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| Contents | |
| Editorial | |
| Current Issues | |
| Science | |
| Mathematics | |
| English | |
| Social Studies | |
| General | |
| Current Practice | |
| Seminal Articles | |
| Volume 2, Issue 4 ISSN 1528-5804 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Proceedings of the Fourth National Technology Leadership Summit: Open Resources in Education Edited by: GLEN BULL AND JOE GAROFALO Preface: Rationale for Building an Educational Source Forge The underpinnings of computer science were developed in university research centers. University researchers often shared and exchanged code as a way of learning new programming techniques. During that era, the majority of software was what might be termed "open source" today. As software development became a for-profit commercial enterprise, the code was treated as a business asset. Commercial firms reasoned that their competitors at other firms might gain an advantage if they were allowed to see the underlying source code. Until 1992, commercial code was almost always treated as a proprietary asset. Two seminal events altered this perspective. Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web through the efforts of volunteer programmers around the world collaborating via the Internet. At about the same time, a student in Finland, Linus Torvalds, collaborated with volunteer programmers around the world to develop an open source version of Unix now known as Linux. The Linux operating system and the World Wide Web itself are examples of "open source" software. The source code in open source software is openly available for the world to review and improve. By making the source code available, a "million pairs of eyes on the code" can identify and fix bugs faster than a tightly controlled team of proprietary programmers. The Linux operating system is so stable that the world's largest computing company, IBM, has adopted it across its entire line of servers, from the largest mainframe to the smallest PC-based server (http://www.ibm.com/linux). Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds provided what mathematicians term an "existence proof," demonstrating that the Internet could be used for large-scale collaborative programming projects in an open source environment. An M.I.T. programmer, Richard Stallman, received a MacArthur Fellowship (often known as a "genius award") for a third important contribution. Stallman developed the concept of a General Public License (GPL) for software. A GPL employs copyright law to establish certain commonsense rights. These include the right to copy underlying source code, modify the software, and redistribute it, with appropriate attribution of authorship of the original code. Academic researchers had shared code from the very beginnings of programming, but Stallman's concept of a GPL used the copyright law itself to establish this as a legal right and not just an ad hoc tradition. The open source tradition underlies the wellsprings of intellectual creativity that gave rise to the Internet and the World Wide Web. It is responsible for the technological infrastructure that has transformed both universities and many businesses. Until now K-12 education has had an informal tradition of sharing resources, but has not made use of GPL to protect shared or collaboratively developed resources. In Fall 2002 a group of educational leaders met in the fourth in a series of National Technology Leadership Summits (NTLS IV). The first three summits were undertaken with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. These leadership retreats proved so useful that a mix of corporate support and funding from private, non-profit foundations was made available to underwrite a fourth summit. The topic of open source software in education was selected as the issue for consideration at NTLS IV. The two dozen leaders participating in NTLS IV included presidents and representatives from national teacher educator associations, editors of educational technology journals, executives from the corporate world, and directors of educational foundations. These leaders were asked to consider how the benefits of open source software that have already proven invaluable in higher education and business might be extended to K-12 education. These leaders formed four task forces: an Enterprise task force, a Teacher Education task force, a Collaboration and Community task force, and an Editorial Directions and Dissemination task force:
The initial findings and recommendations of each task force are summarized in the pages that follow. However, two important results emerged as a consensus across all four task forces. The first result was a general consensus that discussion of shared resources in education should be extended to encompass the full range of educational resources and not just software. Teachers and K-12 educators use a variety of resources - software, educational macros and scripts, text-based content, digital media, lesson plans, overheads and electronic slides, instructional activities, etc. - and there was agreement that a broad term is needed to encompass all this. The term "open resources" was chosen to represent the full range of shared resources employed in K-12 education.
