Online Learner Engagement: Presentation to the Board of Education

1. Henry Briggs Open Source Software: Presentation to The Board of Education Diffusion and Integration of Technology in Education EDUC-7101-1/EDUC-8841-1 Dr. David Thornburg Walden University 08/16/09, Version 10.0

3. Open Source Software

6. Richard Stallman: A Man With An Open Vision

7. Quote Accompanying Richard Stallman's Software “ Share this code with your fellow users. Learn from it. Improve upon it. And when you're done, please give something back to the community” (Kidd, 2000).

8. Linus Torvalds Author of the Linux Kernel Operating System

9. Who, What? The business community adopted open source because of the monetary savings. The education community is beginning to adopt open source because of the savings that can be applied to other school departments. Open source software continues to diffuse into educational communities. The strategies that will be the most persuasive would be to point out the savings and the compatibility of the open source products that can be used for instructional strategies Teachers will have the ability to expose the students to different software applications free or at minimal charge. The laggards would be the traditionalist groups who are inherently afraid of change.

11. Stage 1: NEED

12. Open Source Software: Adapted and Used by Older Hardware

13. A Variety of Software is Available for Many Uses and Users.

14. Free Open Source Code: The Keys Are Free To All

15. Stage 2: RESEARCH

16. Collaboration

18. Open Source Software is used throughout society; whether indoors or outdoors, mobile or home.

19. Stage 3: DEVELOPMENT

22. Development One of the diffusion studies positioned the thoughts on the paper titled “ Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers!” By David A. Wheeler and uses quantitative data to give reasons why institutions and individuals may consider using Open Source Software.

23. Technological Improvements Open Source Software has addressed many of the technological difficulties of online learning. In this age of communication, the Open Source Software has enabled the world to connect and collaborate, through the circulation of the software.

24. Open Source Software is compatible with most computer hardware and other applications

25. Stage 4: COMMERCIALITION

26. Commercialism -The commercialism and marketing of the Open Source Software is simple because there is minimal, if any charge for the various software downloads, modification or use. -In the educational community through sharing information and various educational tools the increase of the software use has become more wide spread.

27. Open Source Software is also used by the business community:

28. S-Curve of Linux Kernel - Free Open Source Operating System 1991 2001 early 2005 early Linux adopters majority 18 million 1st. User Linus Torvalds Continues to diffuse in society 29 million

30. Benefits Continued - 2: -free open source code -detect and change or delete the attacker program, where as propriety software has hidden codes and spy-ware maybe hidden in the code without the knowledge of users and may require a fee by the proprietary vendor to rid the system of the spy-ware (The Linux Information Project 2004).

31. Benefits Continued - 3: -can be used on older hardware and thereby this is beneficial to all and especially to lower income individuals and others in third world countries who get donations of older computers who can take advantage of these open source software resources -savings monetarily lets one invest in other educational endeavors -allow teachers to expose students to a wide range of software products -addresses security issues because its source code is open and available to the users and if any “back-doors” or spy-ware is written into the program the users will be able to detect and correct the problem.

33. Open Source can be currently utilized by many learners around the world. Its use is expected to continue to expand. Huli Wigmen of Papua, New Guinea using laptop computers.

34. Conclusion There are many organizations in the business and educational communities that have adopted Open Source Software into their organizations and computing systems. The monetary savings and the collaborative nature of open source are appropriate for these current tough financial times and the growing use of the internet to produce, manage, and share knowledge across natural barriers and time constraints and a wide variety of communities. The openness and transparency of open source has made the move toward open source appealing. Open source is easy to access with many organizations such as the Thornburg Center making open source software available to all. While the use of open source software is available to all; individuals and organization must apply with the license that accompany the software. My recommendation is that our school system join the use of Open Source for academic and financial reasons.

35. References Celebrating 10 Years of Mozilla http://www- archive.mozilla.org/mozilla-ten-year.html Clipart retrieved from: http:// www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSE Clipart, retrieved from, www.tcpd.org on 7/1/09, Thornburg Center for Professional Development; Open Source software; , retrieved from; http:// www.tcpdpodcast.org/oss.html#Linux . On 6/03/09 and 6/14/2009. Kidd, E. (2000). A History of Open Source; Userland Software Inc., retrieved from: http://static.userland.com/userLandDiscussArchive/msg019844.html . on 7/29/09. Lakhan, S. E., Jhunihuwala, K. (2008). Open Source Software in Education, EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY. Vol. 31, no.2 Open Source Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_open_source_software QuarterlyMagazineVolum/OpenSourceSoftwareinEducation/162873 on 6/25/09. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations ; Simon & Schuster, Inc., Free Press; New York, NY. The Linux Information Project (2006). Source Code Definition, retrieved from: http:// www.linfo.org/source_code.html on 6/11/09 . Vandana Singh, Michael B. Twidale, David M. Nichols, "Users of Open Source Software - How Do They Get Help?," hicss, pp.1-10, 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2009 Wheeler, D. A. “Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! http:// irm.stackworks.net / Wiley, D. (2006). Open Source, Openness, and Higher Education. Innovate Journal of Online Education, 3(1).