How to infect and indoctrinate todays youth in the ways of FOSS!
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
Good afternoon, good day to everyone, welcome to the next session in Mitte, which is actually where I am right now, in Mitte in Berlin. I have the privilege of introducing our next speaker, and I will put on my best Swedish pronunciation, for Kenneth Francian,
00:27
who is, yeah, not bad, okay, and he's going to talk with us today about how to infect and indoctrinate today's youth in the ways of free and open source software. He has some experience
00:45
in this field being a teacher, I believe, in high school in Sweden, so secondary education, so looking forward to hearing about how our next generation can continue in our footsteps. Off to you, Kenneth. Thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, I hope you've all been enjoying the
01:05
conference so far. I've been, at least, some really interesting ideas flowing out there, and I'm glad to see you all here now. I hope you will at least find some interesting discussion points out of all the things I will talk to you about, the material I will bring
01:24
forth. But firstly, the question on everyone's lips, who am I and what right do I have to have an opinion? Well, Kenneth Francian is my name, as you heard, and I work as a web development teacher, and I worked as a web developer before, but now I mainly teach, and it's on the west
01:47
coast of Sweden, and my students, they can become anything from software engineers to web developers or network technicians, and you might have heard my voice before, perhaps. I've been
02:02
on a few podcasts like Hacker Public Radio or in IT Radio, or maybe not. Well, the thing about youth, I mean, we are in the open source community, the free and open source community,
02:22
we have sort of built in this idea of propagating our beliefs, and we like to talk about what we are interested in. We enjoy spreading the word, as it were, about what we do and why we do it, and somehow we often get our kids, if we are
02:49
old enough to have kids, or perhaps acquaintances involved in some way or another, and that is true, even though the thing that we are talking about is somewhat,
03:06
I shouldn't say inherently boring, but I mean, we are talking about code and licensing of code here. It isn't the most spectacular and most interesting of fields, however you look at it,
03:22
but it is a very effective way to produce and govern software, and that is something we have discovered and that is something we believe in. So, as a teacher, I have sort of a responsibility
03:47
to give this knowledge to others. Right, I should have switched the image here. The image you see here is from a Drupal camp in Gothenburg, where I live,
04:02
and you can find me on this picture if you look at the lower left part in a Firefox t-shirt behind a balloon. That is me, and the one actually who posted this picture is the man
04:21
on the top left, Ola Mirveton, who got this conference together, Drupal camp, and Drupal is, as I guess many of you know, a CMS content management system which is very popular. It's one of the greatest ones, most used ones after, of course, number one, which is
04:45
WordPress. So, I've been involved in such conferences as well, and I try to take, when I have older pupils, students, I try to bring them to these conferences if possible,
05:03
and it is a good way to make them see and make them appreciate that what I say isn't the only voice that says this, because when you are in a classroom situation, it sort of becomes
05:23
the teacher saying something and the pupils, the students listening and shrugging, just thinking that, yeah, well, that's what he says. And, of course, that is not how education should be. Me and my colleagues, we try all the time to integrate our education with
05:48
conference talks like this one to show the pupils, show the students that we are a part of a global movement, and there are a lot of people that actually think this is important.
06:09
All right, but still, it's not easy to reach students. They are in sort of a troublesome position. They are surrounded by a lot of people and a lot of organizations
06:26
that are not really interested in free and open source software, and if we just give an eye to what sort of companies they are surrounded by, well, we have this famous example.
06:42
Microsoft, who went from saying that Linux is a cancer and open source software is communism and a threat to society, under Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft, to what we hear now recently,
07:00
where as well the CEO of Microsoft, but now Satya Nadella says that we are all in on open source. So, they have made a change. They have made an image change and an idea change, which is mainly governed by their need to embrace open source or go under, to be totally frank,
07:31
because they are seeing themselves more and more as a cloud company, as does many other companies. The internet has really changed the way that companies reach their customers.