Figure 1. Open resources in education encompass text-based content, lesson plans, electronic slides, and other media, as well as open source educational software. The second important result to emerge from the summit was agreement that a General Public License for teachers could be useful to facilitate and encourage use of Open Resources in K-12 education. A GPL provides language for protecting materials so that others can use them provided that proper attribution is given. A variety of GPLs have been developed for different applications, audiences, and uses, including the original GNU General Public License, an Academic Free License for higher education, the Online Computer Library Center OCLC Research Public License, and the World Wide Web Consortium W3C License, and an Artistic License for artists. The language employed for each of these licensees can be found at the Open Source Foundation (http://www.opensource.org/ ). Niki Davis, president of SITE, and Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE, agreed to collaborate on development of language for a General Public License for Teachers (GPL*T). (SITE is a professional association of teacher education faculty at universities, the majority of whom are also members of ISTE.) Development of language for a GPL*T will involve school-university partnerships represented by the memberships of SITE and ISTE, respectively. For generations teachers have informally shared, modified, and revised each other's instructional materials and activities, both through oral conversation and discussion and through exchange of written materials and documents. However, attribution of the authorship of shared resources is less commonly practiced. Just as Richard Stallman found it necessary to employ copyright law to codify and protect a longstanding tradition in the software community, a general public license will encourage a similar practice in the educational community. As a beneficial side effect, GPL*T will also encourage teachers to model appropriate attribution of authorship for their K-12 students. The task assigned to the leaders participating in NTLS IV was to identify the issues and questions to be addressed rather than solutions. The summary of their deliberations that follows is intended to be a starting point for discussion and deliberation in the wider educational community. The hope is that it will serve as a stimulus for an international dialog on open resources in education in the year to come. Open Resources and Teacher Education
An Educational Open Source Development
Model Open Resources and Public/Private Partnerships Editorial Directions: Establishing a Dialog on Open Resources in Education
Appendix: NTLS IV Participants
Open Resources and Teacher Education JOHN MERGENDOLLER SARA KAJDER The Teacher Education task force undertook the assignment of identifying promising directions for implementation of open source applications in the core content areas of science, mathematics, English, and social studies, as well as teacher preparation. This task force included representatives from the Association for Education of Teachers in Science (AETS), the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council of the Social Studies, and the Conference on English Education (CEE) of the National Council of Teachers of English. The practice of teaching involves a rich tradition of shared resources. For generations teachers have informally shared, modified, and revised each other's instructional materials and activities, both through oral conversation and discussion and through exchange of written materials and documents. We recognize this collaborative development and sharing under the general term, "open resources." Establishment of open resources as a practical model for the educational community will require the following:
Use of open resources under this paradigm consists of a cycle of access, revision, and review, as outlined in Table 1. Table 1
The chief way in which this cycle differs from the current tradition of informal sharing is (a) through attribution of prior authorship of derived works, and (b) through a formal peer-review process to ensure that instructional resources are credible and can be used with confidence in the classroom. The variations in the steps allow teachers with different interests and backgrounds to maximize participation within a larger educational community. It is our hope that through the collaborative generation of instructional ideas that teachers and students will be empowered in new educationally effective ways.
The resources developed and made available could span the range from lesson plans to educational software. An Educational Forge for open resources could offer illustrative examples of open resources in different content areas, including the following:
The concept of open source is predicated on a cycle of ongoing enhancement and improvement undertaken by a community of volunteers to develop a growing body of materials that addresses the needs of the community. Depending on the nature of the educational content, varying degrees of technical skill may be required to modify or revise the instructional materials. At one end of the continuum, almost any teacher with rudimentary word processing skill will be able to modify a text-based document. At the other end of the continuum, extensive programming skills may be required to modify educational software developed in C++ or Java. The next section, on educational software development, provides a possible model for collaboration between educators and a community of volunteer programmers. Table 2
These examples are emergent. In the spirit of open resources, none of these examples is presented as a completed or final product. Instead, they are offered as a starting point for discussion, in the hopes that other educators will build and improve upon them, much as the programming community has developed Web servers, electronic mail applications, and the protocol for the very Web itself through volunteer collaborative efforts. Our hope is to initiate a national dialog on this topic, exploring ways in which the potential of the Web, so well exemplified in the software development community, can be extended to the educational community.
An Educational Open Source Development Model: From Cooperative Synchronicity to Intentional Collaboration JUDI HARRIS KATHY SWAN As educators, we have a long tradition of sharing materials and ideas. We often make our unit plans, reproducible handouts, teaching tips, and learning activity designs available to other teachers. Before we use techniques recommended by others, though, we usually change them to suit our own and our students' learning needs, interests, and styles - and we often pass these revisions on to still other educators. In this way, the continually revised educational materials and ideas that reach us are often results of joint cooperative efforts of perhaps many teachers - though we usually do not know who most of the co-creators are. As you read in the preface, there is another professional community that has almost as long a history of idea and materials exchange and revision: an international network of software developers connected by the Internet. Working primarily as volunteers, this community has produced and fine-tuned many pieces of software, including the popular Web server Apache and email server SendMail. The applications that these talented folks develop are available free of charge to anyone who wants to use them, and users are welcomed to change the code to suit their constituents' needs and preferences, much like teachers exchange instructional ideas and materials to fit their classrooms.
