Guest post by Sandra Kuipers

Free educational technology is not necessarily open educational technology and failing to make this distinction impacts education on an individual and global level. Online resources and technologies present attractive opportunities to infuse learning with digital media and content. However, these resources are not created equally: they may be either open, provided with a license that enables remixing and sharing; or they may be proprietary, provided with a license that protects and restricts their use (Lessig, 2009; Wiley, 2014). This inequality poses a critical issue in education technology (EdTech). Crucially, these licenses can easily become confused or overlooked when the resources themselves are free. In this critical reflective paper, I confront what the ambiguity between free and open means for education and what it costs. Beyond monetary costs, free educational resources and technology accrue opportunity costs, which need to be considered each time educators choose between free and open EdTech.

Free vs. Open

The difference between paid and free is a lot clearer than the difference between free and open. Educators and institutions are acutely aware of how much money they’re spending on their technology and resources. However, the difference is not as clear when they choose between free and open EdTech. In my inquiry into this topic, I realized this distinction was often neglected or misunderstood, which presented a compelling area to investigate further. My aim is not to argue the case between paid and open EdTech, which is well stated (Blomgren, 2018; Olcott, 2012; Wiley, Bliss, & McEwen, 2014), but rather to critically examine the resources and technology which are already free.

As an open source developer considering the topic of free EdTech, I found myself asking: Why do creators choose to make something free, yet not open? Why not take that extra step? I was curious to consider the implications of EdTech that is free and closed, versus EdTech that is free and open. Throughout this inquiry, when I use the term free EdTech, I am referring to resources and technology that are free yet proprietary: those that are protected under a restrictive license. When I use the term open EdTech, I am referring to resources and technology which are both free and open: those that are provided with a permissive license. These include the Creative Commons license (Lessig, 2009) or one of the many open source licenses, including the GNU General Public License or MIT License (Open Source Initiative, n.d.). This distinction is critical to establish, as my inquiry has revealed a high degree of ambiguity in this topic.

Free has many meanings. In the software world, this ambiguity is famously characterized through Stallman’s (2002) slogan: “Think free as in free speech, not free beer” (p. 133). This statement highlights the difference in English between giving something away “for free” (gratis) and providing something “with little or no restriction” (libre) (“Gratis versus libre,” n.d.). In the copyright world, one meaning does not necessarily imply the other: something can be given away for free yet still retain a proprietary license (Lessig, 2009). Stallman’s analogy conveys the misconceptions surrounding the word free and how these misconceptions can affect the licenses that creators choose to apply to their work. Although Stallman’s statement was aimed at software development, the ambiguity of the word free also impacts education. Educators and institutions continuously choose between which technologies to use and invest in (Weller, 2018), and each decision represents an opportunity cost.

Opportunity Costs

The opportunity cost of choosing free EdTech over open EdTech may be difficult to assess but is nonetheless vital for educators to consider. Opportunity cost, a term used in economics, refers to “the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen” (“Opportunity Cost”, n.d.). Although primarily used in an economic context, opportunity cost considers any potential loss when making a decision. When both alternatives are already free, as in the case of free versus open EdTech, the consideration entails many hidden non-monetary costs. Assessing these costs requires looking at the “the bigger picture of educational technology” (Selwyn, 2010, p. 70), from the micro-level of individuals to the macro-level of globalization. In my inquiry, I’ve explored these opportunity costs on an individual, local, and global level.