07:45
So, being a cloud company, you cannot ignore open source because force is what built the internet. It's what it's built on, and no matter how you think about it, you can't escape that, but even though a large company like Microsoft can have these ideas and intentions,
08:11
which so far seems well meant and they actually do contribute to the force community today,
08:20
which is very nice to see, but still, that is something that occurs on a plane and on a horizon which my students never reach or never see. It doesn't affect them, because the software that runs in these clouds and the software that they run isn't really
08:48
in any way your form affected by this. I mean, if they buy a new Xbox, what does that say about free and open source? I'm certain there are some free and open source in the Xbox and there probably are some documentation
09:06
that recites the GPL somewhere, but the 14-year-old who is playing on that game system probably doesn't know or care either. So, this is what the companies they are surrounded by
09:25
are like, and we have a situation where it's the law of least resistance. I mean, Adobe Photoshop is equivalent to editing pictures, but it shouldn't have to be, and
09:48
a large part of that is not only that Adobe is good at making themselves known in the public, but also that the alternatives are not known by those who should teach the alternatives. So,
10:07
students, they know what the latest, coolest, most expensive things are and they want them. They want to be cool in the eyes of their peers, and who doesn't, really?
10:24
Okay, so that is the corporate side of things, what actually influences students that way, but what does the government think? How does the government approach free and open source software in relation to education in Sweden? Well, there are things being said from time to time
10:43
in the latest 10 years that have popped up thoughts and ideas about implementing more force in the way that the country is governed and how the schools operate.
11:02
We have a couple of quotes here on screen. You see they started an organization, the impart the mandate to strive for public administration, as far as possible, to build its solutions on open standards, use open source software, and so on. So that has
11:27
actually been written from the government on official paper and, well, stuff happened with that organization, but that is neither here nor there. And if you read
11:45
the instructions given by the government for the secondary educational system in Sweden, it says actually what you see in the second quote here, that the school should be open to different ideas and encourage their expression. It should emphasize the importance of forming personal
12:04
views and provide opportunities for doing this. It is also a strong, you can find strong wording for democracy and ethical thinking, ethical reflections
12:23
about what you learn as a student, how that affects the rest of the country and the rest of the world of fellow human beings. And in that, sure it's not really directly related to free
12:42
and open source, but still in that you can find the idea of force actually quite snugly making its place. And especially since we have sort of the situation where it's not even
13:03
absolutely there is room for free and open source. And if I just mentioned quickly about how the Swedish educational system is built, if you are somewhat involved in education anywhere
13:22
in the world, you probably recognize a few of these ideas and the way this is organized, but the main thing for you to take from this is that you have compulsory school that is nine years and that is from ages 7 to 15. And then you have upper secondary school which isn't compulsory
13:44
but most actually do continue to study and that is 16 to 19 years of age. And after that you go on to university or some other higher vocational education and that could be
14:00
I mean two years to become a network technician or three years to become a network engineer or anything in there between. So I am situated in the middle of this map in upper secondary school. In Sweden it's called gymnasium and it's actually a name derived from the gymnasium
14:27
but it's the original meaning of the word. So upper secondary school ages say 16 to 19, that is the late teens students are discovering the world in a way that they haven't done
14:46
earlier in their education. And these three years they have the possibility to choose what kind of education they want. So we have 20, 30, whatever, how many there are,
15:04
programs or education that they can choose between and I teach on one of those programs. So I'm teaching mainly as I mentioned web development. All right, so the government
15:23
has made it possible to teach about free and open source in the upper secondary school. There are room for that and there are possibilities to talk about it if you look at stuff like the curriculum for the individual courses. But it is the municipalities that
15:49
actually are behind and sponsor and take care of these schools. So we have 290 municipalities in Sweden who try to do their best and each municipality buy their own software
16:07
and that is software from the cloud like if we talk about student platforms, learning platforms but also what computers should be bought and what software should be on them.
16:23
So that isn't the best idea because you don't have the competence in most municipalities to find good software. Rather you hear something from your friend on the golf course
16:48
from the next municipality over and then you go with what he says. So we have been stuck with a lot of bad software through the years
17:00
and a lot of the reason for that is that the municipalities doesn't have the competence as the scientist mentions in the quote here that I found in a magazine just last week. Teachers are, if it's like herding cats to administer programmers, well
17:26
it's like herding kittens? I don't know what's worse actually because teachers are so set in ways. Ten years ago we tried to implement OpenOffice at our school and the idea was that
17:50
well we have a lot of money to save going from Microsoft Office and they actually went as far as open office on all the pupils computers but not on the teachers computers. Why?
