Listen Part 1 (MP3) – 25min – 11,7Mb

Listen Part 2 (MP3) – 35min – 16,1Mb

(Sorry for the lesser quality of the audio. Knut had problems with
the Skype setup under Linux. Hopefully Skype is soon released to fully
support the new ALSA sound architecture under Linux. I also had to
re-record my questions afterwards)

I had the opportunity to interview Knut Yrvin from Skolelinux. This interview is more like a case story about how they build an operating system for schools, how they beat Microsoft in their own game, how they stand against the new European patent law and how they do a lot of promotion about Linux in their own country with such a small amout of funding. Recently they received the Linux New Media Award in the category of Best Newcomer Linux Distribution.

Knut has worked 10 years in a Norwegian telephone company as an engineer
and in a couple of private compenies. He completed his studies in the
university of Oslo in computer Science. Knut Yrvin describes the
project and the history of developing Free/Open Source software as: “This is not a children’s game, it’s deadly serious”.

Knut Yrvin operates as the elected project leader of Skolelinux. I became interested in Skolelinux when I heard about it back here in Finland. In short it’s a Linux distribution specifically aimed for schools. What makes it interesting is the focused effort to carry out this project and its promotion in Norway.  Just let me say you this: they have done a pretty darn good job on that.

Just look at the map of schools. It sure looks impressive when we take into account that they also have their government supporting their efforts and Knut taking part in public debate on software patents, DRM (Digital Rights Management) and stuff like that. It’s not simply just pockets of hackers in some basements doing great technical things for their selves. They think about a typical end-user and get their developers in touch with schools to understand how they operate, what their needs are and how they work. Technical details are pushed aside and the focus is on usability and cost savings: "we need no 160 page installation manuals just to get a system up and running". Teachers should be able to maintain a Skolelinux network with only a few hours per week per hundreds of users. Recycled code on recycled computers.

The Skolelinux project helps people get started in using ICT in education. Skolelinux aspire to create a quality, full-fledged and preferable computer solution for schools. The other target is to localize Skolelinux into different languages, mainly the many different languages spoken in Norway. They invite outsiders to take part in their effort to deploy Skolelinux in their own region. So, if you were thinking about a Linux distribution specifically for schools in your own country, just save a lot of time and join their effort.

Skolelinux has chosen do-ocracy as a management method. I’m very interested to this because do-ocracy captures the pure essence of what online communities are doing when they build things together, be it software or content or something else:

In do-ocracy the person that does something decides. People who only talk have no meaning. In the other hand, people who deliver have meaning in our society.

In Skolelinux the developer always has to learn something new about the school situtation. They have to investigate how ICT is used in the learning environment. According to Knut, it’s better that people see
their selves instead that  they have some kind of mediators like sales men in between.

Software patents and DRM are discussed to great length. Skolelinux team is advising the local politicians in these issues. The main point is that software patents are a problem for the whole technology industry, not just Linux which is acting as a poster boy. Proprietary software companies like Opera also fight software patents. The only thing software patents bring is trade advantages to big companies. Unfortunately only big companies have the money to talk to politicians why software patents should be allowed.

We should protect people from technology. That’s why we have black boxes in airplanes. If something goes wrong, we can search for that box and see a complete trace of what went wrong. That’s why the source code of a technology should be open for inspection but also a reason to say no to DRM.

In the future, the biggest winners are probably the users because users have more options. It’s not the programmer but we have to remember one thing: most programmers in the world are not paid to program on the Microsoft platform. Previously they didn’t have many options. Now they have options and they will choose other platforms like Linux instead. Microsoft has done poorly in delivering developer interfaces, APIs, programming languages and standards. Number of developers writing in Java and LAMP exceed the number of people who write to Microsoft environments only. Because Microsoft has lost all those developers in their lock-in business model, they are going to loose the whole game.

This is a period where we have forgot the users demands and traditional economics of the software industry. Now we are going to rail this down and get back to normal again.

Some questions answered in the interview:

• 1st part:
• Who are you?
• Skolelinux?
• Do-ocracy?
• Success of Skolelinux?
• Debian vs. Fedora/Redhat?
• 2nd part:
• Recycled equipment?
• Thin client solutions?
• Political situation of ICT in education?
• DRM and patents?
• How is Open Source affecting the IT industry?
• Winners?

"The real reason why Europe wants software patents is because they want to limit the ability of countries like India and China in their way to get into the European markets. This is a trade war. It has nothing to do with Open Source at all. It’s all about who is going to compete on the international arena"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with Knut Yrvin.
If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2005

Debian considered as the most scalable Linux solution

Commercial Linux distributions like SuSe and Redhat have problems in
delivering the same scalability what Debian offers. Debian is quick to
install and Debian hybrids like Ubuntu, Knoppix and Skolelinux provide
Debian-based solutions for different needs. The main scalability
benefit in Debian comes from the fact that it has a three year release
cycle with an easy upgrade between versions. No re-installation
required as it is with Windows or Redhat offerings.

Proprietary providers fight patents

Many smaller and mid-size proprietary software companies have started
to object the software patents. Players like Opera Software have also
problems with software patents not just Linux and FLOSS projects. There
is also fear that foreign and local companies will come and patent
software and computer algorithms that have already been invented
before. The main argument used against software patents is that they
provide real trade advantages only to big companies.

Year 2006

Third-world countries implement Linux

Countries in Africa, Asia and South-America have started to implement
Linux and older recycled computers to close the gap in digital
literacy. Linux with older equipment is considered as a much more
affordable solution. Many new Linux distributions and translation
efforts take place in poorer regions of the world. UNESCO and other
global organizations are helping in this effort. Some have ordered
their institutions and businesses to use Linux only in effort to
prevent the flow of money to better developed countries.

VoIP services take off

Many different VoIP applications have taken off. New VoIP services are
announced almost every week as traditional telephone companies are
entering the markets. VoIP enables telephony over a network with better
quality and smaller cost. Many broadband providers have started to
offer QOS (Quality of Service) to traffic related to their proprietary
VoIP implementations.

Schools buy recycled computers

Linux has enabled schools to buy old recycled computers. These
computers come with Linux pre-installed. Schools are able to buy a
complete school computer network out-of-the-box from recycled computer
centers. This approach allows schools to buy at least twice as much
equipment than before. Linux uses less resources so the latest and
greatest equipment is not required.

Thin-client solutions widely in use

Schools have switched to thin- or half thin-client solutions. This
approach allows them to centralize applications on a server while
desktops act simply as stupid clients booting right from the network by
using the centralized server. Some thin-client solutions do not require
a hard-drive or even any cooling measures, reducing the cost associated
with power consumption, maintenance and licenses. Most of these
solutions run FLOSS software.

RIAA pisses youngsters off

The Record Industry Association of America has taken its last and fatal
step by completely pissing of the youngsters. First by suing their
consumers for listening to music and then using ruthless efforts to get
DRM approved and audio recording and copy devices like MP3 players
completely banned. Youngsters have found ways to fight RIAA ín a
network-wide effort.

Software patents get approved in Europe

The European Comission has approved the software patent and EUCD
related laws. This is in pursuit to block foreign competitors out of
the European software market. It allows Europe certain trade advantages
but mainly only to big companies. Very bizzarre patent applications of
software pieces that people might come up with by accident enter the
system. If you are writing software, you never know if you are
infrighting a patented idea.

