Linux and Open Source

I know several readers of this blog are reading it for their interest in Linux and not so much for their interest in education. However, let me speak specifically to the educators for a moment. Besides, this is going to be a long post. A lot of us are looking at our schools and seeking ways to improve the application of 21st Century Skills into our environments. Many of us have recognized that the traditional models of instruction need to be shaken up a little as they are no longer reflective of the world in which we are sending our students. That was never more clear to me than this week. I spent the week in Austin, Texas as a guest of the Linux Foundation at their Collaboration Summit. What I observed and experienced was the most comprehensive actualization of the 21st Century workplace I could have imagined.Though, at Whitfield, we are merging several notions of 21st Century learning to create one that best fits our school (something I would encourage you all to do) for the purpose of greater clarity, I will use the framework from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (“P21”) as a model for this discussion. The model identifies a new skill set for our consideration and suggests a framework for creating a sustainable environments for this kind of learning. The framework on which the skills are built is very good but will not be discussed in this post. Instead I will focus on the “rainbow” of 21st Century Skills.

Before I get into the model, I'd like to provide a little background on the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. The Linux Foundation is one of the key bodies dedicated to the support of the use of Linux, an open source operating system. Linux is not owned by a company, like Microsoft or Apple. Instead, it is created and maintained by groups of individuals from around the globe dedicated to making it work. Now, many of these teams include people from companies interested in seeing Linux succeed, such as IBM, Novell, Oracle, Google and Redhat. However, none of them “own” Linux and it can not really be sold. However, several companies, such as Novell and RedHat sell versions of Linux that include enterprise level support. Linux has prolific deployment in data centers. Almost everyone has Linux in their server room. However, most may not know it. It is usually an appliance, like a spam filter or remote access appliance, or a router. At home you may have Linux in your TiVO, television or car. I was invited to the conference to talk about how our students use Linux on their laptops. It was a chance for those who build it to hear how it is used by those who have little to no idea what is “under the hood.” I was honored to be there and they were extremely gracious hosts. However, for me, the magic was watching them collaborate during their few days together to identify issues, hash out conflicts and map out solutions.OK. How was this 21st Century Skills? Oddly enough, it had very little to do with the technology. Instead it was all the things that show up in P21's Framework. The “rainbow” section of the framework has four parts; Core Content and 21st Century Themes, Learning and Innovation Skills, Information Media and Technology Skills, and Life and Career Skills. I will briefly break down each of those and discuss my observations of each.The inside of the “rainbow” is Core Content and 21st Century Skills. New information is being created at an incredible rate. However, that doesn't mean we no longer need to learn fundamentals like reading, writing and math. We still need those basic skills as a foundation for new and ever changing information and knowledge. However, those skills can be taught in a cross curricular-manner within the context of a 21st century theme such as globalization.At the Collaboration Summit, software developers from around the globe came together to discuss development standards. However, questions like legal access to DVD codecs and compatibility and adoption of standards within different media players colored the conversations. It wasn't enough to know “what” to code or “how” to code it. That's the “easy” part! Developers had to take international law as well as regional and global market demands into consideration. Though we all know information doesn't exist in a vacuum, it was instantly clear just how interdependent the discipline of their training was with critical information outside of their formal training. This is where executives from companies from HP and Lenovo would come into play. Also, to add further clarity to some of these issues, the Linux Foundation also hosts another conference dedicated exclusively to the legal issues surrounding the implications of their code. However, the point remains that information becomes significantly more relevant (and complicated) when placed in a meaningful context.