open source and the education community_ a report_ and some suggestions presentation

8/7/2019 Open Source and the Education Community_ A Report_ and Some Suggestions Presentation

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Open Source and the

Education Community:A Report, and Some Suggestions

James Stanger, Ph.D.Chief Certification Architect andVice President of Certification,

Certification PartnersCorporation


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Who are we?

An overview of CIW, and what we do

Why open source is important to us?

We focus on job skills (Job Task Analysis)

Our academic clients demand a task-based approach

Who do we work with?

High schools, community colleges, and universities

What's the problem?

Schools want to create employable candidates

But, Employability usually often involve open source in

a meaningful way

Some suggestions

Okay, so there's one open high school out there . . .

Let's try to get a bit practical, shall we?

Agenda


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Who are we? Certified Internet Web Professional

(www.ciwcertified.com)

A skills-based education program

In existence since 1998

We teach:

Web development

Web design Vendor-neutral

Based on job skills

We focus on open sourcetechnologies wheneverpossible

Over 175,000 examsdelivered

We also develop courseware titles


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Who are we? (Continued) Clients include

Corporations such as IBMOver a dozen Universities worldwide

Western Governors University (WGU)

University of the West of Scotland

New Hebei University (China)

Dozens of community colleges Pellissippi State Technical Community College

Mid-South Community Colleges

About 150-200 high schools

Battlefield High school (Virginia)

Niceville High (Florida)

We also have a significant self-study business

We work daily with these clients; no theory or works inprogress here


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Who are we? (continued) Due to our work with open source, we are often asked to

work with other standards bodies and organizations

States Career Clusters (www.careerclusters.org)

Integral7 (www.integral7.com)

On the advisory board of many community colleges

Linux Professional Institute (www.lpi.org)


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Who are we? (continued) We teach and deliver exams for the following:

Web design

JavaScript

Perl

PHP

JavaDatabase design

Server administration


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Why is opensourceimportanttous?

Terrific educational tool Can see what happens underneath the hood of vendor-

specific technologies

We creates innovators and troubleshooters

Open source is a compelling development model

We want to show students how they can contribute to thatmodel

We teach innovators to become knowledge workers

We don't put people on a vendor treadmill

Skills-based approach first

Applications second

We don't put people on a vendor treadmill

We also profile closed-source technology when themarket demands it


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Who do we workwith?

We have an audience of well over 1,000 educators

We regularly work with their many thousands ofstudents


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Who did wetalkto? Educators:

Teachers Professors

Trainers

Administrators:

Deans

Department chairs

Principals

Superintendents

Curriculum designers

State leaders: They enlist CIW to ensure that programsmeet industry standards for high schools, communitycolleges and universities

Survey: We conducted a survey of our customer base


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Talent and innovation: Our best student talent generallystill comes from public institutions

Yes, some major universities are major supporters

But the majority of today's students aren't taught in those institutions

Our communities: Where will we get new innovators ifwe don't attract them now?

Better software, better solutions

Future of software development

What'satstake?


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Whatdo instructors want? Not the same question as what they need!

Motivated students

More time

Funding for training and research

Better facilities

So, what do they want? Reliable input from industry

A way to demonstrate that their students are getting jobs their pay is increasingly tied to this fact

A repeatable, stable turnkey solution

Programs that have industry backing (Government Perkinsfunding)

Something that makes their life easier

What does open source give them, then?


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Isthisthesolution? Business?

Serious?

Turnkey?


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Survey data (continued) So, who responded?

Titles included: Instructor/teacher/professor,

department chair, curriculum leader, training manager

Large number of directors, deans and administrators


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Survey data (continued) The majority of respondents were developers and

programmers - Other listed specific languages

ManyWebdesign

educators,as well


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Survey data (continued) Notice the array of proprietary applications

Not trying topull aneither/orhere

But, noticehow mostof thesetechnologiescan be

open source


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Survey data (continued) From a comfort perspective, and from an industry

perspective,closedsourceapplicationsrule the

roost


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Survey data (continued)What applications o ouuseonapersonalorprofessional asis, outsideofclass?

Adobe OpenOffice at times.

U E Linux ubunto, apache triad

Firefox, ordpress,OpenOffice, ireshark, Linux,Apache Linux, Java, ++

reamweaver,Firefox,Office, XP Microsoft software applications andwebdesignsoftware.

none [lotsofthese!]none,I amnot familiarwith any

wehave a Linuxserverin additional toservers runningMicrosoft.Iplay aroundwithfreesoftwareforcreatingwebpages,blogs, videos,digitalscrapbooks - ifit'sfree,I'llplay

whenIhave time )

OpenOffice, GoogleEarth, Picassa OOo,Filezilla,Apache, Linux, Notepad++,phpMyAdmin,PHP, jEdit, Tortoise VN, YUI,Audacity, GiMP, Smoothwall,

PuTTY andmanymore...