Year 2007

Do-ocracy common in online cooperation projects

Many online cooperation projects take advantage of a management model
called do-ocracy. In this model the person that does something decides.
Those who only talk have no power in decision making in these projects.
This method especially applied to many FLOSS and Open Content projects.
They are full of people who write code and documentation and those who
do, have the opportunity to decide. Do-ocracy is a very effective in
means of shared knowledge creation.

Linux generates cost-savings

Many organizations have switched to Linux because it enables
cost-savings. Organizations are able to get faster up and running with
new equipment because the easy installation process and centralization
with thin-client solutions enable just that. Setting up a complete
computer network with servers and desktops often requires next to basic
knowledge of computer systems. Because it’s made easier to install than
Windows counter-parts, less resourceful organizations can do it their
selves. Complete outsourcing is not really required.

Year 2008

FLOSS developer gatherings improve delivery

Some organizations, especially schools have noticed that by supporting
FLOSS developer gatherings they have been able to receive some
resources to setup their IT infrastructure to work with FLOSS software.
Volunteer developers and FLOSS enthusiasts help schools and other
non-profit organizations to get their system up and running. They can
bring their computers to developer gatherings to get Linux and other
software properly installed.

Computer skills part of mandatory curriculum

Many educational institutions all around the world have included
computer usage as part of their mandatory curriculum. Using computers
and digital networks is considered as important as reading, writing,
mathematics and understanding of foreign languages.

Schools lack behind in IT deployment

Municipalities have big problems in offering local schools enough
computer equipment. This is because of huge budget cuts that have
forced municipalities to cut heaviest in the IT department. Day-care
and teachers salaries need to be covered for education to continue at
all. IT is considered as less important and especially projects that
try to improve and develop IT in schools loss most of their budget.
This sets schools way back in the development of ICT in education.

Linux ready for mainstream use

The penguin has finally matured on the desktop. Linux developers have
moved up-stack in their focus on Linux development. This is partly
because the desktop environment development has received a lot of
funding from major industry players. As a result Linux is considered
user-friendly on the desktop and ready for mainstream use. Several
reports support this conclusion. Government officials and politicians
urge their institutions to switch to Linux and FLOSS in general. It
simply just works.

Year 2009

DRM technology widely used in devices

Digital Rights Management technology has been deployed in many devices
and software applications. DRM prevents playback and copying of content
that is protected by copyright laws. In devices it makes it illegal to
circumvent the copy protection of such a device. Some vendors have
released computer hardware like processors that take DRM into account.
Microsoft has included DRM in its operating system as a key component,
successfully locking out third-party content providers and still limits
the fair use of content even more.

Free music archive appears

After DRM was approved, politicians made it clear that there must also
be a music archive service not owned by the record industry. Such an
archive includes national classics and other stuff provided under the
common good. Profits from such a service is used for the common good as
well instead of filling the pockets of some proprietary multi-national
enterprises.

Year 2010

Microsoft loses because of developers

The core reason why FLOSS has broken the Microsoft model as the
dominant player in the software industry is because Microsoft lost a
horde of programmers to free solutions like Java and LAMP. Developers
became alianated of development on a platform which changes interfaces,
APIs, programming languages and standards every couple of years. FLOSS
alternatives provide a more steady environment to conduct long-term
software development.

Listen (MP3) – 39min – 18Mb

This time we bring a great interview with George Siemens for your listening pleasure.

George Siemens works as an instructor at Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The main theme is common trade and the program functions as a laptop program. Through this work he has played around with a wide range of emerging technologies. George is also a regular blogger and a writer at his elearnspace.org website for about 3 years already. His writings focus on elearning, technology, knowledge management and social trends.

George emphasizes personalized learning and networked activity within that. Recently he wrote about a new learning theory of the digital age called connectivism and also released a new website focused on that topic. Learning is strongly a networked process where a learner aggregates external contents into a holistic representation. Previous theories of learning were created during a time when learning was not influenced by technology. Connectivism is a learning theory that takes into account the way how learning is influenced by the digital age. For a better overview of connectivism, see his article about it.

There is also a lot of interesting details about decentralizing interaction and how the profile of a learner has changed: the average learner is older and many are switching careers multiple times during a life-time. This requires a very dynamic approach to learning. New methods are required to deliver evidence of the knowledge one possesses.

The half-life of knowledge is shrinking and is affecting many of these issues. Informality of learning is breaking down the barriers of traditional learning. Learning is now a continuous process. We can’t only offer a four year learning experience but we have to support learning that lasts for the rest of the life-time. Learners aren’t just empty vessels to fill.

George considers open content less important compared to Open Source software (the pipe) as it
doesn’t directly provide us with means to keep our knowledge current. If the content becomes part of the pipe and gets combined with the added-value of the pipe, it sure becomes very important.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• Who are you?
• Online presence?
• Is learning technology industry simply transfering traditional concepts to digital environments?
• Connectivism?
• Small-world networks in learning?
• Social software in education?
• ePortfolios?
• Open Source software?
• Open content?
• Open Source stacks for education?

"The pipe (connection) is more important than what goes inside the pipe"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with George Siemens.
If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2005

Educators demand a move to basics

Usability and simplicity are the new focus areas of technology
development in the field of education. This is the result of the widening gap
between innovators and less tech-savvy users. There is demand on both
edges: new innovations in the first and simple practical solutions in
the latter. Technologically mainstream educators focus more on finding and implementing little changes that bring good benefits  instead of moving to a completely new working environment.

Year 2006

Blogs and wikis capture informal learning

A notable research journal featured an article just recently about the ability of
blogs and wikis to capture informal learning experiences more effectively
than LMS provided by their educational institutions. This is because
they have access to these systems for as long as they want their selves
and also because these systems build on top of informal conversations of their daily experiences. Social
software is now also called as informal media in contrary to LMS which is described as formal media.

Education struggles to support informal learning

The need to support students’ informal learning as a continual process
has been noticed as one of the highest priorities but educational institutions
still lack the resources and methods to support these needs. Informal
learning consists of 80% of all learning and is still far from the
context and influence of formal education.

Year 2007

Learning approached from the complexity point of view

As many natural sciences have tried to understand the world by first
atomizing a task into small pieces and then trying to understand it as
a whole, learning theorists have now noticed that the same approach  to understand learning as a process doesn’t work. Learning is simply just too complex to cut into pieces and make any sense out of that later on. Learning has to be
approached from some point of view that brings order into chaos. They
have found interesting new things about learning by using network
theories as a basis to understand the complex nature of learning.

Learners bring connections

Previously LMS systems were very centralized and closed. Now their
functionality is more open. As a result, teachers have noticed that
learners bring important and meaningful connections to a learning
environment when it supports interaction in an open environment. Simple
closed chat and forum discussions aren’t enough. We have realized that
the process of interaction cannot be centralized.

Connectiveness a core competency

Latest research found that those who spend most of their time on
focusing on what they know today are lacking behind in learning results
compared to those who actively build connections to make sure that they
stay up-to-date in their own field. Knowledge becomes obsolete faster than before and results in requirements to focus more on meta-cognitive skills of searching, analyzing and evaluating the available information-mass.

ASP service businesses use FLOSS

Application Service Providers who offer software as a service have
started to offer a wide variety of Open Source solutions and software
with value-added services. They are not necessarily
distributing the source code used in their internal ASP service
servers – a set of features remain closed to provide a
competitive advantage. These new services are especially important in regional development and speed up the adoption of Open Source as providers start to offer such solutions to their customers.

