The K-12 Open Source Classroom

Bringing Open Source (Free and Free) into the Classroom

7 Things

Feb 7

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7 Things Logo

Educause's 7 Things

No, I am NOT going to spend this blog post discussing the Miley Cyrus song of the same title.  No matter how much my girls enjoy Hannah Montana.  Well, I guess if she would release it under a Creative Commons license…

No, I want to share the 7 Things ongoing article from Educause (http://www.educause.edu/7Things).  Educause is a non-profit focusing on furthering initiatives with higher education.  Fortunately, though, many of their projects aid k-12 education, such as their 7 things.  When we hear about all these new technology tools and websites, we often spend a lot of time just trying to figure out how to use it, when to use it, and how it could benefit education.  What 7 Things tries to do is provide answers to those questions quickly, so you can save time and determine if a particular tool would work for you or not.  They have been providing these 7 Things summaries for five years now, going back to 2005.  Some of the early topics included using social bookmarking, ‘clickers’, and podcasting.  For instance, with the podcasting article, they provide a nice pdf document that discusses the history of podcasting, who does it, and why it is significant.  You receive a nice two-page pdf document you could print out and use in training.  For a more current 7 Things, 2009 saw a great document on 7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave.  This one helped me, as I do use Google Wave, but am still not totally clear on many of its purposes.  This article begins with a nice scenario of a professor using it in a psychology class.

Even better than the actual content, are the licenses.  On the early publications, I did not notice any licensing/Copyright information.  Now, looking at the Google Waves article, I see a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives license.  GREAT!  So now, you can use these with training, information sessions, etc.  I definitely see these as helpful when my Superintendent comes to me and asks, ‘What do you know about…’  It provides a nice executive summary of a variety of technology tools.  A great resource for all of us in K-12.

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Dell 2100 Apps For Schools

Feb 5

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Open Office Logo

Open Office Found a Place On Our Dell 2100s

With limited funds from our EETT/ARRA grant, we just barely scratched purchasing 60 Dell 2100s, 3 of the specially made carts ($3,500 each!), projectors, document cameras, and professional development.  After this, we will could not afford the extra $3,000 to purchase MS Office for all the netbooks.  And truthfully, I personally did not want to do that.  Yes, Open Office looks a little different, but in all reality, we made a great choice skipping this purchase.  It took my instructional folks a little bit of time until they were comfortable with it, but now they understand it and can use it confidently.  I anticipate some learning curves with the teachers when the carts are delivered as well.  Students?  Nah, they will pick it up with no problem and make the point moot.  I really hope this can lead us to some serious discussions in moving forward.  When we look at the 3,000+ computers in our district, the thought of paying $50.00 each for an Office upgrade, at a total of at least $150,000, does not appeal too much to me.  So let’s see, that is 150 desktops we could purchase.  150 SMART Boards.  20 SMART Tables.  100 sets of ‘clickers,’ the student response systems.  You get the point.  At this point, though, I am just happy to have the leg in the door to move the discussion forward.

What else did we put on the 2100s?  With the integrated webcam and microphone, Audacity was a no brainer.  We envision teachers and students creating animated movies, podcasts, and more with those.  Photostory went on them as well, and while not an open source product, it is a free app available for Windows.  And that’s pretty much the end of the apps installed.  I would like to look at Alice in the future.  Allowing students to create their own ‘games’ in place of a Powerpoint would be a great thing as well.  We also will rely heavily on many of the web apps out there.  We use Wordle in our district, as well as VoiceThread and Animoto.  They all provide great interaction for students.  So that pretty much sums up our 2100s.  Now we will put them out in the schools and see how the teachers use them.  Time will tell if we add any more applications, or how these ones work, but we will let you know!

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Full Circle Magazine

Feb 3

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Full Circle Magazine Logo

FCM-An Ubuntu-geared magazine written by the field

While all of us in the Linux/Open Source movement appreciate information from the organizations behind big projects, I think many folks still like a smaller community to discuss issues, share ideas, and move Linux, OSS, and openness forward.  That is the premise behind Full Circle Magazine (http://fullcirclemagazine.org/), an online publication geared toward the new user and the seasoned pro.  The folks behind FCM really work hard to keep the balance between too technical and too light.  Each month they share a variety of user-generated how-to tutorials, news articles, and reviews on applications, games, and usage of Linux, especially focusing on Ubuntu.  This month, for instance, in episode 33, they share a how-to on programming with Python, creating a Media Center using Ubuntu and Boxee, and configuring the perfect server.  In the My Story portion, you can see how public education uses Ubuntu and open source from yours truly!  I submitted an article a few months ago, and they published it this month.  Other things include a Top 5 on synchronization clients, looking at Ubuntu Women, and some updates on Ubuntu Games.