Individual Costs

Free EdTech may not have a monetary cost, but it often offsets its expense through other means. Student data may be collected, from clicks and page views to individual metrics of aptitude and behaviour, and critics of online privacy are wise to question what is being done with this data (Polonetsky & Tene, 2014). For example, Google Classroom is a free educational platform, provided by the search-engine giant under the banner of its Google Apps for Education program. Lindh and Nolan (2016) warn that concealed behind Google’s offering of a “free public service” is a business model for online marketing. Through this business model, “Google’s information on users’ behaviour on the web is collected through the DoubleClick server and is thereafter packaged and sold to advertisers” (p. 647). Lindh and Nolan argue that educational institutions assuming that Google is providing them with a free service have been severely misled. “It is, in fact Google that has access to free digital labour, as people through their everyday practices produce the commodity that creates Google’s economic wealth” (p. 647). In the crucial and often alarming topic of data privacy and surveillance, free EdTech is not the same as open EdTech. An individual’s privacy is a critical consideration among the unseen opportunity costs of free EdTech.

Local Costs

Resources that are not open remain fixed in the original context in which they were created. Blomgren (2018) notes how publishers and content creators may “attempt to provide accurate content” (p. 61), yet they cannot possibly contextualize learning materials for every local area or culture. The result is that the context of proprietary resources is either highly generalized or relates to a specific instance that may not be relevant to local learners. Localizing and contextualizing learning is an essential part of how learners connect and engage with new topics: curriculum becomes more relevant when it relates to a student’s local area or current events (Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2000). Blomgren suggests that the “the need for place-based learning highlights how the older model of educational [resources] has become challenged by the [Open Educational Resource (OER)] movement” (p. 62). Free educational resources may help a teacher build their lesson plans, but unless those resources are also open, they do not provide the opportunity to localize or contextualize those lessons.

Global Costs

Free EdTech is often presented under the banner of altruism but may ultimately fall into the trap of solutionism. Morozov (2013) warns that humans are increasingly looking at technological solutions for problems that are necessarily social and cultural. This technological solutionism often doesn’t address the root of a problem and is more than likely to have unintended consequences. In my critical inquiry, I looked at Khan Academy, which promotes a “mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere” (Khan Academy, 2018, para. 2). This platform provides visually appealing educational resources, including videos, step-by-step tutorials, and discussion boards. However, looking towards the goal of democratizing education, Hansen and Reich (2015) found that free learning resources do not necessarily “benefit the disadvantaged” or “decrease gaps between rich and poor” (p. 1245). Presenting free EdTech as a solution to global education reduces the issue to a matter of cost, which research into the digital divide has found is not the only consideration.

Several of the free EdTech platforms available online are products of educational philanthropy, which raises questions of motives and social implications. Regan and Steeves (2019) examine the impact of technology company foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. They cautioned that EdTech offered by these foundations may come at a social cost, including a weakening sense of “the public in public education”, and desensitization of youth to the “surveillance state” (para 3). While free and attractive to educators, these initiatives aim to use big data and learning analytics as a solutionist approach to issues in education. “Rather than supporting smaller class sizes and better-paid teachers, elites such as the Gates and Walton foundations are advancing ideas linked to measurement, testing and performance” (Polonetsky & Tene, 2014, p. 19). EdTech from billionaire philanthropists may be offered for free, but it is not necessarily open. Rather than open EdTech authored by and representative of the many, this free EdTech represent the motives and perceived solutions of the few.

Read and Write Culture

The ability to copy one another is central to the human learning process. In Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, Laland (2018) identifies copying as a primary mechanism of cultural evolution. Human culture evolved by watching, learning, repeating, and improving on each other’s actions. In considering the implications between free and open, I wondered: What happens to learning when we prevent this essential process of mimicking and modifying creative works? The choice between free and open EdTech revolves around the type of culture educators want to foster: a read-only culture, or a read-and-write culture of iterative and generative creation (Lessig, 2008). Openness is an invitation: it offers the potential to participate in the evolution of human knowledge and creativity.

Educators need not be passive consumers of the content they teach. Jenkins (2009) illustrates how the internet offers the potential of a “participatory culture,” particularly in education. Yet, this potential relies on the inherent rights and affordances of its digital infrastructure. In Free Culture, Lessig (2004) explores how copyrights and patents are a relatively recent invention and tend to benefit corporations over individuals. For much of human history, Lessig explains, creative works were not controlled by the law. Inventors and artists throughout history were free to imitate and copy each other: and they did. Educators, as participants in the continuum of human culture, need to be acutely aware of copyright and licensing issues. If educators come to see free EdTech as “good enough,” then they have lost a freedom truly essential to human culture.