Year 2008

New boom of companies offering Open Source stacks

Educational institutions are receiving offerings from various new
service businesses which are offering complete Open Source stacks. These companies deliver a certain stack of an information infrastructure in a
customized manner. This saves a lot of time from institutions in their process of
gathering knowledge and plans on how to effectively deploy Open Source
software. As a result Open Source has become more financially driven through the diversity of different kind of service businesses.

Learners mad at losing access to past learning experiences

Students are furious and demand life-time access to knowledge they have
worked with, constructed and gathered in a centralized LMS.
Losing access to their LMS account is like losing access to knowledge
they say. After you have taken a course online and after you passed, you can’t
get in anymore. Disposing previous learning experiences as if they were
some kind of throwaway items is not accepted. As a result educational institutions demand better export features into their LMS solutions so that their students can move their learning history into a publicly available service.

Survey finds that people trust unknown online experts

A recent survey found that 85% of people trust certain online experts
they read in their decision to buy a product or a service. Trust in
online experts is highest in customer communities where people can read
third-party and independent commentary or issues and use Social
Reputation Systems (SRS) to sort out the most trusted experts. Least
trust was given to companies who present their ideas in a traditional third-person sales pitch.
More trust was given to companies which had employees blogging and
writing in first person about their daily work and products.

Year 2009

Teachers and students get tired of new technologies

The complexity of the LMS system has grown during the years. These
systems are growing in number of different tools and features on a
constant basis. Those who have used these tools right from the
beginning are able to handle the constant flood of new features. Others
feel alienated and just want something that does a certain job very
well. The demand for very focused and easy to use tools that are
easy to connect together in a customized fashion goes up.

Half-life of knowledge is shrinking even faster

Researchers have noticed that the knowledge you need in your daily
operations become obsolete more quickly than previously. This is
nothing new but they have compared the results of today to 5 years
earlier and it seems that the trend is not slowing down. As a result people
are getting more into informal learning and rely on expert communities,
where they can learn faster from those who know their topic very well
and are open in sharing their wisdom. Capturing their tacit knowledge
becomes important.

Connectivism as a method to develop learning environments

People have noticed the importance of networks and are reflecting on a
learning theory that makes more sense in a networked world.
Connectivism which views learning as more like a nervous system where
learning is a sequence of inputs and the network itself learns through
building better pipes, relations and connections to high-priority
resources proves to be interesting to many. This reflects on the latest
trend where the pipe is seen as more important than what is going
inside the pipe.

85% of online people rely of search engines

Most people with internet connections report search engines as their
core tools for filtering for information they happen to need at a
certain moment. The idea that such a pipe is not available at times
makes people feel uncomfortable and disabled – as if part of their
knowledge had disappeared. Many have dropped the personal requirement
to remember long and complex issues they come across because they are
able to access that information when they need it through their
intelligent data mining systems. Instead they focus on building
new connections.

ePortfolios focusing on capturing informal learning appear

ePortfolios were previously offered by their distinct organizations in
which the learner didn’t have the control and customization power of
their own ePortfolio. Open source software, cheap hosting and free
user-driven services provide new ways for learners to build their
personalized ePortfolio systems where they can put evidence of their
knowledge for everyone to see. Some people use more focused tools; others are satisfied with a simple blog.

Year 2010

Real-time data used for decision making

Top CIOs of various companies have almost real-time access to
information about their organization and markets. Instead of receiving
quarterly reports from various departments, they are able to follow
remotely in real time the work being done from customer satisfaction
surveys to closed sales. Real-time financial data proves to be
especially useful. Many organizations use aggregators that gather
information from various fields. There are service companies filtering
and providing the required information feeds.

Social software enters education

Centralized feature-driven collaboration products that use a lock-in
strategy start losing the game to more open social relationship-driven systems. In these systems the building of social relationships is more
important than the technical efficiency-driven features. A new mindset
that focuses on developing parts of interaction brings more value to
tools being used.

Mobile devices provide access from everywhere

Smart mobile devices help learners to access their collaborative
networks from everywhere. For example, a set of students may walk in
the nature taking pictures and describing the environment while in the
same time another team sits in a room connected to the internet
providing deeper analysis on the reportage received from the field.  Multimedia capabilities, location awareness and improved two-way communication interfaces enable a range of new possibilities.

Listen 2nd part (MP3) – 29min – 13,4Mb

This is the second part of the interview with Stephen Downes. It continues right from where the first part ended. You might want to start from there. This time Stephen brings us great insight in the importance of open content and Open Source in education.

Stephen talks about communities and what is actually a community and what kinds of communities people belong to. The internet allows people to pick very specific communities by topic out there. Communities are not anymore tied to a place but are more like networks, clusters and clouds.

Downes masterly compares the decline of traditional local news paper business to educational publishers and how educational institutions could turn their wave from buying content to creating content by taking a couple of radical steps. First of all they should make their resources freely available and secondly, stop paying for publishers of journals, books and online course packages. The resources freed by these actions could be channeled to teachers to help them create the same content and release their stuff  freely.

He argues that with FLOSS, the main benefit is not cost but customization and gives a couple of examples why. Customization could enable shared knowledge construction among students. The educational institutions should choose a simple Open Source core of content or software and start customizing it to their needs. Open Source is what makes it possible for a student to change the parameters of her/his own education.

The general concepts that will rule are things that are distributed, decentralized, open and serve the individual need.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• Is community the primary unit of learning?
• Open content?
• Problems with adoption of open content?
• What problems we have to overcome in open content in education?
• Open source in education?
• Winners and loosers?
• Non-technical issues to solve?

"We have this picture of a community that’s comes from people like Edgian Wenger, John Hagel III and Arthur G. Armstrong, that community is some sort of discreet entity, like a pre-Wittgensteinian definition where you have clear boundaries and you know whether or not you are in a community. But the concept of community that evolves out the capacity to exercise choise in joining or not joining a community now becomes fuzzy, it becomes something like a family resemblence. A community just becomes a vaguely defined cloud of clustered interactions that emerge from the center of individual actions. We have folksonomies, so we’ll have folksmunities"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with Stephen Downes.
If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2005

People reach far for communities of interest

New kinds of communities form around rare topics of interest. This is
possible because the internet enables fragmented groups of individuals
to find each other online. More socially oriented people find each
other in chat rooms, dating services and social networking
applications.

Circulation rates for news papers are in free fall

The circulation rate is dropping dramatically in the 18-30 reader
group. This is because the same information is available online in more
polished and complete form through services like WikiNews. News papers
are loosing significant revenues in advertisement due to services like
Greg’s list and Google’s long tail targeted advertisement business.

Collaborative filtering and social reputation systems spread

Online communities that utilize community data improve business. For
example, collaborative filtering based on user recommendations enables
people to find products and information they might be interested in
based on their purchasing and community habits. Many of these products
reside in the so called Long Tail as users discover the Long Tail.
Social reputation systems are used to create a sense of trust between
users.

Year 2006

Communities based on networks form

Traditionally a community was a place just like a neigbourhood or an
internet website. After the introduction of open architectures and
standards, people start to form communities that are evenly distributed
all around the world. The blogosphere is only one example of various
network based communities already out there.

Large university releases freely available educational content

Following the example of MIT OpenCourseWare, certain larger
universities has opened up their treasure chests. A couple of new
repositories of free educational material increase the availability of
free resources to educators. The release is also done as a marketing
act, resulting in buzz in the media who view these acts mainly as
positive.

Open content publishing gets harder

There are a lot of open content resources for educators available. The
problem is that most educational institutions require a certain book
when a course starts. The teachers based on old practices still require
something in printed form. Publishers of course refuse to publish your
open content unless they own it and in that case, they want a different
license. Only a couple of publishers of open content exist, not enough
to satisfy the demand.