Whether you just got into Ubuntu or have been around since Warty and further back, FCM will definitely speak to you.  Ronnie, Editor of FCM, and the rest of the team definitely put together a strong publication, much stronger than many of the ‘professional’ publications you can pick up at your local newsstand.  And while currently free (as in beer!), I think that folks would definitely benefit, even with a small cost involved.  I know I would!

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Alice in Programming

Feb 1

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Alice logo

Alice, The Programming Language

I always believed students should take some type of logic/programming in their high school years.  I remember taking both Basic and Pascal in high school and benefiting from them.  In my Freshman year of college, I snuck into a Professor’s PD course on HTML.  This was in ‘96, and they were just teaching tagging using Notepad.  Real basic stuff, but again, that course set me up for much of what I did in the classroom and beyond.

So now as an educator and administrator, I still feel very strongly that we should expose middle school and high school students to programming.  Research continues to show students taking programming languages excel in math and also build stronger problem solving skills.  With a programming background, we also prepare our students with a job skill they can move right into a decent paying career with.

How can we prepare students?  By looking at one of the specially made for K-12 students programming languages/applications.  Two of the better known ones are Alice, created by Carnegie Mellon University (yes, of Randy Pausch ‘The Last Lecture’ fame) and Scratch, developed by MIT (http://scratch.mit.edu/).   I actually know of both and used both.  When at NECC, San Antonio 08, I participated in a Bring Your Own Laptop session in using Scratch in the classroom.  For Alice, when working as a State Technology Consultant, I participated in many sessions from Duke University’s School of Computer Science (http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/)  Both applications are available free, not quite pure open source, but source code is available.

So you download it, but how do you use it?  In speaking of Alice, I definitely think it will work for middle school and high school students.  Whether you set up an afterschool club or use it in your classroom, you definitely want to target all students.  Students can come in a utilize it over a week and take their ‘worlds’ home on a disk at the end of a week, including the application they can download at home.  I do also think there is classroom application.  I really like this being used as a replacement for Powerpoints, book reports, and the like.  Maybe you create a tech summer camp.  At the Duke page, you can see examples students create.  I have seen awesome examples of geometry, ancient worlds like Egypt, and space.  Great ways to allow students to create meaning on a variety of curricular areas.  And so much better than worksheets!   The Scratch website also shows student samples, including How the Earth Works, a Gift for Haiti (after the devasting earthquake in Jan 2010), and a make a pizza game.

If you have not seen either of these, I encourage you to download them and use them in your classroom.  Also, rock the boat in your school and district.  Ask why one course of programming is not a requirement like some of the other requirements.  Ideally, I would love to see either a 6-8 or 9-12 requirement of some programming language, whether these, HTML/CSS, Java, Python, or something.  I really think this would help in academic areas, but also in providing another possible avenue for children.  Not every child will be a 4 year college student.  Why not provide some other avenue for those, instead of a future dropout?

http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/apply/

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Red Hat Shares Open Source, Literally

Jan 30

Posted by admin in OSS Applications, open source | No Comments

Open Source

Red Hat's Open Source Website

Red Hat, yes, the Raleigh based company that produces Red Hat Enterprise Linux and oversees the free (as in beer and freedom) version Fedora, continues to do well in this economy.  Amazing that every time they release an earnings report, they continue to make money.  Hopefully that means my ‘connection’ will continue to get me Red Hat swag!

So Red Hat decided to put together a website of open source.  You can find it at http://opensource.com/.  With all the other open source websites, like opensource.org, what does Red Hat hope to do with this site?  On their website, they talk about the open source way:

The open source way is about possibility.
Open source presents a new way to solve old problems. To share ideas and effort.

The open source way opens doors.
Open source offers a new perspective. Open, not closed. Collaboration, not isolation.

The open source way multiplies.
Knowledge. Effort. Inspiration. Creativity. Innovation. The impact is exponential.

So obviously a philosophy, like the movement in general.  With a heavy hitter like Red Hat, though, maybe this conversation can move further toward main stream.  And main street.  They also share many news feeds, looking at open source in business, education, and more.  The usual topics are shared, such as President Obama’s move to more openness and MIT’s Open Lab project.  Definitely nice to see a wildly successful open source company put money back into the conversation.  A good resource for teachers as well, to see what is happening with open source in K-12.

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