Realizing Potential

An opportunity cost, however, does not matter if the opportunity itself would be wasted. In my inquiry into the issue of free versus open EdTech, it was easy to fall into the trap of open determinism. Open licensing offers potential and potential alone. Adding an open license to resources, software, and technology does not automatically solve issues of relevancy, diversity, privacy, and contextualization (Blomgren, 2018; Olcott, 2012). The difference between free and open EdTech is moot if the potential isn’t realized.

Education can benefit from openness. However, as an advocate of open source and open culture, I realized I need to temper my enthusiasm with a pragmatic perspective. Open Educational Resources (OER), for example, face many challenges, including discovery, sustainability, quality, and localization (Wiley, Bliss, & McEwen, 2014). Olcott (2012) reminds educators and researchers that “there is no silver bullet solution to the “open” road ahead. OER are not a panacea for resolving all the issues in a global society or in the higher education sector” (p. 289). As advocates of openness present open licensing as a social good, they too are in danger of perpetuating “technological solutionism” (Morozov, 2013). The potential that open licensing offers needs to be met with the intention and empowerment to utilize it. The cost of free EdTech may be lost potential, but for potential to matter in the first place, it must be realized.

Final Thoughts

Both the concept of free and the concept of open are hard to define. My inquiry into this topic began with a look at the ambiguity of the word free. However, the concept of open suffers from a similar ambiguity. Cronin (2017) notes that “open education narratives and initiatives have evolved in different contexts, with differing priorities” (p. 16). As an open source developer, I realize I can often be blind to how confusing the concept of open can be for the uninitiated. Cronin explains that open is used to describe everything from resources, to teaching practices, to technologies, as well as to refer to the values of open culture itself. This wide “umbrella term” for open (Weller, 2104) may make it difficult for educators to understand the specific implications of using open technology and open resources. Watters (2014) also “cautions that while such multivalence can be a strength, it is also a weakness when the term becomes so widely applied that it is rendered meaningless” (Watters, as cited in Cronin, 2017, p. 16).

Communicating the opportunity cost of free versus open EdTech is an issue of both awareness and articulation. In 2007, the Cape Town Open Educational Declaration boldly declared that, through open initiatives, “educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge” (para 1). However, in the follow-up 10th Anniversary project in 2017, they recognize that there remains much work to be done to realize this vision. “The challenge is not in reaching enough people, but rather in articulating the meaning and value of open education in a way that resonates with mainstream audiences” (Cape Town Open Educational Declaration 10th Anniversary, 2017, p. 4). To help teach educators the opportunity cost of free versus open EdTech, advocates of openness first need to articulate what open education actually means.

When educators see the word free, they need to be encouraged to look closer and dig deeper. Free is not the enemy of open, but it can easily overshadow it. Blomgren (2018) suggests that “rather than simply being for or against [Open Educational Resources], educators at all levels need to be deeply aware of the various and connected implications of the OER transformation” (p. 65). This awareness begins with an intentional decision for educators to learn about open EdTech: to look beyond issues of free or paid, and critically assess the underlying licenses of the technologies they use.

The cost of free EdTech is lost potential: the difference between a read-only culture and a read-and-write culture. If educators wish to create participatory, contextually relevant learning opportunities for their students, they need to be aware of which culture they’re choosing to foster. As stewards of human knowledge and creativity, educators need to be aware of copyright and licensing issues. However, awareness alone is not enough. Educators and advocates of openness need to take action. We have work to do. Realizing the potential of open licensing requires a commitment to articulating the value of open culture, as well as empowering others to reuse, remix, and redistribute educational technology.

References

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This article was originally posted on Medium.com.