Software customization reason for the switch to FLOSS

It’s not a question of cost but a question of what you can do with it.
Educators are tired of using LMS systems that do not provide everything
they want. Now they have realized that it’s impossible to find a
software that does everything out-of-the-box. Because of FLOSS like
Firefox they have noticed that there is only need for a simple core
that could be extended with small modules or software pieces. Students
and teachers can even program new features to satisfy their needs on
need basis.

Customer communities emerge

A
recent research article noticed that services like eBay and Amazon
thrive because they enable customer communities. In these communities
the product is not what is important but what people have to say about
them. Reviews and comments are considered by 80% as the reason for
their purchase of a certain item. Social reputation is built into these
system and customers are even sometimes integrated in the value chain
in role of service providers.

Year 2007

RIAA sues people who listen to free music

RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has gone after people
who listen to free music. They try to create an example that also open
content based music is bad. They lack proof and mainly refer to use of
commercial samples. This is a bloody mess, looking like the former case
about SCO accusing Linux for containing their unlicensed source code.

Divine between an open and a closed society fundamentally important

The advocates of open society rises as a result of FLOSS and open
content communities. Those who favour a more closed society where only a
few privileged people can say what they want clashes with the new
culture. The distribution varies from country to country. The problem
is hardest in countries like Iran, where people fight for their freedom
of speech with anonymous blogs and other tools.

Cost associated in publishing open content too high

It is really hard to publish a free resource. The cost associated with
publishing open content is high because publishers want to own the
copyright before they publish. Online learning object repositories
which are tightly connected to proprietary LMS systems also provide a
cost in releasing a free resource. The bar is set too high and as a
result teachers do not bother to develop open content.

Customer satisfaction linked to collaborative toolsets

as a key factor to their success several businesses have picked
customer facing collaborative toolsets, customer support and improved
interaction of their services. Those who have invested most in such
services have the largest user base, directly linked to more sales and
better customer satisfaction.

Year 2008

Publishers talk about piracy

Many publishers talk about piracy and how teachers are stealing their
content. Some teachers have releasing mixed versions of commercial
content under open content licenses and presenting the content as their
own. These are only a few cases but this scares off some of the
teachers and some try to avoid open content as suspicious.

Publishers fight open content and educators face no alternative

Institutions are having difficult time being able to afford things like
journal articles, course text books, online learning packages because
publishers are increasingly selling these in bundles or subscription
packages. The mechanism they use is to make it so difficult for an
individual to publish that the only selection that a college or
university has is from the commercial offerings of these publishers.

Customization companies and communities emerge

Previously customization information was only available from the
software vendors as sparse technical documentation. Now when we have
open interfaces, web services and multi purpose modules, people have
started companies and formed new kind of communities which exchange
ideas and show off their customized environments. Sites dedicated to
open LMS integration and customization have also emerged.

Year 2009

Smaller institutions stop paying for publishers

Some smaller and quicker educational institutions have been able to
switch from buying content to creating content. By cancelling journal,
book and online course package purchases, these institutions have freed
up a lot of money in their budget. This money is used to pay teachers
to create and publish open content. They now have the same amount of
material at the cost of a fraction.

FLOSS covers most platform implementations

FLOSS has been highly successful especially in platform technologies.
Several vendors have opened their core platforms and create commercial
value-added services on top of them. Platforms like Plone get better
and better, because more and more businesses and people rely on the
capabilities that enable them to skip the platform stack in software
development completely.

Year 2010

Publishers’ fortunes decline

The tipping point has been crossed as the capacity to produce and
distribute educational resources by individuals has increased. Some
publishers of educational content have gone bankrupt after open content
and less content-intensive teaching methods like collaborative learning
did the same for their business as what blogging and online content did
to local news papers.

Role of professional journalism changes

Professional journalists are not anymore the unique sole producers of
the information. Their role has changed. Those who have been able to
keep their job have become more like simulators, editors and organizers
who put this openly available information in context and evaluates it,
waves it and helps the general public to participate in.

Decentralization the key for business

Skype, blogosphere, Flickr, wikisphere and others have shown that
decentralization is key to scalable business and information systems.
Those that have taken a more decentralized approach where content is
not available only from a single place and those who benefit from open
P2P application networks have generally win over competitors with more
centralized approaches.

Listen (MP3)    – 29min – 13,2Mb

Antti Kauppi is the Director of Palmenia Continuing Centre for Education in the University of Helsinki, which
is the  largest continuing centre in Europe. Palmenia offers services
from hard sciences to information skills in teaching and learning including ICT.
At the early 1990’s Antti was developing the open learning enviroments for
business colleges: the business projects, the business simulations and the
business games. They developed the business game for the Helsinki Polytechnic
and the University of Hawaii where students studied by using business game through the internet.
The students also used other appications to communicate (email, fax, and so
on)

Mr. Kauppi is interested in integrated,
wireless technologies and services. Maybe PDAs, mobile phones and TV at last opens up the interactive enviroments for
everybody. Learning
enviroments will also be affected by
technology: the learning enviroment will be integrated with multimedia and ICT and as a result, will have a huge influence in education.

When we talked about the FLOSS, Antti took
the practical and experienced point of view on that issue. The benefits of
FLOSS enviroments are yet to be realized. Today, Antti perceives that the
visible benefits can be found from good e-Learning
enviroments for schools. Antti remarked also, that Open Source will unify
people who are using software in content
production. That means that a greater amount of the content will be produced by the users themselves.

This frees the content for
different uncontrolled purposes, but at the same time the reliability and validity cannot be
guaranteed. However this development
can lead to a situation where there might be closed systems beside those
open content alternatives. At the moment it is difficult to see which one of these will
take the lead in the future.

Another interest of Antti is the progress
of “the Open World” and “the Business world”. How to combine FLOSS and business?

Antti believes that the educational world will be much more closely connected
to the “everyday” life in the future. The school is not anymore just the
building where students are studying in 45 minute periods, but schools
can be seen as learning resource
centers that are related to the objects of learning.  The enviroment is open and has different
working places including the virtual enviroments and simulations. The computer desktop is a way to access the world. Most important benefit of the technology in education is an opportunity to bring
the world closer to the schools where it can be seen as a wider working enviroment, where the
students no longer work in a closed classroom.

The reverse of this development is the digital divide which can
already be seen in our society. Our Discussion was very fruitful and gave me
many things to deliberate.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• Who are you?
• ICT in the past, first memories?
• The state of the technology and education today?
• Future ways of using technology?
• Technology changes,
  impacts on education in the future?
• Media Convergence and education?
• Open source and
  education?
• Education and the future?

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with Antti Kauppi. If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2006

Networked applications used more often than closed

There will be several more fashionable
blog/wiki/decision making sites for different kinds of organisations and
communities. The solutions which are rapidly taking advantage of  these internet tools will strengthen to
flexibility and development of the information process and have also the
advantage of competitiveness. However, these tools are managed by administrators who try to prevent  misuse of these open tools. At the same time schools, universities and other educational institutions continue discussion and debate on how to work with these tools.

Students take temporarily  the power of learning processes by using open
communities

The students have already involved in the use of
different kind of communication tools, including chats, forums, virtual
enviroments and communities they feel necessary. The content used in school
education and what is available in the network conflict. Teachers feel powerless in
checking the validity and reliability of the study contents they receive from students. Teachers get tired and frustrated because of technology and bad design. Another source of unmotivation is the decereased resources to teach.