18:08
Well because a handful of teachers had some excel sheets with some sort of programming in them that they had used for 10 years and they would never under any circumstances
18:23
be able to translate that to OpenOffice and since they didn't have the same functionality and the differences that Microsoft implemented there were so many problems
18:40
with the students and the teachers not having the same software that the next year they rolled out Microsoft Office again. But it's not hopeless, I mean we had the pandemic now and from one day to the other almost all teachers seamlessly went over to teaching their courses via Zoom or Teams
19:09
or whatever with the kids being home and so there is a possibility for change but it's hard to see what makes it possible. So how do we in this environment
19:30
approach this then? Well these are two of my closest colleagues on the screen and we talk a lot about how to get these students who have never even thought about
19:44
licensing before, how to get them to understand FOSS in a good way and the first year when they arrive we don't get in touch with them that much because neither one of us have any courses with the first years unfortunately but the library
20:06
at our school does a good job of introducing Creative Commons to them so the library visits all the classes in year one and they explain how Creative Commons works and how you find works that are released under
20:25
such a license. So that has a first taste of it and then in second year they come to me and study the course of Web Development 1 and also a primary basic computer course
20:44
like this is a screen, this is a processor, this is what makes up a computer etc. and then we really try to give them as much as they can handle from the start so we actually begin with how to become a hacker by ESR and talk about the hacker ethos and what started
21:09
and what was the foundation for what later become the FOSS movement and this idea that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel and it's always better if we actually collaborate to create software
21:26
and which has been proven by now you would think that it is actually a better way to produce software and this we introduce them to as well as great examples of software being developed
21:41
that way like Inkscape and GIMP, VirtualBox 7 SIP, we talk a bit about Linux as well as the CSS framework bootstrap but then we really dive into it in the third year where we talk about Drupal of course, we give them the chance to try out Docker, the LAMP stack,
22:08
Git and as they get in contact with software and they get in contact with software that others have built in this way
22:23
well it's still not easy but they start to see and start to understand why it is important and what the benefits are but then to say that they actually become false enthusiasts, well no, no not at all, perhaps one in 30
22:45
become an enthusiast and enters the free and open source community but otherwise I would say the main student body they listen and puts it away somewhere in their mind and
23:10
and then it's not really important anymore. The big problem for us as teachers I think is to make it not seem hard to set up Docker and a LAMP stack and Drupal virtual container
23:31
and start collaborating with code on Git, GitHub or similar. I mean for us it's easy
23:40
because Docker is simpler than Vagrant was and Vagrant was much better than what we had before and so on but for them coming to this from nowhere not really understanding virtualization neither full virtualization or container virtualization
24:05
they struggle and it's hard for me to make sure that their struggle doesn't leave them with a bad taste in their mouths regarding Drupal or FOSS when the problem is perhaps that
24:27
they should have the problem lies in the infrastructure I think and perhaps we are trying to teach them too much perhaps we are too enthusiastic perhaps we shouldn't give them
24:42
the Docker treatment but a already made container in Kubernetes or equivalent and just let them build there but it is still a part of what we are supposed to teach them they are supposed to learn about these stuff these things and if they go out to a company and search for a job
25:08
which they can do after the three years with us they will find companies that work with these technologies all the time I have acquaintances in the FOSS community and in the web development
25:22
community and we have visited them at their companies and asked about what kind of stacks they use what kind of software they use and we really try to use the same things when we educate our students so the biggest
25:45
problems that the biggest thresholds we have to pass to get the growing generation to understand and accept FOSS is obscurity as it ever has been as it has been for
26:03
since forever they simply don't know it exists or why they should care and the other is that it sort of is moving out of reach into the cloud and that way they never get in contact with it
26:21
or that teachers and municipalities in Sweden at least and I guess it's the same in also Europe simply doesn't have the knowledge needed to leave the safe bosom of Microsoft and Adobe and introduce the alternatives and also that not all the software is as polished as it
26:50
perhaps could be to make the transition as easy as possible for the students that is what I've noticed and what I've identified shall we take some questions perhaps
27:07
thank you very much thank you Kenneth that was a very interesting talk I have two kids myself and so I'm always curious about how in German public school so I'm always curious about how
27:23
this is done in other places we certainly have our fair share of similar problems it sounds like especially when it comes to dealing with teachers with laptops and you know matching software with students and funding and networking and high speed internet and
27:40