In 2011, Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and co-founder of the venerable Netscape, noted that “software is eating the world”. His observation was intended to reflect the way that computers, and the software they run, were flipping the business world on its head. Nine years on, and Andreessen’s words ring truer than ever. If anything, it seems that he understated the shifts we were seeing and feeling. In 2020, you could reasonably look at the changes of the past decade and say that “software has eaten our culture”.

Picking up on this thread, Michael Harris’s The End of Absence takes a long look at the peculiar, and revolutionary time, in which we live. It draws our attention to the fact that there will never be another time like this: one in which adults have experienced the world both with and without the Internet. Our current observations, he notes, offer a final glimpse into a world that will soon be forgotten. If this sounds like hyperbole, then just consider how much time you spend thinking about life before Gutenberg’s printing press, which was the 15th century’s own version of the Internet. In the same way that we have, as a culture, forgotten what it was like to be pre-literate, we’ll soon forget what it was like to be pre-digital.

What will we fail to miss most, asks Harris? Absence is his answer.

If you are over the age of 35, you will probably remember a childhood and adolescence filled with absence: the absence of stimulation, fun and company. It was, for many of us, a time with ample opportunities to be alone, to think, to ponder, to be creative, to read deeply, to be bored. These activities, although we did not always relish them, forged the minds we carry around with us today. They enabled a culture in which deep thought was valued and valuable.

Unless we are very careful, the intrusion of devices and software into our lives will mean that our children will never have these experiences. Which will mean that by the time we are grandparents, these thoughts and feelings will seem old-fashioned, musty and dull. And then, in a flash, they’ll be gone.

Harris is far from alone in voicing these concerns. Sherry Turkle, the author of Alone Together, discerned the corroding effects of digital dependency almost a decade ago. More recently Adam Atler, William Powers, Andrew Keen and many others have all written compellingly about the changes we are undergoing. Richard Louv and Lenore Skenazy demonstrate how these shifts play out in the lived experience of our children.

If you remain unconvinced, then perhaps this short read by Benjamin Conlon, focusing on how childhood has changed, might help you to imagine how difficult it must be for our children to daydream, imagine, create and get lost.

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Given all of this, it might be fair to say that we are set on a path which leads to software eating everything. Whilst this will have sounded excitingly disruptive to venture capitalists in 2011, it should, today, strike us as alarming.

It might not be surprising then, that for all of the energy schools are pouring into software, there is a growing concern among educators about where we are heading. As Conlon observes:

In many districts teachers are encouraged to employ Twitter and Instagram for classroom updates. This is a bad thing. It normalizes the process of posting content without consent and teaches children that everything exciting is best viewed through a recording iPhone. It also reinforces the notion that ‘likes’ determine value. Rather than reading tweets from your child’s teacher, talk to your children each day. Ask what’s going on in school. They’ll appreciate it.

This thinking represents a distinct change of tack. It represents schools pushing back against the ascendancy of big tech. It suggests that swimming downstream through the dominant culture might not be the right thing to do.

It was with all of this in mind that Toby Newton (Head of School at ICHK Secondary) and I spent a sunny autumn day in 2018 sketching the outlines of a new ICT policy. By this point, it had become clear to us that our existing structures, which were based on the techno-utopian thinking prevalent at the time of their writing, were no longer fit for purpose. It was also apparent that drastic change was needed, and that it would not be easy to pull off.

What followed was 9 months of intense discussion, drafting, consultation, introspection and iterative improvement. The whole process relied on exactly the kind of solitary deep focus that software seemed to be imperiling, coupled to short bursts of intense collaboration. Almost all of the work was kept hidden from students, as we asked ourselves how we could orchestrate a sea change, without coming across as a bunch of old, irrelevant reactionary Luddites.