Year 2007

FLOSS opens education

FLOSS role in education is the way to open the world. It
offers learners possibilities to learn, discuss, argue
and reflect on issues from different perspectives. It also connects learners with similar interests to produce new software and content. The popularity of FLOSS is not only affecting the ideal world scenario but also frees certain financial
resources on the field of education.

Year 2008

Open source world and business world struggle for markets

The contest between free and open peer-production world and commercial business world is greater but some businesses have found a way to integrate FLOSS in their business models in a meaningful way. Mainstream still continues to
develop ICT in two directions: Open source connects people who are using
software more in content production. The tools of content production will be created more by the users themselves. This development
has lead to a situation where there is a thicker line between the closed
systems and the open communities. 

Year 2009

Learning everywhere

The school is not anymore just a building
where students are studying in 45 minute periods. Schools can be
seen as learning resource centers which are related to elements of
learning. The enviroment is open and contains different working places including virtual enviroments and simulations.
The virtual desktop is an access point to the world of education. The most important benefit of technology in education is the opportunity to decentralize learning from closed classrooms to open spaces.

Year 2010

Business world and open communities nearing each other

ICT, TV and other media devices have
been integrated as one centralised entity. These models of controllers have
been developed for the need of citizens to manage all the micro-processed  equipments. Open Source communities and business actors have agreed that education
is the key to fair and ethical competition. Education is one that can’t
be measured by the quantitative variables like financial costs, quantity of
courses and mass education.

Education changes from individual learning to
collaborative learning

The evolution of behaviorism is only a reflection of the past, found from museums and collections. There is worldwide understanding and practises of powerful collaborative working methods binded geniously with
individual thinking. Technology enables easy utilization of such methods in education. Renaissance and glorification of traditional interaction and face-to-face
meetings will increase.

Listen 1st part (MP3) – 29min – 13Mb

The first interview I conducted for the future of FLOSS in education was with no other than Stephen Downes himself.  It was my first experiment with Skype recording. The connection had some problems and recording peaked at times, so I’m sorry for lesser quality of the sound but the content is excellent.

There was a lot of good stuff so I decided to cut the interview into two separate pieces, 30min each. This is the first part, the second part will be available later (it’s even better than the first).

Stephen Downes works for the NRC (National Research Council of Canada) in Moncton, New Brunswick. He is part of the e-Learning research group which is attached to the Atlantic initiative of Institute for Information Technology.

As Senior Research Officer he is given a fairly free hand to pursue a research agenda in the field of e-Learning and is the author of OLDaily, a newsletter of issues related to educational technology. Previously he specialized in learning objects and in what manner
learning objects are organized, arranged, syndicated, distributed and displayed to
potential learners typically using a LMS (Learning Management System) and the techology
underlying that.

I asked him about learning objects and DLORN (Distributed Learning Object Repository Network). It’s a good start to be the basis of an open content learning object repository which could support shared construction of learning objects.

In comparison to that federated searches and controlled metadata are discussed. He is very critical about closed learning object repositories that are not visible to Google or any other search engine. He brings up the scalability problem of federated searches and the problems assosiated with describing learning objects.

As an alternative method he suggests third party metadata, which generally allows people to describe how a certain object is used instead of what it is. This kind of third party review lacks in federated searches.

Then we discuss the future of his Edu_RSS service. Downes brings up a very interesting idea of combining content production with social networking. This is achieved from the use of FOAF (Fried-of-a-Friend) in association with personalized and shared resource feeds. People could see what their friends are reading and writing. This could potentially help people to find others interested in the same topic in the field of education to work with.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• Who are you?
• Learning objects?
• DLORN?
• Are we going to see distributed learning object repositories?
• Metadata?
• Folksonomies?
• Federated search?
• Is RSS a potential base for the semantic web?
• Edu_RSS?

The second part of the interview is here.

"If you sit down to get started and look at tagging a million objects, you’re looking at a major investment. Only large companies can afford to do this but most of the world is not made of large companies"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with Stephen Downes.
If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2005

Metadata based search still not useful

The LOM (Learning Object Metadata) exists in order to make learning
objects discoverable so that people can execute a search. Yet this
still doesn’t work in practice as institutions don’t have the resources
to describe every single object they create. The keyword and title
fields are the ones people fill the most. The other properties provided
by metadata searches are next to unuseful.

Year 2006

Amateur audio and video enters learning

Cheaper and more accessible tools for recording audio and video have
enabled teachers and students to produce learning results and teaching
materials with new kind of low-end tools they already possess. For
example mobile phones include cheap and low quality but functional
features for sharing their experiences and ideas in audio and video
form.

Folksonomies used as a basis for new ways of content classification

Researchers approach the problem of controlled vocabularities through
folksonomies, where people can describe any content with words and
keywords that come to their mind. Researchers use a large amount of
users to conduct these experiments. Based on their free-form organic
tagging behaviour they try to come up with insight on how to build
better information classification systems.

Year 2007

Learning objects more like software

Previously learning objects were mainly static combinations of text,
images and illustrations. This was because of the lack of
sophistication in various authoring tools. As authoring tools gained
more functionality, learning objects started to look more like
interactive software pieces.

Learning object repositories based on crawlers appear

In spirit of Google and Technorati, new LO repositories appear. These
new repositories are less controlled and provide a different business
model than their predecessors. Their functionality is the same of the
web, based on bots that crawl various resources for learning objects
and automatically extract metadata out of them. A teacher simply just
releases the LO on a website and bots will aggregate the content. A
second layer is built on the search engine to support reviewing and
third party metadata.

Teachers protest against controlled metadata

When people search, they want metadata results from multiple sources,
not from a single provider. Yet user contributed commentary and review
capabilities of commercial learning object repositories are lacking.
Providers refuse to change the policy because it’s against their
business plan to control the search and the metadata. Extended metadata
capabilities are provided only to paying third party providers.

Content tagging businesses appear

Anyone who has tried to encode learning object metadata knows what a
pain it is. This is a major investment as only large companies and
institutions are able to afford tagging with metadata every object they
create. New businesses have appeared to serve these organizations with
professional tagging services. The cheapest providers are located in
india and other low-cost labor countries.

Year 2008

FOAF combined with search results

Services have appeared that combine Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF)
information with content being searched. This approach is combining
social networking with content production. Developers have learned from
the previous failed attempts like Friendster that social networking
alone is not enough. These new kind of systems enable users to follow
what their friends read and write. Content based social networking
applications lower the bar to find other people to create open content
with.

Constructivism talked even more

Because of Wikipedia and other similar systems where knowledge is
co-created successfully, the educational philosophy of constructivism
has once again gained a lot of debate and discussion in education. Even
companies look at constructivist approaches to carry out on-job
learning, although they use different terms to describe it.

Communities build their own content repositories

Many online communities and courses have built their own searchable
resource repositories for very specific and focused areas of interest
based on the needs of their community. Software tools to create such
resources are available to everyone. The interesting thing is that
these repositories often carry out live information crawled from the
web. Managers/teachers pick and screen the sources of information they
want. Users/students are able to personalize the resulting feeds of
information to fit their needs.

Federated search faces scalability problems

The dominant model to setup a network of learning object repositories
has faced problems in growth. Only the most resourceful organizations
have been able to enter the network as each one of them has to be able
to carry out every single federated search on the network. The larger
and more popular the network has became, the more there are propagated
searches and bigger server requirements. Distributed open content
repositories based on more economical approaches have grown faster in
popularity.