What if some of these talented software developers could work with educators to develop and customize educational software? In addition, what if a mechanism were in place to help educators share the materials that they create in this virtually collaborative manner? Recently, a group of educational leaders gathered at the fourth National Technology Leadership Summit (NTLS IV) to consider potential implications of open source software for educators. If such "projectships" - as Mark Webbink of Red Hat, Inc., terms them - were to materialize between groups of educators and programmers, how could the development process be structured to accommodate the motivations and subcultural styles of both groups? Preliminary answers to these questions were posited by the members of the Collaboration and Community task force, and a summary of our initial "imaginings" follow. Communities and Roles
Development of educational open source software could - and probably should - be rooted in a new kind of cross-community collaboration. The nature of this collaboration is necessitated by the dispositions and work habits of the two communities whose motivations, values, and styles must be accommodated in this collaborative process: K-12 educators and open source programmers. Fortunately, members of both communities were represented in the Collaboration and Community task force group. It did not take long to understand that these two communities work, communicate, and are rewarded very differently - for different reasons, on different schedules, and with different subculture-specific styles. Almost immediately, we recognized the need for liaisons who comprehend both cultures to "translate" between them, if members of both are to work together successfully to create educational open source materials. As our discussion continued, we realized that the liaison's work is quite complex; it expands to incorporate many roles.
In Table 3, we have summarized the roles that educators, liaisons, and developers would play in the development of open source materials in our model. Please note that while we use the specific example of open source software development here, we see this model, with minor modifications, also describing the creation and refinement of noncomputer-based educational materials. Table 3
As Table 3 indicates, the role of liaison in this collaboration is the most complex of the three. As such, it probably requires talents and prior experiences that are more rare than either of the other two roles. In essence, liaisons would serve a bridging function between the educational and software development communities. They would, therefore, need to be able to understand and function well in both groups. Technology-savvy teachers, school-based educational technology coordinators, university professors and graduate students interested in educational technology integration, and creatively/technologically gifted students are potential liaisons. Additional roles and responsibilities of these individuals include:
Development and refinement of each educational open source project will probably progress in identifiable stages, with the specific roles that each participant plays shifting over time as work on the project progresses. More importantly, roles played by team members collaborating on the same project are likely to shift according to individual interests, expertise, and motivations. This flexibility and fluidity of roles is crucial to the success of each project - and to the educational open source movement itself. (We suspect that the educational open source movement, or "metaproject," will develop in stages that are similar to project-related stages.) At all times, though, all roles must be filled in a particular project for the endeavor to succeed. Rewards The work done in each of the roles described in Table 3 is primarily voluntary. Though some open source projects are funded by grants or as works for hire, the impetus for the typical open source project at present is other than financial. Any feasible and sustainable educational open source development model must, therefore, take into account the varying - and, we hope, complementary - motivations of the participants playing each of the roles with reference to a particular project. Table 4 outlines probable motivations for educational open source work.
The roles and corresponding rewards described in Table 4 will probably emerge as much from the nature of inspired work already extant in the educational and software development communities as from the new experiences and relationships to be found in future educational open source work. Beginnings
At present, collaborations between educators and open source software developers are rare and rarely sustained. To shift this pattern, the first rounds of educational open source software will have to be planned and supported in strategic, somewhat preplanned ways. In a sense, we will have to create first artificially assembled collaborative teams to explore and document the as-yet undiscovered intricacies of the "bridged intercultural collaboration" we suggest. For the new working relationships between disparate subcultures to become organically initiated and sustained - and for the same to happen within the open source in education "metaproject" or movement - a high-quality collection of well-received educational open source products must be conceived, developed, tested, and publicized. The instructional applicability and diffusibility of this first group of projects will, to a large extent, determine the success of the movement itself. Therefore, we strongly suggest that early educational open source workers seek not only government and private funding to make this first stage of software development possible - but also choose carefully the projects to be created. This first set of software will then have the best possible chance at widespread adoption in K-12 classrooms by virtue of the applications' inherent characteristics. The "proof of concept" of the movement itself rests upon nothing less than our perceptiveness about educational software needs and preferences, our knowledge of the nature of the two subcultures involved, and the adoptability of a relatively small number of particular products. Our ability to operationalize these perceptions in creative, generative ways through the design, testing, and publicizing of educational software is the key to success or failure on both the individual project and metaproject levels. Will we be able to incorporate the open source community's cooperative synchronicity in software development into a cross-cultural model of intentional, sustainable collaboration? Only time will tell us the answer. Time to Begin?
