by Heidi Pridy & Rena Kanya

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

The Inquiry Question

What are the options for open-source or nonprofit EdTech tools hosted in Canada or locally installed, how viable are they and what can be done to increase access and viability of open-source or non-profit EdTech tools in secondary education?

Sections

Why did we choose this inquiry?

Image by Nathana Rebouças, via Unsplash

With our sudden shift to online school, we have been doing a lot of learning about educational technologies, especially those being used for virtual learning. Since the pandemic shifted a lot of learning online, everyone seems to be talking about Google Classroom, which has been offered for free to educators. Despite using Google in our personal lives, we both had some alarm over the the widespread use of Google in public schools. The realization that this was a manifestation of the privatization of public education pushed us to start learning more about alternatives to corporate, for-profit technologies.

Goals:

  1. Learn about open-source software: What is it & why does it matter?
  1. Identify open-source alternatives to proprietary software used in education
  1. Test out open-source alternatives and provide screencast introductions and reviews based on our experiences
  1. Compile a resource list of open-source alternatives along with features and reviews

What we did

For this inquiry project we looked for open-source or not-for-profit alternatives to corporate, proprietary software that is being used in public education. We tested out some of the apps that we found so that we could provide some reviews about our experiences using the apps, for anyone who might be interested in using them in their classroom.

Some of these apps are direct replacements for the apps that are commonly used in schools, and some offer new and unique functions.

What we learned

What are the risks of proprietary & corporate software in education?

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In 2016 the Canadian Teachers’ Federation put out a report on the privatization of public education in which they raised concerns about growing corporate involvement in education, including by Google. These tools allow teachers to bridge a technological and economic gap, but they pose ethical issues and other risks. Should teachers be complicit in Google’s marketing strategy to brand consumers early? What are the ethical implications of persistent exposure to branding on our students? These partnerships also bring up concerns around privacy, surveillance, and the shaping of education by corporate monopolies.

What is open-source?

Open source technologies, with publicly accessible design that people can modify and share, offer an alternative.

Here is a video that uses Lego to explain what open source is all about:

Why is open-source important?

  • Reasons for using open-source educational technologies in schools:
  • Raising awareness for informational freedom vs. monopolies
  • Freedom (to distribute and from commercial interests)
  • No license cost (usually)
  • Security – the source code is accessible so bugs can be quickly fixed
  • Greater and more flexible understanding of how programs work – learn computing concepts instead of products
  • Increases equity in student access to technologies
  • Upholds values – sharing knowledge, transparency, collaboration, free access to information, informed decision-making…
  • Easier and more efficient administration
  • Old hardware can be used longer

(This list was adapted from a 2018 article from openschoolsolutions.org)

Does open-source have more security risks because the code is publicly accessible?

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It turns out hackers don’t need to actually look at the source code to break software (makes sense, I guess, given that proprietary software has been hacked). Rather than increasing the risk, having more eyes on open source code allows bugs that are discovered to be addressed very quickly. Also, open source software gives you an opportunity to take precautions such as disabling functions that you think might be insecure. Closed source software requires trusting and relying on the developer to address security vulnerabilities. This is not to say that open source is always safer than proprietary. Any code, open source or proprietary will likely have security vulnerabilities, but there are differences in the risks. The best thing to do is to evaluate each piece of software (open source & proprietary) on an individual basis (read reviews about security history etc. and base it on your specific security needs). Many articles suggest using mix of open source and proprietary software. It is also important to take personal steps to reduce security threats – the most important of which is staying up to date!

I highly suggest checking out this article for more info!

What do we need to consider regarding BC’s privacy laws?

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Open-source software must be either hosted on a server or hosted locally. Being locally hosted means that the software is downloaded and run on your computer. Privacy laws are different depending on which country the server is located, which is where data is stored. Before the pandemic, educators had to get the consent of students, teachers and others to use tools that store personal information outside of Canada. Since the pandemic, the BC government issued Ministerial Order 085 (MO85) allowing public bodies to store information outside of Canada without consent under specific conditions set out in the order.

Regardless of where the software stores information, products used by public bodies must comply with the FIPPA requirement to protect personal information from unauthorized access and other risks. For this reason, research any product that you intend to use to ensure it complies with the security requirements of FIPPA. Read about the product and privacy on the product website. Search for the product along with the words “privacy” or “security” and read articles from reputable sources about the product. Reach out to IT staff to ask about the product.

Read about FIPPA and Online Learning here.

What organizations exist to support open source tech education?

We have highlighted two groups in Canada who are working to support the use of open source technology in education within Canada and BC.

The Open EdTech Collaborative

Open ETC supports provides shared open-source platforms (Sandstorm, WordPress, Mattermost) with the goal of enabling co-creation and sharing of open educational resources and approaches to open pedagogy. Anyone can sign up for a free account.

