Inspired be Elana Leoni's post-Drupalcon Edutopia post, I'd like to map a path for how teacher teams in public schools, with little or no money, might connect the dots between Global Education on a Dime and Open Source Success Stories.
I'm speaking of the "ante" (as in poker): what you need to put on the table to play. "Open Source is Free" doesn't include time, equipment and support needed to make it effective! For any schools interested in following this pattern, there will need to be an investment of social capital (people spending time and effort) and organizational capital (school-supported structures and initiatives) as part of the ante.
The Technology Ante for Blended Learning in ONE CLASSROOM
- Equipment: Assume teachers have one computer with a reliable internet connection, and at least one second computer for students to use. The other important pieces of equipment they need: a digital projector ($500 and up - ) and a Skype setup (webcam, a condenser mic for small groups, and headset for higher quality connections - $30 and up).
- Web Environment: There's got to be a "place" where all this "happens" - where the communication between classroom, home, and world is made. In Global Education on a Dime the tool cited is Ning (which is no longer free). There's Google Groups, etc... all take time to set up, learn, and manage, and have limitations. Should an external entity decide when your curricula and student work disappear?
The Technology Ante for Blended Learning SCHOOL-WIDE
An individual teacher can set up individual Nings or a Google Groups and get his or her feet wet, but if we're looking for school transformation, there is going to need to be School Intranet: a website students can access from school (not firewalled) and home, that can facilitate:
- Community boundaries: teacher decides who has access to whom and to what; no student data is shared with anyone outside the approved community - that's school law.
- Iterative classwork: teacher posts assignment, student submits work, teacher comments, student improves, etc.
- Cumulative curriculum: curricula and student work can be exported from the envrionment and shared or archived.
This is just a starter list...comment with more?
The Social and Organizational Ante: PLCs & Student Tech Support Programs
To make that school intranet happen, there will need to be:
- Design consensus: faculty and other stakeholders need to figure out how this Intranet will work and what it will do.
- Design and implementation support: even if the intranet software were free (as in Drupal), the design and support would not be.
Two organizational structures that can support the "not free" part of Open Source implementation (the labor, the management, the communications) include:
- Online Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): For the technology planning, curriculum design, project development, and management consensus, teachers, administrators and other stakeholders can meet and collaborate online to address these issues.
- A Ticketing System for Student Tech Support Teams: One of the Drupalcon sessions was "Open Source Opens Doors for Youth" - I've done this sort of thing with Tech Scouts and most people know Generation Yes.
Our young folk are willing, able, and eager to help teachers learn to implement open source software. The time and cost of turning them into nascent open source developers would have educational validity, workforce preparation validity, AND cost less than hiring outside developers and trainers.
The Full Ante
Okay, to recap, here's what I thiink the ante is for school transformation with open source:
- Digital projectors and Skype Setups in all classrooms
- An Intranet platform for blended learning and global connections
- A dedicated professional learning community of teachers, administrators, and others
- A student tech support team course / club / infrastructure
What did I miss?
-Bram