The programmer-based open source movement is about a dozen years old. Surely in a decade or so, we will look back at assumptions undergirding the model suggested here and both nod at their verity and smile at our naïveté. Although we believe that the best approach to this endeavor is clear sighted, strategic, and proactive, we also acknowledge that the best ways for the two communities to collaborate will necessarily emerge over time and through repeated, reflective trials. The next step, therefore, is to begin. Open Resources and Public/Private Partnerships ALLEN GLENN STEVE WHITAKER1 The open source software movement represents a unique collaboration between volunteer programmers and for-profit businesses. The Enterprise task force considered how this collaboration might be extended to K-12 education through public partnerships. Specifically, the Enterprise task force considered how best to create an environment that would foster creativity, enhance educator influence, and more actively engage students in the learning process through the development of an open-resource model of software sharing. The Enterprise task force included CEOs, general managers, and educators representing higher education, public schools, and educational organizations. The members considered how the needs, interests, and abilities of the private sector and educational institutions might be joined to create a useful and long-term partnership to support open source resources. The corporate world and education have a long history of collaboration, cooperation, and periods of uneasy truce. Good schools are important to business - they provide well-prepared workers, educated citizens, and consumers of products and services. Businesses place a good educational system as one of their top priorities for location because of a need for educated workers and good schools for employees. Schools are also the beneficiaries of school-corporate partnerships. Employees provide tutoring, expert knowledge, and skills for numerous school projects. Business partners also provide needed training for teachers and students and new technologies for the classroom. Technological advances and the advent of the information economy have created new opportunities for corporate partnerships. Billions of dollars have been spent on computing hardware, the development of software for instructional use, and information access. Both corporations and schools have benefited from these relationships. But in today's educational environment, there is a growing lack of pedagogically appropriate materials accessible to classroom teachers. Can a public/private partnership that brings together programmers, educators, and business address this issue? Before rushing to create such an alliance, it must be clear that all parties must benefit from the relationship and all participants must understand more fully the other's position, needs, and culture. For example, business must make a profit and meet the demands of investors. Educators, therefore, must expect to pay a fair market price for products and service. Educators, on the other hand, need quality instructional materials, service support, and some confidence that the business will work to sustain the relationship. Both need to believe that the other respects their work and that an honest effort will be made to sustain the partnership. In order to better understand each other and to create a workable partnership, the Enterprise task force recommends that the following issues need to be clarified before moving forward.
