Re: [school-discuss] Philosophy: Teachers with Admin Privileges or Not

["Alan E. Davis" <lngndvs@xxxxxxxxx>]

I, a Biology teacher, have been running GNU/Linux for more than 13 years, and in my own little way, in my own isolated little niche, have tried to get GNU/Linux into use for my students.  I have introduced it to teachers, but I am not expert enough as a sysadmin to play as big an advocacy role as I'd like.  In general, I run GNU/Linux, and it impacts almost every aspect of my work as a teacher, and my personal projects as well.  The potential that is unlocked by using GNU/Linux has been huge, for me and for a few students.

But my colleagues are well trained in Micro$oft.  Perhaps I am a conspiracy theorist, in believing that their addiction was carefully cultivated by the moguls, through donations to schools and the like.   In earlier years, my interest in Free software was met with scorn and derision, or at least disinterest.  Then, a few years ago, people started noticing GNU/Linux and other Free software, and I started meeting a few people who at least were willing to try.  Most of them more skilled than myself.  Somehow, I have only connected with a handful of Free software users over the years.  Meanwhile, the software base has improved exponentially from year to year, and I can recommend it to just about anyone.  But on this island, the school administration lives in the "windows shop" world, and seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that Micro$oft is a synonym for Technology.  Or Apple.  One of the Two.  

I emphasize that I am not an IT person; my interests are scientific, and I have hoped to utilize Free software to enable my scientific activities, teaching work, and hopefully students.  What I see is a paranoid mindset that seems to pervade much of the educational arena.  Substituting Free software to use the computer in the same old way.  

One cannot but appreciate the ability to hook up old equipment to servers, and perhaps it is these servers that are being referred to.  A diverse range of applications, and numerous teaching tools are enabled by Free software---software that is Free to share. 

"Computer literacy" is taught in our schools.  In our schools, this means Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  Does that suggest to anyone else a sales program?  What it SHOULD mean, in my humble opinion, is knowledge of what a computer can do, cannot do, how the computer works (write a program), ability to manipulate the hardware (write programs) with software, a range of application types, how to build and repair a PC, how to make graphs and analyze data, perhaps edit a video.  Free software would enable more of all these things, and if we were to leverage the Erate monies our schools receive using Free Software, we would be able to do more interesting things.

I miss that spirit in many of the posts to the Linux education lists.  Here are some of the benefits I envision to using Free software in schools:

1.  Teaching tools
2.  Learning tools
3.  Access to sophisiticated applications with a low bar to entry
4.  Access to high grade compilers to teach programming.  (I might add that in our school district, only "computer literacy" is taught, and I have met one or two students only over the years who have ever written a programming language.)
5.  Freedom to share bypasses the obscenity (in the classroom or ed institution) of expensive software packages with "one seat licenses."  (We were told by the local college that we could not experiment with Photoshop for this very reason.  How can we get the Gimp into the public eye?)
6.  Security.


I have drifted far from the Original Poster's question.  However, I think that I have arrived at a clearer understanding of the original question---at least for me---as well as the responses.  For each response I would ask "how does this approach to the use of computers and software in school meet these 6 (or perhaps more) needful benefits of the use of Free software in schools.  Are we merely using the same approaches on different platforms, with probably the end result of producing more customers for those proprietary software moguls?  Or what?  

For what it's worth, to restrict the software a teacher can install and/or use in the classroom reeks of mind control and top down approaches that are an abomination to what I, at any rate, see as the beacon of the Free software community.

Perhaps I am too radical?

Alan 

-- 
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@xxxxxxxxx  

"It's never a matter of liking or disliking ..."
       ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man