[education-wg] Karen Cator

[Mike]

"Karen Cator is the Director of the Office of Educational Technology

for the US Department of Education.  She is very interested in the
idea of open source, but she has questions.  "How do we invest in open
source?"  "How do we know if open source is effective?"  "How is the
model sustainable?"

How do we figure out what Karen's goals are, and position open source
as the best tool to help her achieve those goals?  If I should get
another meeting with Karen, what should I say when I get into her
office besides "open source is awesome"?"

I think it's a positive thing that Karen Cator is now the office of 
educational technology director. Her questions are valid and need answers.

Let me take a stab here at putting together some ideas that may respond 
to her questions or raise new ones.

*How do we invest in open source?*

Identify some funding that can be used for projects in K-12 schools that 
rely on open source software. This is clearly this first step to making 
anything significant happen. This is also a good way to develop some 
working models. Perhaps various models should be explored. One model 
would include full open source from operating system forward. Another 
model might consider open-source products on proprietary OS's. We need 
to get to the point that we can take schools where they are and help 
them to move forward. It is unrealistic to think that schools will 
discard all products currently in use and move to new, different products.

*How do we determine if open source software is effective?*

In my opinion this is the wrong question. Do we ask "is Microsoft 
software effective?" "Is Apple software effective?" No. We tend to look 
at achievement levels after students have used various types of 
software. Our experience in Indiana showed little difference between 
proprietary software and open-source software. (Although we ran out of 
time to fully document this information before the program was 
substantially changed.)

The biggest challenge is ACCESS.  We found that the average high school 
student averaged 30-45 minutes per WEEK using technology in schools.  At 
that usage level it would be hard to determine if brushing teeth was 
effective, let alone the more difficult issue of technology.

Perhaps the question should be, how do we determine if technology is 
effective? How do we gauge the effectiveness of software compared to its 
price? Would we be better off taking the money we spend for software and 
hardware and putting it into additional personnel? Should we look at the 
types of software that we are using? The fact that a school project has 
technology does not necessarily mean that it is successful or desirable.

*Is the model sustainable?*

This is a difficult one on several levels. I am hoping that her main 
concern is sustaining the model that is established for K-12 schools. 
The ultimate model should consider everything: hardware costs, software 
costs, professional development costs, and implementation practice. I am 
not certain that we are looking at these things now as we implement 
systems in schools. Although it is a good idea and we should be doing 
this, the question needs to be be more broadly applied to technology 
used throughout K-12 education.

I think it will be reasonably simple to put together some basic 
strategic guidelines for developing open source projects in K-12 
schools. Some discussion on this would be helpful and this may be a 
great starting point to get us going to provide guidance and leadership 
for people like Greg D. who may come in contact with Ms. Cator again. I 
think would also be good to contact the State Educational Technology 
Directors Association (SEDTA) and include them in regular mailings from 
this group. Dr. Mary Ann Wolfe is the executive director of the 
organization.


-- 
*Mike Huffman* mhuffman at comcast.net
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