yes seems like seems like it's a common problem there are there are no questions that are coming up just yet but I actually have a question for you based on the years that you've been doing this have you seen kids come back later and say like hey I really this was really useful
28:01
for me and in what context was it useful for them or did they find that like it took them a lot longer to understand the fundamentals so they could get a grasp of why FOSS is important yes yes absolutely I have met students that perhaps five years later realize
28:22
that wait a minute what Kenneth taught me actually is something I find useful now and it actually is what people use and how this how it works in in the real life so to speak that they didn't really make the connection when I was teaching them but later
28:44
when they went out got the job and so forth they found that this is really how it works and this has really helped me and we also we have students who stay for a fourth year
29:01
and they go out to a company and works there as a part of the curriculum and they always come back and tell us how much more they know than even the people at the company because we are in the forefront of what we teach and what which corresponds with what
29:24
companies actually need that's that sounds great that's really uh I mean it's impressive to see uh to see all that coming back to you um so there are a couple of questions that have come up as well um so one of them is from your personal experience um was it that catches the interest
29:41
of young people for FOSS so you mentioned one in 30 was enthusiastic yeah I guess another way maybe it's like of the other students or of that for that enthusiast like what is it in particular about FOSS that sort of like really clicks for them I mean it's never it's not the
30:02
GPL I mean what they actually go for is they discover vector graphics and inkscape and realize how empowering that is when they start to draw and create or blender or
30:22
one of these softwares that are a really good example of FOSS it's the software that draws them in and it doesn't have to be much I mean some only discovers Linux and find that this does suit me much better and as soon as they appreciate the software whatever it is the appreciation of
30:47
FOSS comes with it and then they start to in a small way evangelize and discover other pieces of software that helps them move forward yeah okay um so one other question is um what do
31:02
you feel open source projects could do to uh make their projects more interesting and accessible to younger contributors and if there's anything in particular to be aware of regarding safeguarding uh I guess for young minds let's say I love the things that Canonical has done I don't know
31:29
if they do it anymore but when they pick bite-sized bugs to fix even if it's the documentation that I mean of course every project should focus on software but also have a look at
31:49
the instructions for that software to make it simple and easy to understand regardless of age because that's not that difficult to make sure that the video snippets that explain one or
32:05
other functionality is easy to understand for everyone and also to include students and people who are trying to learn programming or trying to get into the community to give them these small
32:23
ways to help and to contribute I think that is very important okay so also contributions in terms of bug reports and improvements documentation stuff like that absolutely and in terms of safeguarding and in terms of safeguarding I mean keeping things in mind that these are
32:45
you know 16 to 19 year olds you know should should projects consider like a special section of documentation for a younger audience is there anything else in mind that you would like open source projects to be doing in that sense I feel that that would put a
33:03
too great a strain on the project okay I think and I these are students that are surprisingly mature in the way that they handle technology they aren't strangers to reading manuals and such
33:21
I mean they have grown up with it in a way that we haven't so I think that to make them a special place no it's not necessary but of course it's better to put that work in that time into making sure that the ordinary documentation and and ordinary visible places of the project
33:48
is as polished as can be yeah makes sense okay so someone is asking thinking more about regarding that question about the last one was thinking more about child safety so working one
34:04
on one with adults from around the world fully digitally so let's say they're they're collaborating with someone and you know someone asked to do a video chat or something like this so keeping in mind that there are youth any ideas so has this has this ever happened any any ideas for maybe ways to safeguard kids we have been blessed in not having that problem
34:28
and a part of that is that since they only start learning programming year two they are not there until year three and that's when they turn 18 okay so and then the rules
34:45
are a bit different and it's so well it's more or less their own responsibility right of course we we always try to warn them about the problems that can exist yeah do you find that at that age when kids are coming in they already have some experience understanding by their from their
35:04
other teachers or from their parents how you know how to be safe on the internet is this sort of a common well-known uh common knowledge or is it still i'm curious as well for myself what do i have to do to prepare my kids 10 years ago well i started teaching 12 years ago but
35:25
10 years ago i had a class where a 17 year old girl were she had her own blog and she was frequently posting pictures of herself in a bikini and scantily clad and i took up i took
35:42
this as an example in class to make them see that you don't know who's watching this and i don't feel that any one of my students would do that today so something has changed this this last decade and i think that the educational system has caught up
36:05
now and i at least hope that is because they have been probably warned