From Acadia University’s School of Education, a sober plea for increasing the use of free-software commons within our information technology in education, brought to our attention by way of a paper by Professor Gary Hepburn in the latest FirstMonday:

Schools are hindered by cost and flexibility problems as they try to obtain resources such as software and textbooks. Open source development processes are producing products that can address many of these problems and, as importantly, provide a better alignment with core educational values. Indeed, open source products potentially encourage the development of an educational commons.

Mind you, concepts like any alignments to core educational values are going to fly directly into the face of those Ministry of Education stewarts who have licensed the whole of K-12 edu-unawares from Disney, not to mention how this may also grate with those who'd rather use the classroom for sponsored indoctrinating of our children with copyright disinformation but nonetheless, at least Professor Hepburn is ringing the bell, even if administration is too busy fiddling to notice the alarm.

[ Source: Seeking an educational commons ]