Teachers and Edubuntu and more

[David Groos]

The following is copied from a post I just put on my GCoS project
blog<http://groosd.blogspot.com/>.
I'm posting it there, not just on these list serves, as a place where others
beyond our community can encounter these ideas.  This post is the result of
more than a year of pondering my role, and that of the Teacher, in Edubuntu
I hope it doesn't misrepresent or marginalize anyone--please let me know if
it does.  Instead, I hope it to bring to the surface structural aspects of
our community not often discussed, as well as provide some new ideas.
Anyway, here's the post...

I'm not sure who I'm quoting from the Edubuntu list, but in some heated
discussion, someone said, "Edubuntu is not software, it's a Community!".
That stuck with me. Sure, it is also software and it has been the focus of
the community, but still the best thing about Edubuntu is the community.
Programmers, advocates in education, and advocates outside of education are
key groups that make up this community. And, what a nice community: a
community of volunteers and intellects and people who choose to work with
children! All groups play separate and also extensively interwoven roles;
each group is critical for the success of the whole.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be complete!  It doesn't focus on the
critical roles of the students, of the supporters of the technology
environment, of the evangelists, of the family-based users of Edubuntu, of
the philanthropic supporters of open source software nor of the
district-level technology leadership.  Nonetheless, it addresses a part of
the puzzle.

First and foremost, there are programmers who may also be part of an
educational enterprise. Some programmers get paid to develop but most don't;
all seem to be volunteers to some degree as all develop the software beyond
their work day. These programmers create the software and the documentation
and often the wiki 'help pages'. Also, they are a backbone of support via
the user list serve and irc for those who are the implementers of the
software in the classroom. They are often the visionaries who know the
software-context (ie the larger code environment and established social
network) and lead the way to the future products. In conclusion, programmers
are the producers of products, the producers of knowledge, the providers of
help.

Teachers and other implementers of the software are the 'front-line' members
of the community. They are often employed in this role though some are not.
They all seem to be volunteers in the sense that successfully using Edubuntu
requires work beyond their regular work day. These people provider meaning
for the community--they are the ones who create the environment where
students actually use the fruit of the labor of the programmers. In the
communication channels of the community, the list-serves and the irc, these
people (especially those most-novice users of the software) are mainly
present when seeking help with software and hardware problems. Occasionally,
these implementers of the software (I'll call them 'teachers' though it is
broader than that group) give ideas for greater functionality and identify
bugs in the software, providing a service to the programmers, however they
usually represent themselves as consumers of the products provided by the
programmers.

I'm seeing 2 issues and some possible solutions.

   1. The first issue is that teachers are mainly present in the community
   as consumers of resources *in the current communication channels of the
   community.* in other words, it is rare that programmers 'see' the
   hundreds, the thousands of students in the classes who benefit from what
   they have made!
   2. Additionally, the professional knowledge of teachers is not shared,
   not developed in our community. How often do you see in the irc or
   list-serves questions about how to focus students attention on learning the
   main functionality of tuxtype, for example?

I'm NOT proposing that these questions enter into our current communication
channels! What we have currently seem especially well suited for exactly
what they are doing at this time. I'm proposing that teachers use 3 new
channels of communication:

   1. a new irc eg "#edubuntu-in-action",
   2. a list-serve for teaching in Edubuntu-empowered classrooms where
   teaching challenges can be addressed,
   3. and an already existent community resource where lesson ideas can be
   created, co-developed, and reused ie http://LeMill.net<http://lemill.net/>
   .

It is obvious how these additional channels would benefit the implementers
of Edubuntu software, the 'teachers'. And, by improving the use of Edubuntu
in the classroom it would indirectly benefit the community as a whole but it
could also provide direct utility to the programmers by providing a window
into the often invisible and private environment where the fruits of their
labors are actually realized, where the resultant joys and needs can be more
directly seen.

I'm also proposing a new 'member' that is, a new group of members in our
community.  I think our community would be more powerful, exciting and
diverse if we also had educational researchers here, providing their
interests and resources.  The Finnish educational research
team<http://flosse.blogging.fi/>that created the LeMill software which
powers the site mentioned above and
other awesome open source software also produced this quote: "In educational
research, software is the hypothesis".  In other words, software plays a
critical role in their work.  We could use their (any interested ed
researcher) ideas and knowledge and possible financial resources, they could
use our ideas, knowledge and implementation of their ideas.  And again,
together we would be stronger.

I recently saw a comment on #edubuntu: "I love publicly funded [software]
development!"  I've also seen it said on the list-serves that, when major
leadership of the Edubuntu community was provided by a financially-based
enterprise (Canonical), the leadership and participation by volunteers
atrophied.  So, I've really got no idea how public software development
monies could be positively infused into our community but at least the
possibility is there.  As a teacher who is not more than 2 years away from
also becoming an educational researcher, I see much possible synergy between
researchers and the current Edubuntu community.

What do you think?  Should we expand our community with additional channels
of communication specifically designed for 'teachers'?  Should we seek to
invite educational researchers into our community?  Any proposal such as
this is fraught with the dangers and benefits of change.  What are the risks
and what are the benefits as you see them?
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