The resulting policy was introduced to students in June 2019, via a series of unannounced simulations and presentations. Its aim was no less than reclaiming for students some of the quiet space commandeered by digital technology. The primary vehicle for this was a set of protocols that would invite students to put away their own mobile phones, whilst refocusing teacher attention on how we use laptops for learning.

Although I find our students to be very attentive and engaged, launch day was the most striking example I’ve seen of having their undivided attention. A handful of individuals, those most tethered to their devices, had felt the tremors approaching, but most were caught unawares.

Where I had, during some dark sleepless night, feared a visceral backlash of phone-deprived adolescent rage, we saw a remarkable degree of thoughtfulness. There were many good questions, the odd wounded look, and a range of very sensible suggestions for making the new policy more workable.

School life, as it will, marched on. But the culture had been distinctly altered. Where, at break, we previously saw growing numbers of students conspicuously using mobile devices, we now see playing cards, games around whiteboards, students talking and playing. There are more students playing sports on the playground, and the old primary school favourite, foursquare, has enjoyed an unexpected resurgence among older students. During class time we’ve seen the near total disappearance of mobile phones, and the distraction that attends them. Our senior students, who have more leeway, have proven reliable role models, in carrying their devices but using them discreetly. Students no longer wait for class to begin by playing with their laptops. Teachers are more aware of their own role in modelling positive digital behaviour.

Given the danger of newly-bored and untethered students, we worked to create a physical and social environment that supports socialisation and playfulness, introducing giant board games, installing more seating and putting on lunch time activities. Phone lockers, now installed in every form room, offer a structural change that allows students to use one material technology to control another. All of this builds on our ongoing work in offering students an epistemic apprenticeship, in which they learn positive habits and skills that will serve them throughout their adult lives. The foundations of our school remain choice, adult-adult conversations and an absence of traditional school behaviour management.

Ultimately, whilst we might want to blame children for not controlling their device use, it is not really their fault at all. As Adam Alter (Irresistible) makes abundantly clear, it is adults, acting under contemporary economic pressures, who have deliberately designed the environment our students find themselves in. Having found a plausible and popular narrative, many schools have, under the tired banner of “21st century learning”, jumped on board the digital bandwagon. What has taken some time to become apparent, is the extent to which our biological imperatives to switch attention towards opportunities and threats have been hijacked. These “orienting responses” (Behave, Robert M Sapolsky), have been turned against us because it has become economically and culturally advantageous, and technically possible, to do so.

As educators it is imperative that we recognise these forces, and work to create an environment that guides students to be able to judge both the value and the costs of a wide range of human technologies. We cannot simply turn out backs on the many advantages that digital living offers, but neither can we remain complicit in the greatest heist of all time: the theft of our collective attention.

Phones in particular, for their many benefits, carry a massive set of interconnected costs. However, we, as educators and parents, can counter these through the use of other technologies, such as well thought out protocols and policies, phone lockers, the freedom to roam, the freedom to connect in person and dinner together as a family. During such times, we might stop and consider the extent to which words that once held meaning associated with face to face intimacy and organic emotional growth are now connected to a much less rich sense of what they could or should represent. For example, how many of our online “friends” serve the functions that a real friend ought to. Likewise for “community”, “contact”, “like”, “share” and a growing lexicon of repurposed words. It is in these shifts that we can divine the deconstruction of much that we ought to hold dear.

Of course, the best technology of all might just be adults who reliably role model a positive culture around device usage, and who revel in absence, spontaneity, exploration and fun. As Neil Postman notes, perhaps a little stridently, in Technopoly, “a family that does not or cannot control the information environment of its children is barely a family at all”. Our actions as adults, like it or not, form a large part of this very same information environment.

The changes we’ve experienced at ICHK Secondary over the past 18 months have been neither straightforward, nor pain free. However, we believe that when we draw firm boundaries against the encroachment of digital devices, we stand to gain tremendously. Along the way we have greatly appreciated the ongoing support of the many parents and educators who have voiced their joy at our new policy. We hope that, over time, yet more people will join us on this journey.

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