The idea that we must pay for the means of information distribution, how we create content isn’t entirely true.

Speaking more specifically about the Open vs. Closed debate, too often we hear the criticism ”Users don’t care about open”. This is absolutely true and the reason why most open efforts fail. Users don’t care about open. They care about utility and choice. This is why the only way to continue propagating the open web is to work with BUSINESS. B2C. Startups, Media Brands, The bigco Tech companies. They care about open because the proprietary winners are kicking the losers…and that usually means there are at least 1 or more other guys who need a competitive advantage. They need to team up and build, deploy and popularize the open alternative.  That’s why open always wins. There’s always plenty of losers around who are going to commoditize the popular closed thing. As technology leaders we’re paid to care about things users don’t care about. Things that shape the future. While users, in the short term, might not care, we should dare to think and dream a little bigger. As a case study look at Android vs. iOS. iOS is more profitable for a single company, but the other is now a force of nature. (Source: The Open Web is Dead–Long Live the Open Web)

While Apple may have a powerful tool in iPads, ibook Author, there are concerns for any educator who sees creating and sharing of content for noncommercial, attribution, sharealike purposes. Simply, why create content that Apple would control (link shows Apple has changed its EULA)? Still, why not output to ePub format rather than the stolid PDF? Instead, I’d prefer to create my content using a different free, open source tool (e.g. Sigil, LibreOffice.org) and share it with the world, whether they use iPads or inexpensive netbooks running Linux OS.

Why would anyone accept a restriction on the ways they can distribute content if they can use other tools that have no such limitation? A variety of reasons come to mind: 1) Technologically challenged; 2) The tool is great and the user doesn’t care about restrictions; 3) They are ignorant of the possibilities of free, open source ebook creation tools.

As a result of a second article in the LA Times made me have another thought that draws a comparison between old ILS approaches and new ones from companies like Apple.

Today, though, I am reminded of a conversation I had in my early career as a teacher and campus technology coordinator in Mt. Pleasant ISD schools. My principal had pulled me out of my 3rd grade bilingual classroom–my students were involved in using Tom Snyder’s The Graph Club to create, well, graphs about their favorite vertebrate and invertebrates or something like that so they could be conveniently attended by a colleague without specific direction from her–to meet with a vendor. The vendor? A representative from a prominent integrated learning system (ILS).

In my youthful exuberance, I derailed the salesman’s approach to selling the campus an ILS, pointing out that I wanted my students to be constructivist learners (I had just read The Case for Constructivist Classrooms and was fresh on the research debunking ILSs), using technology to exemplify “to know is to know how to make.” Of course, who knows if constructivist approaches still endure the onslaught of testing, etc. That might be an interesting blog entry…what theology came after constructivist approaches were cast aside? Hmm….

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In my mind, I remember the words of an article that said something along the lines of, “There’s no way schools can resist the influx of technology into schools…there’s too much money behind it.” Unfortunately, that observation from Tom Snyder remains true today.

It’s easy to blind oneself to the possibilities of technology. But it’s even easier to go blind AND deaf when discussing new technologies. In my Twitter stream, I saw a new blog entry announcing 4 ways to use Pinterest in the Classroom. Having written many of these kinds of blog entries myself, I am as guilty as they in embracing new, cool technologies for use in K-16 classrooms.

Yet, there just seems to be something wrong when we embrace technologies that cost an inordinate amount of precious taxpayer money, as opposed to a fly-by-night “Web 2.0” site that may or may not endure the test of time. Am I the only one who thinks we should stop reaching for the coolest, most popular app delivery platform, and instead revisit what our fundamental mission is? And, if you end up with the cool tools, at least, you’ll know it was because you started with what you wanted to accomplish rather than what the marketing and salesmen for a technology encouraged you to try.

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