“Education and Free Software” round table at the Ludoviales
Yesterday (Tuesday April 28th, 2020), l’Atelier des chercheurs took part, with Framasoft and Sugarizer, in the “Education and Free Software” round table, moderated by Christophe Noullez (Tiers Lieux Edu) for the Ludoviales 2020. A short look back at, and some thoughts on, what was discussed.
The “Education and Free Software” round table held on April 28th, 2020 during the Ludoviales 2020 brought together educators and the free software community around what is at stake for education stakeholders in taking up free software – an all the more pressing question during this lockdown, when teachers have to find solutions to teach online.
After a short presentation of what free software is and of its philosophy, Louis Eveillard and Erwan Vappreau looked back at their collaboration which, during the lockdown, involved Erwan’s students and greatly improved the do•doc software (follow it in the do•doc development log for version 9!). Erwan highlighted the educational value of the collaboration with l’Atelier, and the discussion quickly turned to the question of institutional support for this kind of approach. The members of Framasoft, who have been working on this for decades, described how hard it is to promote free tools and values within the French national education system.
One issue, sometimes less noticed, seems essential to us to stress the importance of designing and using free tools at school, and thereby of bringing together designers (designers, developers, engineers...), educators and students. Besides being relevant from an ethical point of view (values of the commons, respect for data, ...), it is beneficial from a teaching point of view. Our experience has shown us that “residency” forms of collaboration (still to be invented from an institutional point of view) allow for a concrete, rich and effective dialogue, which encourages collective questioning of teaching practices. Experimentation and reflexivity are at the heart of this dialogue, and students are directly involved. Simply put, very concrete decisions about a feature can lead to a complete reorganization of how a class works: they invite teachers, students, designers and other partners to collectively ask themselves whether it is desirable. Iterations are therefore fast and make it possible to test several options. As Nolwenn Guillou, a kindergarten teacher, explains (see links below), testing “for real” with students builds confidence and opens up possibilities that had not been imagined at first. This also shows why the goals given to these collaborations should not be limited upfront.
We were able to explore these questions during our residencies, and discuss them in detail in the following texts (in French):