Year 2009

Open content repositories surpass commercial repositories

Open content based repositories surpass commercial repositories in
popularity, contributions and offering. Commercial providers talk about
lack of quality but they are losing. Educators do not need pretty
looks, they need something that gets the job done. Open content is
easier to publish because of decentralized nature, availability of
certain authoring tools with CC built-in and the fact that federated
repositories require you to setup your own repository which takes a lot
of resources to build.

Structure of metadata still argued

Experts have not yet come into agreement of general purpose taxonomies
for tagging content resources with metadata. This is because the way
you describe an object and the way you classify an object, changes from
person to person and from time to time. Even in very focused
communities there is controversy of how to seamlessly tag the resources
they create. The most successful examples come from cases where the
rules are open ended.

Year 2010

Use considered as the most important property of a resource

Previously learning objects were described with metadata that described
what the learning object is. As the availability of content for various
purposes have increased, the information of what a resource contains is
less relevant to teachers. Teachers want to know how and for what
purpose a resource is useful. This is achieved through purposeful
combination of third party recommendations, comments and use scenarions
with objects.

Source of reliable news changes

When the commercial media started to quote Wikipedia in their articles,
the reliability issue was finally solved. Knowledge of Wikinews’s power
spread to the general public. Anywhere and anytime when something
relevant happens, people who are so into the case have a vast ammount
of time and combined effort to write the news. Enthusiasts and experts
do the job better together. Some media companies changed their business
plan to use independant reporters as a vechile.

Listen (MP3) – 28min – 12,6Mb

This time we offer an interview with Teemu Leinonen, who is also one of our bloggers. Once again recorded in Skype for our series of future of FLOSS
in education. I have created a future event analysis based on this interview, available in the end of this post.

Teemu Leinonen is doing learning environment research and design work at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki. His research group started in 1998 to work on future learning environment development. The idea is to use ICT in a meaningful way in a school .

This research is conducted together with the department of Psychology, University of Helsinki with Kai Hakkarainen and his research group.

In addition to study papers, his research group has also produced computer software that reflects the ideas central to their research. One of the tools created is the FLE (FLE is a Learning Environment) software – latest one being FLE3, the 3rd version supporting the FLE concept. FLE is a prototype to try out how to build a future learning environment. It aims to engage students in active process of building knowledge, rather than receiving information.

Teemu thinks that the traditional eLearning vendors should continue to do what they do and get better in providing content to students. Content based approach serves perfectly for the majority of people. In the other hand he sees that there will be space for alternative approaches like knowledge building.

Also he notes that many smart companies see that their biggest challenge is how to get people collaborate and share information together instead of taking traditional courses but that’s what the eLearning industry is mostly offering. One way is to introduce so called learning add-ons to existing business tools.

Regarding Open Content, Leinonen mentions that teachers should understand that content production is not their core business as only a hanful are making money out of that. They should start sharing content and working together instead.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• What do you do?
• Open Source FLE3 research method?
• Are we going to see FLE4?
• Blogs and education?
• Future of current VLE systems?
• Knowledge building?
• Is the concept of a course going to change?
• eLearning business and universities?
• Collaborative learning and companies?
• Open Content?
• Non-technical factors that have to change?
• Copyright legislation?

"In traditional business tools there will be a learning add-on, which enables learning issues to be concidered there as well. These learning add-ons are offering people a place and time for meta-cognition"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of
fictional future events extracted from the interview with Teemu Leinonen.
If you want to comment or have additional future events to present
based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The
future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the
interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal
ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events.
Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year 2006

Organizations distribute geographically

Technology offers a lot of possibilities for the decentralization of
organizations and virtual teams. Shared online workspaces are a common
place. It’s now cheaper and more efficient to work from multiple
locations from all around the world. Multiple mobile units replace
massive corporate headquarters. Some companies move parts of their
premises to countries where it’s cheaper to conduct business.

Educators find weblogs weak for learning

Weblogs are increasingly popular among students in their free time but
the use for learning purposes is still lacking. Some teachers state
arguments that a weblog is not straight away a great learning tool
because the blog was originally created for very different purposes.
Weblog was not designed for collaborative learning, knowledge building
or even for discussion. This is similar to the failure of discussion
boards in learning which also were not originally designed for
learning.

Blogs popular for personal learning

As people get more used to blogs, they notice their value for personal
learning. According to a survey, 85% of bloggers find that they have
learned major new concepts and are now able to better sort out their
own understanding of issues through blogging. The concept of a learning
diary finally reaches a critical mass as people start to voluntarily
maintain their own learning diary to develop their meta-cognitive
skills.

Content approach to learning serves the majority of people

There are many different learning styles. The content based approach
trumpeted by LMS providers is getting better all the time. According to
researchers, the traditional content based approach still serves the
majority of people and is sufficient as a general method. A minority of
learners find their way to online communities of practice where they
are able to develop their understanding in a different manner. 

DRM artificially prevents fair use

DRM has developed during the time and has been incorporated into many
consumer technologies. Creative Commons and EFF are objecting its use
because the DRM technology is also limiting the fair use of original
content. Electronic book readers do not allow copying text out of
copyrighted books and generate problems especially in education. In
some instances people are not even able to copy or print open content
or works under the public domain.

Year 2007

Businesses focus on developing knowledge building skills

Some revolutionary businesses are spending 20% of their training budget
to train their employees in knowledge creation skills and related
practices. It’s more important to get people collaborate and share
information instead of taking traditional courses. Employees
continually challenge existing practices and transform what is known.
These are both considered important to compete in the global economy.

Open Content start-ups receive funding

Investors have noticed certain innovative start-ups who have been able
to turn the free and open content into profitable income. Among them
are filtering technologies that gather open content from the fragmented
web and cluster them into usable categories for businesses to use.

Open content licensing built into several applications

Over 25% of educational authoring tools now include open content
licensing built-in. Users are forced to think if they want to keep the
content or give it away. This step in releasing all kinds of digital
material accelerates the availability of open content in education and
contributes to the troubles of traditional publishers as teachers are
increasingly able to find people who are willing to share their work.

Proprietary learning environments start to provide syndication

Due to popular demand proprietary vendors are pressured to include open
XML based syndication standards in their applications. Bigger LMS
vendors try to reason why this is bad and refer to lack of
authentication in the syndication scheme. The truth is it’s against
their business alliances with publishers. Open syndication would allow
their systems to be used with open content based decentralized learning
object repositories.

Year 2008

Learning add-ons enhance enterprise applications

As businesses transform into learning organizations, learning add-ons
are introduced to existing information system infrastructures.
Financial systems, groupware applications, corporate intranets, ERP and
CRM applications are all extended with additional methods and software
components that take learning aspects in the use of these systems into
account. These learning add-ons are offering people a place and time
for meta cognition and greatly improve just-in-time learning.

Several eLearning companies go out of business

The concept of eLearning is a failure by most counts and perceived by
many as a ripple effect of the IT bust. Several eLearning vendors go
out of business as educational institutions – especially universities –
notice that what is offered under eLearning provides nothing they will
need. Good practices are overridden by practices that are not as good.
They focus their resources to develop their traditional practices
instead.

Academics increasingly produce results as FLOSS

In academic research it’s now common that end results of research
include computer programs in addition to academic papers. In research
where software programs are written in addition to academic papers,
over 25% of these programs is now released under an Open Source
compliant license. It’s quite natural that the results are in such a
form that they allow outside participation, commenting, peer review and
reproduction on the source code level in spirit of the ethics of
science.

