LGM 2014 education summit

This is an archive of the Etherpad notes hosted at http://piratepad.net/lgm2014edu.

Free culture aware educators in art and design
 
http://eightycolumn.net/ (not working) fixed
list : eightycolumn@multiplace.org
 
Attending: Julien, Larissa, Olivier, Manuel, Pierre H, Alex Leray, Brendan, Christoph, ginger, Manuel, Ale, Cedric Gémy, Elisa de Castro Guerra,  Matthieu, Simon, Daviz Gómez, Myriam Cea, Ana Isabel, Ricardo Lafuente,…, Michael Murtaugh, Femke Snelting
 
Introduction by Larissa about last year meeting at LGM, Madrid, organized by Aymeric Mansoux.
 
David, (ES)
Open Univ Catalonia (UOC)
Multimedia
Inkscape, Blender slowly being introduced
Members of Wikimedia Spain & Amical Wikimedia
Graphica Libre
 
Ale (CH)
Interested in ideas for workshops
 
Julien (BE)
Graphic Design / Digital Arts
Ex-teacher.
Python Blender Workshops with Python
 
Olivier (BE)
Digital artist using FLOSS 10 year+ Video, 3D
Pure-data patching circles
 
Simon (UK)
Hybrid publishing consortium
Open access
automation and skills in the new editing panorama
http://aaaaarg.org and http://thepublicschool.org/ (related) workshop book scanning
 
Cedric (FR)
Teaching 15 years in 2 universities
Free software in enterprises
GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, (prev Blender)
Has written 12-13 books
Private school wich teaches only free software. http://activdesign.eu (fr only)
 
Elisa (FR)
Teaching in 2 Universities
Author, Inkscape in traditional editing
facilitator and manager of fr.flossmanuals.net and part of the Floss Manuals Foundation
 
Matthieu (FR)
Teaching Blender for Architecture for 7 years
Blender, Written book on Blender (for architects)
FabLab
 
Michael Murtaugh (US/BE/NL)
Teaching w/ Aymeric in Rotterdam
Media design program, studying free software in graphic design.
 
Myriam (ES)
Medialab Prado
Sense of leaning together through Libre tools
 
Manuel (CH)
Designer / Web Dev
Workshop in Fine arts School in Geneva
But no influence on school curriculum.
 
Claire, Gemma (UK)
Student of Larisa in London
 
ginger (CA)
Classes in Canada 
Toronto
Mozilla Popcornmaker
Workshops for people like community organizers and anarchist zine makers
Libre Graphics magazine http://libregraphicsmag.com/
 
Pierre H (BE)
Member of OSP, Brussels
Teaching at La Cambre, art school
Students has tried to use the problem of internet access to build a learning situation around mesh network – currently failed
Erasmus+ program possibilities for us teachers?
Teaching in engraving — maybe a strange context but comparison of the machine tool to the physical tool – bitmap/vector
 
Brendan (US/DE)
Artist, reluctant engineer
Has taught (in private university), 
Teaching workshops
Teaching programming to designers and architects, Communciaton design/Interaction design
 
Peter (BE)
Industrial designer, not teaching; curious about the state of education
 
Alex (BE)
Member of OSP, Brussels. Designer/programer
Teaching at La Cambre, art school
Interested in how FLOSS can change education.
2 hours a week quite constraining
 
Christoph H (DE)
gives workshop
 
Ana (PT) + Ricardo
Teaching informal / workshops where one has more freedom to define the rules
Teaching Porto Fine Arts
Apathy gives space
 
Femke (NL/BE)
Here representing Ludivine & Stephanie who couldn’t make it
The experience of bottom-up / network effects with students becoming teachers, circulation of ideas, change not top-down
shared wiki and mailing-list between students in different courses
While management might be « interested » — they don’t really understand the issue — so it’s brittle / weak
 
Network effect, Manuel, after  reporting about LGM13, got interest from the school he is working with  and got invitations for some OSP representatives for a « hacking epub »  workshop, which was well received by students and teachers alike.
 
Larisa: It’s not students we have to educate, it’s management we have to educate.
 
