Philosophy

From Schoolforge-UK

Contents 1 Prof. David Hargreaves 2 Prof. Stephen Heppell 3 Scientific Method analogy 4 Social constructivism 5 Productivity Model failings 6 Paul Nelson - originator of K12LTSP 7 The contribution of social collaboration to effective e-learning 8 Open Source and Web 2.0

Prof. David Hargreaves

Professor David Hargreaves, Chairman of Becta, delivered the keynote speech on "Innovation and ICT: a personal view" at the FLOSSIE Conference 2004. Prof. Hargreaves graphically contrasted various approaches to innovation, leading progressively to his vision of an open source network of schools and teachers that would produce a peer-to-peer system of knowledge management that is decentralised, distributed and disciplined.

"Innovation is best achieved through collaborative networks"

"The same networks are the most effective way of transferring the emergent good practices"

You can view Prof. Hargeaves' slides at http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/flossie/hargreaves.ppt (345 KB)

Prof. Stephen Heppell

At the Open Source in Education Conference at 2003 Stephen Heppell gave a talk which went to the heart of the philosophy of open resources. This link to a bit of his work seems relevant.

Scientific Method analogy

At the conference Roger Whittaker of SuSE and Diana Laurillard of the DFES also raised the concepts of the 'scientific method' as a useful metaphor:

• Peer Review
• Open publishing of work and sharing of results
• Honesty
• Rapid development cycle built on pre-existing work
• Working in collaborative teams of expert peers

This is useful as far as it goes, but does not necessarily allow one to build on the actual embodiment of concepts that copyleft permits, as anyone who has actually researched FROM and written for scientific publications will know. While development in a scientific method is very helpful, it is not optimal. -- MjR

In software, the pre-existing work must also be freely available for the most rapid development. Compared to a few years ago, this web site took minimal time to set up, building on the pre-existing work of PostNuke and phpWiki developers -- JohnIngleby

Please feel free to correct or edit this entry - as with the whole of this wiki!

Social constructivism

There is an increasingly broad consensus around what constitutes good learning, which is perhaps best seen as a guided process of knowledge construction. This is underpinned by a constructivist epistemological paradigm, in which knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, rather than being passively received from the teacher or the environment: this is of course supported and mirrored by software that the user can help to construct.

A consensus also exists around effective approaches to education, most of which are analagous to aspects of open source software development. Effective approaches to learning are characterized by:

• participation, as users and a community of developers participate in the development of FLOSS software
• reflective thinking, part of coding in general, but particularly promoted by community discussion of code, and by having the source code open to the scrutiny of ones peers
• collaboration, again a characteristic of a community based approach to software decelopment
• intrinsic motivation, FLOSS developers often code because they love to, rather than for financial reward, although this helps
• a well structured knowledge base, again the open souce aspect provides motivation for documenting ones work, as does the communal construction of documentation, support forums, wikis etc.
• problem solving, an experience known to most programmers, and it could be argued, many end users of FLOSS programs.

Such approaches are based on a social constructivist approach to education, in which knowledge is created through the interactions and relationships within a community, or classroom. This is mirrored by the community approach to development that characterizes most FLOSS projects.

A learning environment which promotes social constructivism would provide:

• experience in knowedge construction, as not only FLOSS programmers gain, but also those users who contribute to bug reporting, support forums, wikis etc,
• appreciation of multiple perspectives, as the community based approach to development and support provides,
• realistic and relevant contexts, as FLOSS programmers gain through solving real world problems,
• ownership and voice, again contributions, however minor, to code and user support provide such an opportunity in FLOSS projects,
• a social experience, which because the code is open, typically characterizes the development of FLOSS,
• the use of different modes of representation, the same project has many facets, such as the coding, porting to other operating systems, the interface design, documentation, support, website, advocacy, etc.
• self awareness, this links with the intrinsic motivation described above, FLOSS projects have captured people's imagination, rather than merely serving a corporate bottom-line. (See Cunningham, Duffy & Knuth, 1993, Textbook of the Future in McKNight (Ed), Hypertext: a psychological perspective)

Whilst such opportunities are intrinisic to FLOSS development, there are also an increasing number of FLOSS projects which are particularly suited to promoting these areas in the classroom, examples include:

• virtual learning environments, especially Moodle, which is grounded in social constructionism,
• content management systems for internal and external websites,
• blogging, and
• wiki development, including wikipedia itself.

Those interested in learning more about these ideas could start with A Jouney into Constructivism by Martin Dougiamas, himself the FLOSS developer behind Moodle.

Vygotsky's notion of education as taking place within the 'zone of proxymal development', is an experience known to most programmers, who have learnt to write good code by working alongside and learning from others engaged in the same activity.

If the above are values to which we aspire in our schools and classrooms, then shouldn't the software we use to help us towards them itself embody the same processes and aspirations?

Miles Berry

Productivity Model failings

Much of the software that we use at the moment is focussed on the productivity model

• this model is not suited to true education
• much of what we do does not SHOW the process, just the product
• it is hard to get involved in producing new systems

We need to have resources that we can use and develop and share freely. For software, this means free software. For other works, this means works under an open licence. Only when we have the parts to build our own targetted materal and systems can we get anything like the full benefit of available computing resources.

Paul Nelson - originator of K12LTSP

The full interview is at http://www.redhat.com/advice/ask_pnelson.html. Below is an excerpt:

RH: Name the killer OSS apps for education that exist today? That lack?

PN: The real question is how should kids be using computers in schools? They should be gathering and analyzing information, using email to collaborate with learning partners around the world, using software to present their ideas for peer review and exploring the creative powers of computers in music and art. Isn't that just how we use software as adults? That's how kids need to use software. OSS has everything we need to do this and more right now.

Some educators will cite the lack of traditional educational packages for Linux that teach reading or math with funny rabbits that wink at you and say "Good job!" I just don't think we need to go there. Teachers don't need cute teaching applications. They just need computers that work and provide basic access to the software we all use everyday.

The contribution of social collaboration to effective e-learning

See Steve Lee and Miles Berry's paper on the above.

Open Source and Web 2.0

A discussion of points in common and key differences, again from Miles Berry.