Year 2009

Universities in trouble as core business get outsourced

Several notable universities have found out that they did strategically
bad decisions in their hasty move towards online learning environments.
The problem is that they happened to outsource their core business in
the process: learning content and learning environments. Now they are
locked in with contracts and are forced to buy content and learning
environment technology from companies with mismatching values.

Information is self-organizing itself faster than before

Thanks to XML syndication, web interfaces and trackback technology,
there are smart access points for users to personalize the information
they receive based on their own requirements. The rise of the
blogosphere fundamentally changed the way webpages were written and how
hyperlinks were used. This enabled information to self-organize faster
than before and as a result, machines are now able to sort out
information in a more accurate manner. The semantic web appears in a
different form than what W3C originally thought.

Year 2010

Three-dimensional navigation grows in popularity

After IBM’s successful effort in developing the first mainstream
targeted three-dimensional desktop navigation for popular Linux
desktops, also the web developers started to create similar
navigational systems. 3D navigation became especially helpful for
navigating tags based on folksonomies. In learning 3D navigation is
successfully used in knowledge building applications because 3D is
perceived as a more suitable way for navigation of complex networked
ideas.

The notion of a course has changed

Originally a course was primarily constructed based on content that is
teached and what concepts are supposedly learned through the content.
This has changed. Memorizing small instances of information are not
anymore considered important because that information is quickly
available through smart information hubs or online experts. Ability to
reach a higher level in understanding and ability grasp concepts in a
certain topic is considered as more important.

Open content is reducing the size of the publishing industry

Open content in audio, video and text form is starting to distract the
publishing industry. The phenomenon is growing so fast and through so
many fronts that the publishing industry is unable to fight the
movement and are forced to change their business models. Only a handful
of larger publishing companies are able to cleanly change their revenue
models to fit in the new sharing economy.

Mickey Mouse is free

The copyright legislation, especially the ridiculously long authors
copyright has been changed as a result of global political pressure
carried out by open content advocates. Disney Inc. is not anymore able
to block the use of Mickey Mouse as it has entered the public domain. Hooray!

Listen (MP3) – 40min – 18,9Mb

I had the pleasure to
interview Alan Levine through Skype for our interview series of future of FLOSS
in education. I have created a future event analysis based on the interview, available in the end of this post. 

The future events will be used in the Comenius 2.1 Contact Seminar Open
Source workshop sessions as a basis for discussion. I will post more of these
interviews in the following days.

Alan Levine is an
Instructional technologist at Maricopa Community College System which
is a 10 college system serving in the metropolitan Phoenix area. Their
institution is by most counts largest such system in the USA: 240 000
students pass every year which is an equivalent to 90 000 full time
students.

His institution has good reputation for being
innovative and providing technology to students and computers in the
faculty hands.

His main job is in experimenting with new
technology in the central office called Maricopa Center for Learning
and Instruction by trying new technologies and communicating their
potential value to their people.

That means messing around with
Wikis, Blogs, RSS, cool web services and spam prevention and trying to
find out how these technologies could support education.

Alan
talks about the last 1,5 years he has been working with these emerging
technologies. Especially he focuses on weblogs, RSS and wikis and their
importance in education, especially what new opportunities these tools
provide for educators.

He is also a bit sceptical about the
adoption rate of Open Source tools in large institutions like his. The
key events that have to be overcome are related to support and staff.
Decision-makers are concerned if they are able to support the number of
students they have. Only the largest universities like MIT are able to
use their own staff to invest in in-house Open Source projects. Support
for Open Source software in education is still sparse and expensive.

He
perceives that big monopolies in software, music, university training
and publishing industry have to change their offering if they are about
to survive.

Some questions asked in the interview:

• Who are you?
• Visionary leadership?
• Small pieces loosely joined?
• What is a weblog, wiki and RSS and why are these technologies important?
• Are teachers going to use RSS in teaching?
• What is Feed2JS?
• Are easy and simple tools [like Feed2JS] going to popularize emerging technologies?
• Rip, Mix and Learn?
• What about devices?
• Is FLOSS going to affect the methods of teaching and learning?
• Are the support issues [of FLOSS software] going to be solved?
• Open Content in education?
• How does year 2010 look like?
• Who are the loosers and who are the winners?

"The future is not the dim one where we are solidary droids in front of our computers alone – the connectiveness and ability to tap into shared expertise is also one of the sweet spots for us"

"Read more" to see the extracted future events and analysis.

Future events

Here is a list of fictional future events extracted from the interview with Alan Levine. If you want to comment or have additional future events to present based on the interview, please do so.

Disclaimer: The future events were constructed from the ideas presented in the interview and do not represent the ideas of the interviewee. No crystal ball or time machines were used in the construction of these events. Bear in mind, it’s the future and everything is possible.

Year: 2006

Monolithic tool environments used in most large educational institutions

Large educational institutions have acquired several monolithic tool
environments for learning. The largest have three or four different
commercial CMS/LCMS/LMS systems which all come bundled with a set of
tightly-joined tools. Only pockets of educators are using alternative
FLOSS or otherwise freely available tools in a bottom-up manner.

Firefox first browser to format XML content automatically

Open Source Firefox and it’s even lighter successor, the XHTML-only
browser called Firedog are among the first browsers to format XML
content automatically. It all started from the innocent looking RSS
button which displayed raw XML code to people who didn’t understand how
to use them. People demanded for a readable version as well and Open
Source developers were fast in respond.

FLOSS based LMS systems not in heavy production use

While educational institutions renew their yearly contracts on WebCT
and BlackBoard they are still looking for people to do more than
experiments with FLOSS tools like Moodle. The decision-makers are in
sleeping mode, waiting for someone in the neigbourhood municipality to
take the first major step towards Open Source.

Adoption of collaborative document writing tools grow slowly

Reportage and hype surrounded by Wikipedia and other Wikimedia services
gain momentum in global press as Google enters in the game as a major
supporter of the world’s biggest encyclopaedia of free content. Wiki
becomes the de-facto tool for creating open content and it reaches new
dimensions in its creative use. Users become familiar with the concept
of creating their own navigation. Most widely used Wikis are Open
Source software. A good wiki experience is still required as people
have hard time understanding what is so special with a page that anyone
can edit.

Year: 2007

Open Source based web aggregators become popular among teachers

After a free popular web-based aggregator service called Bloglines.com
became a service based on monthly fees, Open Source based web
aggregators started to replace the previous leader in aggregation
market. Teachers who previously had built quickly outdated static lists
of web resources are now building lists by collecting RSS feeds in
their Open Source collaborative aggregators – concept which is often
associated with the fact that their students are able to help them out
in the process.

Less move towards FLOSS in education as hoped

Only the largest educational institutions like MIT have been able to
move completely into FLOSS applications. Smaller institutions lack the
staff or resources to pay for the maintenance and customization of
these applications and rely on cheaper proprietary LCMS mass-products.
Especially there is fear of their ability to support the number of
students they have. Cheap commercial support models for FLOSS
applications are available only regionally.

Educators discover one-click publishing

In contrary to large and rigid content management systems, educators
and students have noticed easy personal publishing on a wide scale. One
weblog related to education is created every second according to
statistics provided by Technorati. Google has launched a specially
branded service called EduBlogger™ based on their popular Blogger™
service.

Students install Open Source tools for their teachers

Social software tools have gained great interest by students among the
20-30 age group. Some early adopters are using blogs as an alternative
learning diary and a wiki for drafting out school projects with their
peers. Teachers are given access to these resources. Some teachers have
become interested in the capabilities these new tools are able to offer
compared to LMS systems their institutions provide. The students are
helping their teachers to setup blogs and wikis for their classes.

