Yacapaca

Like most people who run large web-based projects, I’ve had good and bad experiences with open-source software. Generally, I’m very pro open source, for the simple reason that it enables me to offer better (much better!) value to Chalkface’s customers.

Where I’ve had bad experiences, they have been a result of my failure to weigh carefully the advice of over-zealous advocates for the open source movement. Given this, I was fascinated to read Michelle Levesque’s paper Fundamental issues with open source software development (via OL Daily). She correctly identifies all the issues I’ve faced and gives some very sound advice on dealing with them. If you are making an open source vs. proprietory decision, make sure this is on your reading list!

The timing of this article is particularly apposite because we are this week in the process of installing a new development server with a new software configuration. If successful this configuration will be carried forward to our main production cluster in about six months’ time. The new configuration is:

• Operating system: Gentoo Linux (was Red Hat Linux)
• Web server: Apache (no change)
• Java server: Tomcat (was Jrun)
• Database: MySQL (no change)

This represents a further shift towards open source. JRun is a fully proprietory product, and Red Hat has become a licensed product even though it’s a distribution of Linux. I’ll report in a few months whether this experiment has been a success.

Anarchism was one of the memes of my misspent youth, but like so many ideals it has generally failed to perform in practice. So it was with great delight that I discovered Wikipedia – a comprehensive and authoritative online encyclopedia that is both written and edited by anyone who wants to get involved, without preconditions.

Seriously; anyone at all. Test this for yourself. Go there now, find a page on something you know about, and improve it! It’s a good idea (but not compulsory) to visit the Sandbox first – an area specially set aside for playing with the editing tools until you have confidence in their use.

So how does this work? With no access controls, how come it’s not heavily vandalised by political extremists or bored teenagers? It is. But here’s the genius: the site has full reversion controls for every page, also open to all to use. In contrast to a toilet door, it’s much easier to remove digital graffiti than it was to put it there in the first place. If you change a page in a way that someone disagrees with strongly enough, they’ll just change it back. The community effectively polices the site without centralised control. Anarchism in action.

Which political point brings me to the timing of this post. The Wikipedia page entitled Jew has become a cause celebre. A while back, an unpleasant antisemitic site called ‘Jew watch’ (which I won’t link to) managed to get the first result for a Google search on the word ‘Jew’, due to an effective Googlebombing campaign by anti-semites. So the call went out to counter this by specifically linking to the Wikipedia page Jew wherever possible. Which I’ve now done.

We’ve been looking recently at the idea of student blogs – encouraging students to keep some kind of an online diary – and whether Chalkface could play a role in promoting these. Most of the writing I come across in this area is still in the “blogs will change the world” genre. That doesn’t interest me terribly because I think it ignores the wider structural context of school life. This commentary from Will Richardson, however, struck me as very down-to-earth. If you are thinking of getting your students blogging, I recommend you read it.

Schools normally react to technological change by confiscating it to protect the past: ballpoint pens to save our handwriting, calculators to save our arithmetic, digital watches to save our analogue timekeeping, mobile phones to save our…er well, just because they are new.

Source: Education Futures, RSA, 2000.

South Korea is the most connected society on earth. 75% of the population has broadband; 85% in urban areas. They have the world’s highest density of wi-fi access points. A full one-third of the economy operates through the internet, compared to about 2% here.

So it will be very useful to watch how the Koreans use this new connectivity to improve education. Fulbright Scholar, Anthony Townsend, is in Seoul researching the area under the title Understanding South Korea’s Broadband Miracle: Policy Choices and Urban Outcomes. I’ve asked him to include education as a particular focus of his research, and will be reading his blog avidly. (Thanks Corante for the link)

Look out for Korean-inspired features in Paperless School soon!