(Larisa mentions having invited the following to give workshops:
Dave Crossland: workshop for typography
Rob Canning, teaching Inkscape + Arduino)
 
Larisa: reviews notes from February meeting on open source learning
 
Some possible starting topics (and related working groups)
  • [80c] Public Presence (website, communication, 80c, content)
  • Curriculum Development (actual content, modules)
  • Business of F/L/OS: How to make this a professional skill
  • Pedagogy (method)
  • Resisting classical models, Teacher/Student.
  • Distance Learning / Connection to how people are learning themselves already
  • What really worked, best practices
  • Tactics (a cookbook of teaching/learning tactics)
  • How to avoid the « it doesn’t work » situation?
 
[80c] Public Presence (website, communication, 80c, content)
 
Michael : not how we do things  like wiki, ML, …but. Need to feel federated but bring resources together.
Do we need to crystallize further.
Julien: Labels but how to do this. Federated wiki … but let’s think about social federation.
Michael:  don’t wait for some hypothetical future federated tool. federation from  a social perspective is more interesting. Webring is a simple,  effective way to do this.
Stéphanie: I agree with Michael, let’s start simple
 
Pedagogy (method)
 
Best practices:
 
Pierre  H + Alex: workshop for colleague teachers, using a rasperry pi sever.  Revisiting the basics of command line and unix from the 60’s together  (makes it clear that the computer haven’t started in 1984). The common  machine in the center of the setup permit to overcome the difference  between participant’s machines.
 
Oli: revisiting the history of computing. What a computer is? What is a byte, a bit etc. Workshop in two times: 
To understand how it is so related with free software
 
Ricardo: Virtualmachine (OS in OS) avoid the hassle of installing, configuring, incompatibilities… Include learning material, scripts etc.
Oli : or use live usb key
Gemma, about VMs: it can solve the question of the ‘do not work’
→ Stéphanie: I’m not sure, usually it works worse than a dual boot
 
Brendan: demystifing. reversing the « start with complicate professional software » situation. Starting from scratch: write an SVG, write a bitmap image with 0s and 1s
it’s empowering immediately
 
ginger : arduino blinking lights is great, it’s empowering the people who consider themselves « non technical people » by demystifying.
it makes code stop looking scary
 
 
Matthieu : start with hardware basic coding things.
experimenting  with open hardware makes it easier for students to understand the  value; it’s a part of the brain that is not contaminated, unlike  software
 
Pierre H: Start with something students (or colleague teachers) can not compare
 
David : using stock content but respecting the licence 
Introduce and discuss the idea of ownership first
 
Myriam : using the game (playing)
 
Gemma : experiment with tools, a sense of ownership; school fees are high in the UK and in ths context FLOSS tools are very appealing
 
Brendan: some students expect structure, can feel disoriented if open-ended
 
Matthieu: students don’t grasp the value being able to access source code, being able to modify
step by step to show that it’s possible to code simple things.
 
Matthieu + Alex : Without a pratical example/use the four freedoms are not understandable/graspable.Students don’t feel concerned.
 
Oli : putting things in the right order : explain where it come from (it takes time)
In pratical terms maybe the 4 freedoms are hard to understand but the philosophical side of Free Software they do get
 
Peter : having practical exemples of things the students already use every day (internet, wikipedia, …)
 
Pierre h : Typography is a field in which you are standing on the shoulders of the giants.
 
ginger: having students contributing to Wikipedia; they talk about how to do it, best pratices and then put it into practice. Gives students ownership of a public outcome.
 
David : using Remix game to understand/experiment compatibility between licenses  http://opencontent.org/game/betagame.html
 
Matthieu : Asking students: Do you care if I use your images on a talk? My slides will be under creative commons licence. What does it mean? (losing control over your work but in a positive way: give your work a lot of different possible lifes)
 
Alex:  install party divided in parts, don’t do it for 5 hours in a row but  interpolate installing with discussions and pratical exercises
 
Myriam:  first contact was a workshop « Put this there »; confusing — what is a  terminal? do I have one? — until you start seeing results. Like doing poetry with the terminal
Starting with games, a way to introduce to free-software and the openess of modifying
 
Ricardo : picking a creative commons picture, it insert a constrain – restriction
and public domain ones
 
Peter : do they understand at the end
 
Ricardo : images have different degrees of existence, different status
include  in the curriculum the goal of understanding licenses; how to work wiith  images in legal terms; as something students should to take care
 
