{"id":123,"date":"2008-12-02T19:27:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T02:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/123"},"modified":"2016-06-10T14:45:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T21:45:15","slug":"is-open-source-too-difficult-and-how-do-we-get-the-most-bang-for-our-buck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/123","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Is Open Source too difficult?&#8221; and how do we avoid being just a fringe movement?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steve O&#8217;Connor> wrote a thought-provoking post &#8220;Is Open Source too difficult?&#8221; in response to the formation of the <a href=\"http:\/\/community.k12opensource.com\" target=\"_blank\">K-12 Open Source Community<\/a> on ning.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been slow to respond, in part, because life is a bit chaotic for me right now and, in part, because I wasn&#8217;t sure I wanted to weigh in on what could be perceived as overly critical of the K-12 Open Source Community, which I think, on the whole, is a benefit to the Open Source movement in schools.<\/p>\n<p>The issues are gnawing at me, though, so so here are some thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If the &#8220;proponents&#8221; of the movement aren&#8217;t using FOSS tools for a community dedicated to FOSS, there is a problem. (I have some ideas of what could be done to help address this, but I&#8217;ll save them for another post.)<\/li>\n<li>Open Source tools, on the whole, are more difficult for most users than standard proprietary tools. (I base this on hundreds of hours of workshops with tools like MediWiki and Wikispaces, Open Office and Office, GIMP and Photoshop, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Steve&#8217;s fifth graders are undoubtedly more adventuresome (and probably more skilled) than most middle-of-the-road teachers.<\/li>\n<li>Middle-of-the-road teachers have to be the target for any broad-scale educational initiative.<\/li>\n<li>You have to pick your battles.<\/li>\n<li>An important 21st century skills to be be able to evaluate tools and to choose the best tool for each task, which varies according to the task.<\/li>\n<li>For all of his contributions, Richard Stallan-type thinking will not add to the expansion of FOSS or OER. One of my great concerns for OER is that it won&#8217;t ever grow beyond being a fringe movement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For these and other reasons, I&#8217;ve chosen to focus more of my personal time on <strong>open content<\/strong> as opposed to <strong>open tools<\/strong>. Related points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most people see the weaknesses of textbooks and have identified a need for better content resources that are feasible (and legal) to modify for the purposes of differentiating instruction<\/li>\n<li>Most teachers are much more facile with content than they are with software.<\/li>\n<li>There are not IT barriers to open content (though there are substantial barriers presented by the educational-industrial complex).<\/li>\n<li>Education can be positively and substantially improved with open content.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Food for thought. I&#8217;d be interest in your comments.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks, Steve O., for starting this discussion, and  Steve H. for starting a community to discuss this in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve O&#8217;Connor> wrote a thought-provoking post &#8220;Is Open Source too difficult?&#8221; in response to the formation of the K-12 Open Source Community on ning. I&#8217;ve been slow to respond, in part, because life is a bit chaotic for me right<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6mlV-1Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2209,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/2209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}