edna.edu.au

Opening Education

There is a conversation under way in the progressive corners of the education establishment. A conversation that often includes the word "open". Open Source software, open content licensing, open standards. There is also a cadre of education enthusiasts reaching out to Internet technologies such as blogs and social networking which are open in nature. I see significant institutional roadblocks to openness in R-12 schools in Australia.

Before you click away I am not going to regurgitate Ivan Illich here and suggest we dismantle formal education and deschool the population.

Frankly there are too many fringe loonies out there who would have their kids destroying each other in the name of their particular brand of idiocy if we didn't have a place where they could meet and learn about each others cultures. We don't have a dominant church. Parents work entirely too much. We don't have a dominant media anymore and the fragments of the old media place community at a distant last to all other consideration such as profit.

So I am convinced we need schools for the sake of a peaceful and functional society. Preferably secular public schools which promote the acceptance of difference. How do we make them work better in the modern world?

Within schools we have a multitude of blockers that prevent or restrict moves towards openness. Some of these are easy to overcome. Others are sacred cows. Guess which ones I am going to discuss?

Professionalism

I have yet to meet a teacher who could convincingly express what they learn in four years of formal education that would make them more capable as teachers than a passionate knowledgeable adult with equivalent classroom experience. I am not trying to belittle teachers. I respect them for the valuable work they do and their tenacity in the face of systemic obstacles. Their status as professionals has done a lot for their ability to collectively bargain, something this teacher's husband and their child appreciate greatly. Actually how about a raise?

If you are passionate about something in your youth do you explore that passion or go to teachers college? How many people have experienced life with out giving a thought to teaching as a profession but now feel a little empty. Two hundred years ago they would have been working with young apprentices or running informal lessons. One could argue that if we let these people in to schools to share their experiences we would instantly be enabling a potential source of scab labour that could break the power of collective bargaining and put teachers in an even poorer position than now. Four year degrees do not only restrict supply. They also instill a commitment to preserving the status quo.

These barriers don't only apply to class room access. Within schools only teachers get paid professional salaries and only teachers have a career path. Ofcourse you say - teachers are uniquely positioned to understand the needs of schools and other teachers. The consequence of this is that ancillery positions within schools such as IT support are treated almost with disdain. People who work with computers and who are passionate about them are often uniquely placed to inspire and lead others in the workplace. Do schools leverage this? No. They employ the least skilled, cheapest labour they can find. Overwork them. Expect them to perform miracles. Don't treat them as peers. Provide no career path. If they employ anyone with the slightest skill and ambition they are going to be left searching for a replacement in no time and so they prefer ex-students who fit their needs.

Duty of Care

We all want to protect children don't we. What sort of parents would we be otherwise. But most parents I think have a little voice in their head that says "back off a bit." Children need to make mistakes. Children need to experience the world. It is our duty to guide them, protecting them from the worst dangers, while allowing them enough freedom to grow.

Fear for children's safety can be both manipulated and exaggerated. Whether it is Al Upton having his children's blogs taken offline or the zealous overblocking of the Internet that takes place in our High Schools many of us know things have gone too far. The powers that be aren't getting their information from crime reporting statistics or wide ranging studies. They are getting them from "A Current Affair."

Yet if you raised a real problem with the school filtering such as the underblocking, or suggested that whitelists might be more suitable in a lower primary environment you would be at odds with infrastructure people and all that support them.

To read some reports allowing young adults to use Youtube in a supervised learning environment is the depths of depravity and anyone suggesting otherwise is probably a child molester or as bad as.

Please! Please. Back off a bit. The Internet is dangerous the same way everything else of value in the world is dangerous. You could be bitten by a redback in the toilets - should you hold it in forever out of fear? Humans constantly have to weigh risk versus reward. Teachers have a significant role to play in helping students understand this and maximise the rewards and minimise the risks. Internet risks can never me minimised away entirely but the rewards can also be limitless.

We have got it completely wrong with the Internet in schools. Completely wrong!

Crown Copyright

This is a weird one to pull on you. As employees of the crown work you create could be covered by crown copyright. This is extremely problematic in a world tending towards open content and open source. As an IT professional if I was working in a school I would insist on my code being made available under open source licensing. There is no benefit to hiding this knowledge. The gains to schools worldwide of sharing source code outweigh any potential for commercial exploitation by the government. Having to get a clearance from the Attorney General before I share a backup script is complete BS.

Lets have a blanket ruling that code and teaching materials produced in schools are either in the public domain or under a Creative Commons license. For the benefit of all humanity and future generations. Or better yet - just change the copyright act to place all government work in the public domain so tax payers don't have to pay twice for anything our government produces.

Ok. That is entirely too much of a rant for one blog post. One last thought.

Academics at a dance

With Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk about academics at dances in mind. Really - do you want to emulate these people? I think of the Twitter, Facebook and Blog profiles of the cutting edge of teacherdom and it is a fairly incestous affair.

Mix it up a bit guys and pick up some new dance moves. You may need to leave your friends to mind your handbag for a bit. There is a growing fringe around education of people who care and want to contribute in meaningful ways. Within my own area of interest we have OLPC friends, Moodlers, Wikipedians, Linux user groups and a while lot more who are passionate about making and exploring. I know some of you have tapped into this in a big way already. To all the rest - don't be scared. There are a lot more people passionate about education and educational opportunities than you might realise.