From the website:

The OpenETC is a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector. No contracts or agreements are required to join us, just a willingness and ability to actively participate in our collective endeavor to:

  • encourage technological autonomy and provide ways for students, faculty and institutions to own and control their own data.
  • lower the barrier to participation on the open web for BC faculty and students.
  • provide a more sustainable EdTech infrastructure to BC higher education that gives institutions more control over their tools. Institutions are currently at the mercy of vendor pricing, upgrade cycles, and exit strategies. This puts institutions at a certain degree of risk when there are changes to any of the variables beyond their control. Open-source approaches reduce the risk to institutions in this regard.
  • assist BC faculty in evaluating and making informed pedagogical decisions around open-source teaching and learning applications.
ClassCloud

ClassCloud is a collection of websites for open source digital literacy teaching and learning. Educators can sign up for a free account to access content.

From the website:

We do not believe our children’s education should be outsourced to third party corporations that benefit financially from their online activity. ClassCloud is a collection of websites that offer open source digital literacy teaching and learning tools that allow students/learners and teachers/educators to collect, create and collaborate.

Our Mission is to bring to Canadian schools all the benefits of the Open Education movement with the power of the Open Source community delivered by our own cloud network.

All sites are hosted in Canada and all data is kept private.

Take-away

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Open source technologies can be intimidating to many people, including both of us. However, it is not just for hackers and coders – there is a lot out there that doesn’t require a great deal of tech-competency. It’s true that it isn’t as easy to find (or being shoved in our face constantly) and may not have as shiny of a user-interface, but there are plenty of open source communities and resources to help you out when you get lost or overwhelmed, and it is worth the effort for all the benefits that open-source educational technologies can offer in the classroom. The fact that open source technologies can require some problem-solving and learning to use them is all the more reason that they should be used in the classroom. Students should be learning at a young age how their world works and how they can engage in it as active participants rather than simply being passive users. We need to break down the idea that open source technologies are only for certain people and we need to overcome the fear that keeps us from growing and engaging with things that we are not familiar with. By using open source educational technology as teachers, we can model a growth mindset for our students, and we can offer them tools to navigate tech spaces as empowered and critical members of a broader open source community.

Open-Source Resources For Education

photo by Alex Andrews from Pexels

To help others get started, we found a variety of open source educational technology tools that can serve as alternatives to well-known proprietary versions. We tested most of the tools and shared our reviews and included a breakdown of some important information for each of them. We hope that these can serve as a starting place for other educators and future-educators to begin their own open source journey. It’s been an enriching, surprising, and extremely interesting journey, and we look forward to where the path may lead next!

Sandstorm (ETC)

  • What is it?: Sandstorm is open source server software that makes it easy to install web apps.
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Any proprietary server
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: 70+ open-source web apps for students and educators, all pre-approved, security audited, and hosted within British Columbia on the OpenETC, sync and share files, edit documents, organize projects, publish online
  • Is there anything I should know?: Sandstorm ETC has been intentionally created for educators and students, so it is very easy to use. Read more on the Open ETC website.
  • Did you try it?: Yes!
  • What did you think?: It is awesome. Having this server makes a lot more possible, especially since it give you access to so many useful open source apps!
  • What did you make?: An Etherpad, WordPress, WeKan, Hackerslides, Scrumblr board, draw.io diagram

Mattermost

  • What is it?: Mattermost is an open-source, self-hosted team communication platform
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Slack, Google teams
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: Team chat can be used on any device, ability to set your availability and customize your own notification preferences, threaded discussions, real-time chat, file-sharing, emojis, search capability, facilitates synchronous interactions even if high speed internet is not available (low-bandwidth)
  • Did you try it?: Yes!
  • What did you think?: It is wonderful! Had no issues with using it. The only problem I found was that it is an additional platform that people can be reluctant to add to their roster.
  • What did you make?: This was the main platform that we used for communication. It would be a great place for students and teachers to communicate in ways that foster collaboration.

WordPress

  • Where do I get it?: available as a Sandstorm App (https://apps.opened.ca)
  • What is it?: An open-source content management system that can be used as a private or public website for information sharing or creative expression (originally used for blogging). OpenETC offers WordPress-powered sites with a curated collection of plugins, widgets, and themes and also allows you to create a new site from WordPress templates.
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Google sites, Google classroom and other Learning Management Systems, any proprietary website builder.
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: Text, pictures, embedded videos, H5P, links, drafts, comments, privacy options
  • Did you try it?: Yes!
  • What did you think?: Awesome! It makes so many different things possible! Heidi used it to set up a virtual learning experience for EDCI 773, created a showcase for their EDCI 780 Inquiry Project, and have been using it for blogging for EDCI 336. There are frustrations that arise and some basic problem-solving is sometimes required, but there are work-arounds and it’s good practice!