Brendan:  teaching using restriction as a strategy. One example assignment was to  ask the students to make a drawing using only a paper and a bicycle
 
Stéphanie (remote participation): I have introduced command line in several workshops, and it was quite fruitful even with students already programming as it is a complete different paradigm
Now  I have a course on Libre graphics, but it seems that because command  line is the core of the course, that it is perceived as an mandatory  boring technical knowledge to acquire.
I  also realized how typography is indeed a powelful object to study in  this context. I am no type designer at all, but I ended up, and not on  purpose, to have a lot of typography making involved to talk about file  formats, digital drawings, algorithms…
 
 
Tactics :
  • Starting from another point, like hardware – using VM or in terminal mode on the local wiki with a raspberry
  • The question of ownership, licence, derivative works, sharing source files
  • Starting with small concepts and building up, making the LED blink, writing a plugin, etc.
  • Wikipedia + fonts could be interesting cases, also movies + music, vjing
  • historics of IT and free software to understand what code is.
  • teacher leaves the class or change role.
  • reading text as pictures or sounds
  • Placing constraints
  • building  values into grading: make it clear to students what kinds of things  they should be prioritizing by making those elements of the  grading/evaluation
 
 
—-
 
Curriculum Development
Larisa shows the formal docs for university course development
Share the documents, for inspiration and maybe reuse
 
Question: would university want to keep and not share its curriculum
 
There is a decade long movement of Open Education Resources, similar to Open Access Publishing but for educational material.
 
 
The learning registry
Stanford Research Institute – eductation resources search facility
 
Cedric: Use of flossmanuals
 
 
Digital Toolsets
Blended Learning (online and f2f, a post MOOC model)
Breaking the 9 – 5 
Publically available 
 
Post MOOC – book. Gary Hall, Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Simon Worthington, with others
http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/65025071/‘We’re%20All%20Game%20Changers%20Now’%3A%20Open%20Education%20-%20A%20Study%20in%20Disruption  
 
Summer School (OSP/http://relearn.be)
Week long, any longer would be harder
 
Modular system (ECTS?) of curriculum – the modules could be for other courses and full MAs
 
This could be for a whole masters course
 
We  should write a formal curriculum for course approval in a formal  university setting, up to a level that another person could pick it up  and use to get a course approved and started.
 
Larisa shows off an example course based on the ‘Open Video’ FLOSS manuals book.
 
Also  mentioned an example Adobe book that was made under and open licence so  people rewrote if for a FLOSS context. The book covers some digital  basics. 
 
 
F/L/OS  as a way of (re)expanding the boundaries of a (professional) practice  to embrace the variety of processes / complexity / diversity of work —  rather than product a software
 
Tension of theory vs. practice: Schools always want to use software to each a concept, but in the end if often becomes
 
Build up an ability to learn.
 
*  Can we make a sharable document / template for Writing Curricula,  comparing existing criteria, use as a template to design one’s own  critera
Questions
* Can existing Open Education (Open Access) protocols be used to support releasing / sharing curricula documents
* Can we connect to existing projects
 
Actions:
  • Edit the minutes of this meeting
  • Post to 80c mailinglist
  • Plan next actions to work towards an outcome (get people to commit time / take roles in the plan)
 
 
 
 
—-
pierre wrapping up pedagogy group:
focus on positive experiences (imporance of that)
fruitful constraints
historics of IT
relearn school, teacher leaving class
reading chains of text as pictures / sound: feeling the poetry of the terminal (even if you don’t speak english)
building  values into grading: if you do an assignment on wikipedia, you grade  according to how one actually works collaboratively
raspberry pi: environment to start quickly / get hands on
(eric: also important to bridge to their existing space, find the command line in windows / os x)
 
 
Julien
3 entry points : Institutions, People, Curriculum
Resist a hierarchy between these (people often cross boundaries)
Important to connect to people regardless of their relationship
Craft the website to be agile 🙂
(fix the disappearning page)
Hotlinking a png / svg (place on wikimedia commons)
removed the other links — too confusing for now — need to figure it out
femke + manuel will  make it happen
 
Michael M
Git style way to see how other teachers are building curricula
Repository
Describing modules
Can we feed into initiatives like OER (Open Educational Resources)