Gimp,Audacity, Moodle, Xampp, Linux,OpenOffice, Utilities,mostly. Nomajor applications.

PHP, MySQL,Apache,Audacity Moodle ourse Management System,OtherFOSS Utilities

Idon't use anybut haveheard about OpenOffice.IfIhadmoreinformationon thesesources,Imight bewilling touse

them.

Almost everythingisopensource...

Not surewhat opensource applications are availa ble CrimsonEditor,FileZilla,Firefox,Unbuntu Linux and

xampp, ordpress, Joomla

Yes, Adobe Flex isopensource but noticesomeof the mistakenandnaveideasabout opensource


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Survey data (continued) The majority of other said We don't use open

source, and we never get asked for open source

(Traincanada.com)


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Survey data (continued) Corporate adoption is key

Instructorsdon'twant totake the

lead Advisory

Councils

Theseinstructors

aren'tbozos -they listen toindustry


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Survey data (continued) Open source is something for students but corporation

use standard industry software

Lack of personal experience

quality textbook resources are sometimes limited. Idon't have time to write my own "books" for all the

different open source and Not many publishers offertexts in it.

Our county doesnt have the software

The students reluctance to learn something that isn't'office.'

Many are not as user friendly unless you are aprogrammer and require more steps to use thanpurchased software.


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Survey data (continued) Greatest demand in the state is for .NET solutions. We

respond to industry demands rather than proselytizenon-commercial alternatives

Money - there are hidden costs and ASP.NET is free -prefer VB based code for teaching

lack of my training not always compatible with home computers

Don't know what is available


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Survey data (continued) If corporate adoption is key, consider this slide

Other was allNone


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Survey data (continued) How deep and sophisticated is academic support of open

source?

The question was, Please name any open sourceprojects you work with or contribute to

None, I'd like to someday

Do not work with them - just referrals for students to find freestuff

Edinburgh Linux User Group (EdLug). UKOpen SourceConsortium. Linux Professional Institute. Peter George

I am working on a project to look at open source coursedelivery options similar to blackboard

OpenOffice and PortableApps

Moodle, Joomla

Asterisk PBX system

ossim /ipcop /nessus / nmap /moodle /exe

Of 74 responses, 41 said none.


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Survey data (continued)

Answers included: Never gave it a thought and50/50


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Survey data (continued) briefly 15 min overview

1hr, includes pic of Rich. Stallman


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Survey data (continued) It is many development models with copyleft being the

far left.


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Some of ourrespondents Kern High School District: We offer 50+ different job

training programs

Western Governors University (WGU): Emphasis onOracle and industry-backed programs

Lawson State Community College: I currently do not

actually teach students how to use open sourceproducts

Howard Community College Low income students.Digital Divide. Show students transferrable skills onopen source and how to access.

Some schools are quite progressive, sure.

But for every one progressiveschool/program/instructor, there are at least 4 whoreally don't know, don't care about open source


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Problemsandsolutions

Some solutions

Don't emphasize the GPL andpatents to the exclusion ofdemonstrating how open sourcebusiness models work

Show how open source is a

compelling way to developsoftware

Community and projectleaders need to show highlightthe business use of theirsolutions

Include educators more inprojects

Open source leaders need toactively engage educators

Some problems

ACTE Conference: What goes onin Vegas stays in Vegas?

Meeting in Florida: I show somestudents open source tools afterclass

Comment from Scotland: I useopen source all the time forexample, trial versions of Adobe

Question asked on Drupal: Weneed a portal that allows us tocreate forums, share ideas, blog,

and share documents. Why aren'twe using Microsoft SharePoint?

Let's talk about some problems and solutions, shall we?


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Eric Meyer

A CSS god He gave a presentation on open source Web design

Very inspirational for a while, at least

In less than a 1/2-hour, though, attendees were back

to talking about how important it was for them to get

funding for Adobe CS3!

Anotherstory: CIW conference


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Solvingthe problem?

Create new schools? Redesign the schools?

Well . . .

Let's try to be practical

Can't we work with existing schools?


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Who's holdingus back?

Answers:

It's all Microsoft's fault. Hmm. Not really.

Sometimes, your best friends are your worst supporters

The independent nature of open source project leaders

The small nature of projects Balkanization

Overly idealistic thinkers and shakers who maybe pleasant to listen to, but who have not executed inexisting academic institutions on a large scale


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Who's holdingus back?(continued)

We have at least two communities at play, here:

The open source community and all of its projects

Academia, which has its own language, culture, andconferences

When was the last time you went to an academic conference? Why is that?

More dialogue even some dialog is necessary

And, let's focus on what can be accomplished on alarge scale, not in isolated instances


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I'm ready to take somenotes

Whatsolutionsdo you haveinmind?


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Thank You!

JamesStanger,[email protected]

(888) 303-8694

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