While personnel changes occur in business, business partners must understand that educational environments do change in a unique way - students move through the system and educators leave the institution. These changes often create unique problems for any relationship. Given that partners can gain an understanding of these issues, the Enterprise task force believes that the open resources concept provides a powerful concept that can bring together a select group of business and education colleagues to further the agenda. In order to advance the agenda, members believe that:
While these issues are significant, structures exist that can address each of them and provide leadership. In addressing these issues, there is ample room for both open resource materials and materials of a proprietary nature. A partnership between business and education focused on open resources is an essential element of providing the best materials for students in today's schools. Editorial Directions: Establishing a Dialog on Open Resources in Education ANN THOMPSON LYNN BELL The Editorial Directions task force was given the charge of synthesizing the work of the other three groups and developing a plan for an international dialog on open resources in education. The task force included the editors of six educational technology journals, including
These periodicals span the spectrum of professional journals in educational technology, ranging from illustrations and narratives of technology use for practitioners in K-12 schools to research-based articles on the role of technology in teacher education. Hence, these editors collectively were well positioned to consider the relevance of open resources to education and how a dialog could be constructed to advance consideration of ways such resources might best address the needs of schools and learners. For the past half-millennium, print has been the primary medium for dissemination of scholarly work and educational materials. Invention of the World Wide Web offered another mechanism for distribution of resources. Millions have taken advantage of the opportunity that this has afforded for distribution of ideas and resources. As any school librarian can attest, this is not an unalloyed blessing. Issues ranging from creditability of sources to attribution of content must be considered by schools using these resources. These emerging issues were discussed by each of the groups at the summit, with each group taking a slightly different approach. The Teacher Education task force found a credible rationale for establishing a website devoted to educational resources distributed under a General Public License (GPL). As their deliberations determined, there are useful educational resources across a range of content areas that would be enhanced through distribution under GPL. This copyright mechanism empowers educators to refine and enhance resources that others have created. However, an ongoing cycle of creation, refinement, and review is needed to ensure that materials are both, as the Teacher Education task force phrased it, "accurate with respect to content and pedagogically appropriate." The Collaboration and Community task force undertook the assignment of determining how an educational source forge might be constructed. The Open Source Development Model they identified would adapt a method that first proved successful in business and transform it for use in education. Since educators and programmers constitute different communities with different perspectives, values, and culture, a successful educational source forge would therefore, in the words of the Collaboration and Community task force, potentially "represent a new kind of cross-community collaboration." The Enterprise task force combined corporate executives who have already successfully implemented both open source and proprietary software models in business with educational leaders who have served in similar roles in education. This group discussed how business and education can work together to adapt an open source model established in business for use in education. The Editorial task force has the responsibility of braiding these three strands of dialog together and combining them with other existing dialogs regarding use of open resources in education. The editors in this task force agreed to collaborate on a common article on open resources in education that would serve two objectives. It would familiarize the educational community with the issues related to open resources in education. At the same time, it would also allow the editors themselves to participate in an open resource initiative, providing them with a ground-zero perspective on the process. We, therefore, decided to begin the dialog by writing an article in the open source format. The article will be shared across all of the journals represented, but will incorporate specific information for the audience of each journal. The article will be distributed under a General Public License that will allow the editors of other educational journals to modify and publish the common article while crediting the original source. As is true for many resources distributed under a General Public License, many people will contribute to the development of the article, and each iteration will be slightly different from the others. We encourage the readership of this journal to participate in the process by adapting the article for distribution within your educational community and to follow its evolution as it appears in different publications and venues. We intend for this to increase awareness of open resources and begin a dialog about their role in education. In addition to conceptualizing the open source article, the Editorial task force focused upon international issues. An intercultural dimension may prove to be an important driver for open resources in education. As the Collaboration and Community task force reminded us, good partnerships depend on the ways in which participants' goals and expertise complement one another. There are stark contrasts in affluence internationally. Educators who have little access to educational software suited to their language and culture have much to gain if open resources could bring such development within their reach. Were open resources to work in ways that level the playing field, it could also reduce the temptation to illegally copy resources that are currently beyond their financial reach.
Programmers in countries with low incomes could potentially be motivated to participate to gain acknowledgement from the international community. Much of this energy is currently devoted to antisocial outlets such as programming of computer viruses. Open resources could provide a positive direction for talented programmers who can work collaboratively at a distance. Open resources could provide valuable challenges for their skills, as well as professional development, permitting collaboration with counterparts in other countries. There are many other issues to be considered. The Teacher Education task force identified the importance of a review process for open resources that will allow learners to use them with assurance that the content is accurate and appropriate. The Collaboration and Community task force observed that this will require a context to define the roles of teachers, teacher educators, and technical personnel in this process. The Enterprise task force noted conditions necessary for the public/private partnerships required for a successful open resource initiative in education. The results from all four groups suggest an agenda and a format for the beginning of the dialog. Professional organizations such as SITE and ISTE, working in concert with other teacher educator organizations (AETS, AMTE, CEE, and CUFA) can provide leadership. In the words of the Collaboration and Community task force, "The next step, therefore, is to begin." Reference Bull, G., Bell, R., Garofalo, J., & Sigmon, T. (2002). Learner-based tools: The case for open source educational software. Learning and Leading with Technology, 30(2), 10-17. NTLS IV Participants I. Teacher Education Task Force
II. Dissemination / Editorial Task Force
III. Collaboration and Community Task Force
IV. Enterprise Task Force
Note 1. Based on reviews and comments by Steven Whitaker, Glen Bull, and Joe Garofalo. |
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