WeKan Boards

  • What is it?: Open-source project management tool.
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Trello
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: real-time user interface, cards comments, member assignations, customizable labels, filtered views. You can create boards, on which cards can be moved around between a number of columns. Boards can have many members, and cards can be assigned coloured labels and members (to assign a task, for example).
  • Did you try it?: Yes!
  • What did you think?: Very customizable. There are small glitches – you can’t add multiple people to a second board, editors can’t edit label titles/colours , but overall a good tool that does the same work as Trello.
  • What did you make?: We did our inquiry project planning on WeKan. Enjoy this screencast tour:

Etherpad

  • What is it?: cloud-hosted real-time collaboration documents
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Googledocs
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: synchronous document editing, chat, comments, formatting options (–text styling, list formatting, headings, font styles and sizing, etc.), ability to export as different file types, visible authorship option, notifications. Sharing a document is as easy as sending an email invite or copying a shareable link, and new document collaborators automatically join anonymously and can choose a pseudonym to work under if privacy is a concern. Asynchronous participation is also supported as users can access shared documents at any time, regardless as to whether the host is currently editing.
  • Is there anything I should know?: Shouldn’t be used for long-term storage and doesn’t allow some functions – tables, for example, but it is a very usable program.
  • Did you try it?: Yes
  • What did you think?: It was super useful and smooth to use. A great collaboration tool – easy to navigate and to share your work with others.
  • What did you make?: We used it to collaborate on our draft blog post for this project, and to take notes along the way. Check out our screencast:

Hackerslides

  • What is it?: Open-source presentation program
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Powerpoint, Google Slides
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: FIPPA compliant and data is stored securely in Canada
  • Features: Allows the creation of HTML5 presentations. It has a built-in markdown editor and a preview. Presentations can feature images, iframes, backgrounds, transitions, colours, and speakers notes.
  • Is there anything I should know?: Many of the transitions and background effects don’t render in the preview. you may need to open the presentation and refresh to see the effects.
  • Did you try it?: Yes!
  • What did you think?: Intimidating at first, but actually simple to use. Can be used in very simple format or be made fancier by using html. I just searched some simple html codes and was able to figure out how to add pictures, borders, and colours! The website shows how to add transitions and more!
  • What did you make?: Check out this short hackerslides demo that Heidi put together.

Twine

  • What is it?: open-source tool for telling non-linear interactive stories
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Dialogue Designer, Inform
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Privacy: locally hosted!
  • Features: You don’t need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine, but you can extend your stories with variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript when you’re ready. Twine publishes directly to HTML, so you can post your work nearly anywhere. Anything you create with it is completely free to use any way you like, including for commercial purposes.
  • Is there anything I should know?: Mild coding may be slightly intimidating, but the standard coding needed to do the basics are very straight forward, and for those who want to “go deeper” can easily find resources to help
  • Did you try it?: Yes
  • What did you think?: Twine is a super fun program that can be used for a lot of different projects. It is easy to use alongside a tutorial, and can be made simple or complicated depending on your preference. I like that it allows a non-linear way of sharing information, which reflects how my brain works.
  • What did you make?: Heidi used Twine for an introduction project for EDCI 352 and for a self-assessment of the PDPP competencies.

OBS Studio

  • What is it?: Open-source software for video recording and live streaming
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Screencastify
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Features: High performance real time video/audio capturing and mixing. Unlimited number of screens that you can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions. Intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters. Easy to use configuration options. The ability to rearrange the layout to how YOU like it.
  • What if I have a problem?: While OBS Studios provides help to many of their common problems here https://obsproject.com/help there seems to be a lack of activity on their forums. Some users who ask for help do not receive prompt responses, which can be problematic.
  • Is there anything I should know?: Available for Linux, Windows and iOS
  • Did you try it?: Yes
  • What did you think?: This software isn’t super intuitive to use right away, especially if you’re not familiar with video streaming and editing. They do provide resources and tutorials online to help with this. If you are determined to use this software, and work around the learning curve, I think it would be very useful.
  • What did you make?: Rena was able to make a small screen cast video that included audio and webcam footage, similar to what you’d see Twitch gamers do.

Cam Studio

  • What is it?: Open-source desktop recorder/ streaming video software
  • What is the proprietary equivalent?: Screencastify
  • What does it cost?: Free
  • Features: screen and audio recording. High-quality, anti-aliased screen recordings features and webcam “picture in picture” capabilities.
  • What if I have a problem?: There is a known problem where you cannot view these videos on Netscape or Firefox, but there is a patch for this in the next update. Also their Help forum seems pretty active, and replies look to be quick.
  • Is there anything I should know?: Only available for Windows.
  • Did you try it?: NO
  • What did you think?: While the software looks promising, Rena’s internet security software didn’t like the looks of it, and she was unable to download it. Reviews for this software are excellent, and it is personally recommended by Rich McCue, so we would like to think it is safe to use. Perhaps we will try it again, but we suggest doing your own research before downloading and deciding for yourself if you feel safe using it.

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