. In fact the entire idea of pages doesn't make sense for electronic texts. Instead it should be about logical sections and not something imposed by the medium.

While that an explain why I printed the two PDF files, what about the two page MS-Word document? Surely I could have read that online. Well, yes, I suppose I could have done that, especially with such a short document (more on that later) but in some cases it's about formatting as well. For me to want to sit and read something at the computer it has to be interesting, and not just in content, it must be visually pleasing as well. Here's another place that electronic texts tend to fall apart. A lot of websites (particularly in academia (that's you EbscoHost)) simply dump quantities of text to the screen. No real formatting, no bold headings or dropcaps, no pictures, nothing but the text. This is not whatsoever conducive to reading online as without pages or columns (as with paper documents) to break up the text (see above) and often with poor font choices it's very uninteresting and easy to get lost. This lack of visual interest is why I rarely read word processor documents in their entirety on a computer.

So what do I read on the computer? I can read news stories (lots of them), threaded discussions, web articles, Wikipedia, blogs, special features, emails and lots of generic website content for hours on end. Some trends are easy to pick out such as relatively short things such as news stories, threaded discussions, emails and blog entries tend to be fairly short. Short things are easier to read on computers. At the same time I can read web articles and sites which would be pages and pages long if I printed them out. Most of the longer things I read show some good design sense. For example, they may break things up into sections and delineate things by using various fonts and styles. They often make good use of graphics and photos and have a pleasing layout.

It's often said that you should not judge a book by it's cover and to some extent that's true. It's not all about design, content must exist as well, but if you want people to read something it's long been acknowledged by graphic designers (who are responsible for much of the good print layout you see) that making it accessible to the reader encourages them to stay with it. Similarly, I would argue that good design goes a long way towards making electronic texts more accessible but at the same time we can't simply take print design methods (columns and pages for example) and translate them into electronic text design. It pays to be conscious of the decisions you make regarding design and dissemination of electronic text if you want people to read it.