“Can you trust your computer?” asks Richard Stallman, advocate of Free Software movement. In K-16 education, the question is, “Can we trust the teacher with the District’s computer?”

As a result of content filtering, MS SMS/Active Directory, and technologies like CompuTrace which track what programs you install and run, educators are increasingly frustrated in their experience with technology. Increasingly legislated and monitored, teachers use of technology is restricted to only specific applications and tools. One example of restricted use is access to Read/Write Web tools such as blogs, wikis, Skype, GizmoProject, and social bookmarking tools. Discussions among technology directors focus, not on the best ways to use such technologies, but how to best BLOCK ACCESS to those technologies.

Consider the School Administrators’ Dilemma that Australian teacher Bill Kerr writes about:

On the one hand education departments are calling for innovation, change, creating the future, constructivism, more emphasis on engagement with less emphasis on content. On the other hand they are blocking one of the most important sources of the creativity (the read / write web) that they profess to crave for.

The reason given that blogs, wikis, and other Read/Write Web technologies are blocked is to protect our students, as well as protect the District from liability. . .much in the same way the current Administration seeks to do domestic wiretaps to protect our liberty and safeguard our lives. After all, human beings only do things for the highest, noblest motives, right?

Consider this paragraph from the “Can you trust your computer?” article. In it, Stallman writes about treacherous computing, the idea that computer systems–both hardware and software–are being set to control how we use them. One example is the concept of digital rights management. As the company’s perception of our rights changes, that narrow point of view is imposed on us by the technology we have decided to use (such as Windows XP computers using Windows Media Player, or Apple computers with iTunes). Consider the following:

There are proposals already for US laws that would require all computers to support treacherous computing, and to prohibit connecting old computers to the Internet…even if they don’t legally force you to switch to treacherous computing, the pressure to accept it may be enormous…To oppose treacherous computing, we must join together and confront the situation as a collective choice.

The pressure to accept this is tremendous. Aren’t we setting ourselves up for a big fall, hmm…for armageddon style control, if we continue down this path? It’s frightening…because curriculum that focuses on these issues–information literacy–is CONTROVERSIAL and can get people fired. Information literacy could become synomous with digital rights advocacy. And, digital rights advocacy equivalent to actual rights that we now hold. For teachers like Bill Kerr, the perspective espoused by Stallman and others is coming in true in our schools. But, with a few exceptions, we don’t know it. We are blind to the loss of civil liberties, what are a few more in our schools and universities? Stallman is thought by some to be a fanatic, a radical eccentric. How long before dedicated teachers like Bill Kerr are branded as such?

I honestly believe teachers and administrators want to use technology. But they can’t keep spending thousands of dollars for just ONE teacher who “gets it.” They have to take those funds and spread them around. Why continue to pay millions if you have it within your power to pay less? Just because of the one super-user who can dismiss open source because he didn’t take the time to learn it? But, now, it’s a lot more than just saving money. It’s about a movement to return trust BACK to the people using the technology, to believe in them again.

In education, one of two roads may be taken. The first will be to just eliminate technology integration in schools. This will happen easily since it costs too much. The second, worse than the first, is that technology will become the education version of “treacherous computing” that Stallman refers to. Look around, you will see the reality of this in your district. Have you given up your freedoms without a fight? If you teach in schools today, chances are, you not only gave it up, you did so willingly.

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“Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” –Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure