HELIOLITH

Sometimes it seems that from the moment I wake to the moment I lay down to sleep I am racing to accomplish tasks and learn things. The cycle is worsened when I miss the mark, and get less than the required 8 hours of sleep (which is usually). Although I frequently fall back and look around, aware of myself from a distance watching the whirl of activity… it’s often all-consuming. I am currently, in addition to teaching, attempting to solicit more technological grants for my little elementary school, as well as trying to piece together the dozens of computer parts piled up around me at home, the results of our first two donations. I’m beginning to rethink the effort/benefit ratio of accepting pieces of hardware, as opposed to well-formed systems… especially without a workshop to store all of the parts in! Each system inevitably requires far more attention and troubleshooting time than any reasonable estimate would project. I am beginning to think that as Richard Stallman and others have stated, that Open Source Software is the best solution for education.

Check out this photo of a highschool computer lab in Australia that’s gone 100% Ubuntu Linux- so nice! I’m confident that with relentless positive visualization, I can aquire all the tools my students need to have complete access to an increasingly digital world. With open-source they can have the access they crave, and at least I don’t feel like I’ve made a deal with the devil, selling them out to Microsoft!

I’m often pulled back to catch up with the vibrant world of by blog-community- while the thought hasn’t recently caught up with me enough to form action. I’m swimming in between command-line prompt investigations and installing Linux on computers that were donated to my school. I’m considering checking out a Linux conference in LA this weekend, after learning about it from a local Linux User’s Group listserv. I’m fascinated by the transparency of Linux, the goodwill of the people involved with it, and the labyrinth of intricate software mysteries unveiled by knowledge of shell commands.

There’s an activism inherent to the gnu/opensource movements whose mission engenders the desire to share knowledge and information, and to empower others with their own understanding. In many ways I think that the kind of constructivist acquisition of knowledge I’m discovering in Gnu/Linux and open-source is the self-same Deweyan spirit of education that I believe in. Maybe my worlds are converging: professional, political, and technological. I hope I’m strong enough to see it through to the other side of this transformation of my various interwoven life-paths.