Keitai

Wesley Fryer brings up some good points regarding web tools and open source adoption in education in his recent ‘Open Source Tipping Point‘ post. Adoption of web and open source tools is certainly increasing in both business and education but I’m not sure when the tipping point will come—particularly in education.

There are lots of companies out there still valiantly creating ’solutions’ for education and learning. Few of these products are web based, few are cross platform, and fewer still use open technologies. How many CD ROMs does your library carry that no longer run on your class computer? How many neat storytelling, charting, or simulation apps has your school used that produce an executable or proprietary output format? What happens when your license runs out, you change OS (or Apple/Microsoft change it for you,) or the company no longer supports the product? Is a new teacher able to access the data or assets several years later?

That said, many of these applications are designed for education—usually with the help of pedagogues—and bundle in all sorts of curriculum and task-tracking related goodies; so they should be worth the money—right? Sadly I think the answer is a resounding "maybe."

After many years in the ‘educational’ multimedia industry (and several more working in schools) I think I’d rather see students engaged with real-world technologies that provide them real world (technical, critical thinking, and social) skills, than simply pop in a CD and complete an exercise—no matter how compelling, well designed, multi-media rich, or SCORM compliant it is. Using Flickr or del.icio.us in the classroom isn’t a fad—it’s just useful. When used creatively it teaches real world skills (classification, taxonomy, etc.) and can be used at all sorts of levels and in all sorts of contexts (primary, adult ed., EFL etc.)

So the challenge is two sided—and convincing school boards and teachers to embrace these technologies is certainly one of them. The other, is a direct challenge to the software community. Let’s build more open, flexible, easy to use, tools that can easily be integrated into classroom activities.