Software customization prospers

FLOSS tools enable easy customization. Service businesses focused on
customization and delivery of FLOSS tools are a common place. World’s
most successful weblog software company, SixApart popularized the
requirement for easy software customization among personal publishing
tools. LMS providers are pressured to include easier customization in
their packages as institutions notice how they have been able to create
better targeted solutions based on customizable FLOSS software. Even
some web services enable customization of their interface by
introducing versatile web service interfaces in foot-steps of Amazon
and Flickr APIs.

Rip, Mix and Learn is the new metaphor for constructing learning objects

iTunes and several other music stores enabled people to buy only a
single song and mix their own album for listening. The now famous Apple
add campaign, Rip – Mix – Burn started everything. There is a popular
parody of this: "Rip, Mix, ????, Profit". Among educational circles
there is Rip, Mix and Learn, which allows teachers to mix various
learning resources in dynamic RSS feeds to deliver to their students.

Proprietary software vendors have partly opened source code

Movable Type was a semi-free software tool but became popular in its
own user segment because the code was available for modification. A
similar trend is visible in many other software user segments as users
are demanding proprietary software companies to open their code for
customization. Some move to an Open Source business model, others
satisfy their customers by offering them easier means for developing
custom extensions and making modifications while still retaining their
control on the core package.

Software becomes a commodity

As more efficient and easier to use software services come out people are overwhelmed of the possibilities they have with all of the
new technology. New businesses start to bloom, investors offload their
money and we are in the middle of the next IT bubble. Thanks to Open
Source, software has become a commodity which is available to everyone
from enterprise software to simple personal tools. Most importantly,
people are thrilled of the new opportunities that weren’t there before.

Pull beats push

The spam problem becomes even worse as over 80% of incoming email is
spam, scam or viruses. Another popular push technology among social
software tools called TrackBack fails as spammers have rendered the
technology useless in the public internet. Based on this development
users are forced to look for other alternatives to receive the
information they need. Syndication technologies like RSS and Atom come
for rescue as all major browsers now include a built-in aggregator.

Creative Commons starts to promote open content exchange standards

After being successful in creating a concept for people to remix
culture and distribute open content based on CC licensing scheme,
Creative Commons starts to promote open standards for content exchange.
Many analysts believe that this is the key for the future of content
exchange in general, especially in the realm of mobile devices. Imagine
a music player which is able to exchange content between other music
players in the area for letting others to tune in. Content licenses
follow content.

A fair amount of teachers have dropped text books all together

A handful of teachers all around the world have given up text books and try to build very well thought out concepts online. A survey among
students reveals that 85% find the new approach to content more
beneficial to their learning experiences. This is possible because
teachers are now more easily able to join forces with other teachers
all around the world to build quality content together based on
peer-production and Open Content licenses. Even students help in
writing new content.

Year: 2008

Open Content moves faster in education than Open Source software

Open Content in education takes a big leap as educational institutions
find better ways to deploy that content. Previously deploying Open
Content was a problem as schools required students still to buy text
books and there were also unnecessary copyright misunderstandings about
printing and distributing certain Open Content. Also as Wikimedia
started to publish their cheap encyclopaedias based on open contend in
printed form, some educators have started to use them instead.

The gap between digital-illiterate and literate gets wider

People use more and more time online. Some who do not have the
equipment or never joined the digital world have hard time
understanding what people are talking about – a similar experience as
for those who gave up watching television. This affects education as
many universities start to offer certain courses only in online form.
Also, early adopters of new technology jump to new waves sooner than
the mainstream is able to pick up the latest cool technology. It
becomes increasingly important for early adopters to help less
tech-savvy people along with the changes.

RSS is the new information publishing system

People are tired to go for a website for the information they need.
It’s a lot faster for them to receive the content on topics they are
interested in through services that semantically filter a wide variety
of information resources and provide personalized feeds. Content
publishers take an advantage of this by focusing on RSS as a publishing
platform. Some revolutionary websites are published only as an XML
based feed.

Email based mailing lists become less popular

Because email mostly failed as a system for tapping into conversations,
the use of mailing lists has reduced by half. The traffic on mailing
lists becomes harder to differentiate of spam. the small fraction of
user feedback compared to volume of received posts forces people first
to jump into read-only mode through their aggregators. As a
side-product of this, an XML based feedback channel is built into
content aggregators. Users are able to answer to posts directly from
their aggregators. The comments are authenticated and injected back to
the feed based mailing lists.

More and more knowledge assets move to collaborative document spaces

Previously email was the storage medium for most of the knowledge
assets in an organization. After the revolution of freely available
small software pieces, a fourth generation wiki tool is a common place
in many organizations. Knowledge assets are stored in a central place
where anyone from the organization can add, edit and link to them. A
recent study found that writing a new document together is about twice
as fast with a Wiki compared to swapping ancient Word Documents.

Travel expenses decrease as remote collaboration increases

Many prominent institutions have reduced their travel expenses by 45%
through a policy which requires their workers to prefer remote
collaboration tools to connect together in virtual meeting rooms. Even
inside organizations meeting time is reduced as collaborative working
methods transform many face-to-face meetings unnecessary. Internet
replaces the elevator as organizations are able to decentralize their
operations.

Year: 2009

Digital convergence happens in two dimensions

New mobile devices become like swiss-army knifes with all kinds of
functionality from IM, blogging to context sensitive learning
applications. In the other hand, web services, FLOSS and open standards
enable small pieces on a larger scale as many different kind of simple
tools are able to connect together through common APIs. "Sometimes
there is a need for a simple blade that is able to cut you some cheese
but it’s also able to connect to knife-rests with other blades"
comments a well-known educational veteran blogger. There is demand for
both complexity and simplicity.

Educational institutions locked into old toolsets

Many educational institutions look from the side as new and better
tools for educational purposes appear. Unfortunately based on their
long-term politics in acquiring software, multi-year contracts of old
LMS/CMS/LCMS systems eat most of the available IT budget. Some have
fought out through the court, some are using FLOSS software in parallel
and others just wait for the contracts to end as there are no resources
or staff to start using FLOSS in-house.

Main argument used against non-open content: Is it useful in 5 years?

The so called lifespan of information shrinks all the time. Content
produced today is considered old in less than two years. Educational
content and books that are incrementally updated by educators,
academics and pro-amateurs in a consistent manner on the web under an
Open Content license is able to survive during the next 5 years.
Publishers still counting on their old business model have hard time to
find profitable ways to counter this act.

Universities are repositioning their selves

The myth of a college student who goes to a university, moves to campus
and finishes his studies in four years is no longer true. People are
working on many things and they rapidly change careers among many other
issues. These changes drive universities to reposition their selves and
their offering.

Year: 2010

Changes coming from the outside drive changes in education

As more and more people do teleworking and spend their time on the
internet and see the changes coming, they start to expect the education
to change as well. Students no longer look for a place where they go
for studying but look for a more rich experience in learning where they
can mix work, gadgets, peers, teachers, offline and online in a
consistent manner that fits their needs.

Microsoft is no longer the dominant player in software industry

People were not able to put up with very large software products that
harshly work. Microsoft fought this by introducing software security
services, spyware prevention, virus prevention and several other
products. Sooner or later people noticed that they are creating a new
monopoly based on a problem they personally invented. Finally FLOSS
makes a breakthrough. Microsoft’s fortunes drain in their counter attack measures. Every single continent in the world has sued Microsoft for
monopoly issues.