- MCP server with stdio transport for local use - Search episodes, transcripts, hosts, and series - 4,511 episodes with metadata and transcripts - Data loader with in-memory JSON storage 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
442 lines
35 KiB
Plaintext
442 lines
35 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 1376
|
|
Title: HPR1376: How Should We Then Teach the Art of Computing?
|
|
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1376/hpr1376.mp3
|
|
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:27:23
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Everyone, this is Clack 2 and this is Harker Public Radio.
|
|
In this episode I'd like to discuss a little bit about the idea of education and open
|
|
source, the impetus for this episode was that I was speaking with a few people about
|
|
what public schools and private schools, but the focus of the conversation I think was
|
|
public.
|
|
No, that's not true.
|
|
It's actually private.
|
|
So, yeah, both of those things, what those schools should promote in terms of what
|
|
they're teaching.
|
|
And one of the arguments that came up was that it's a good idea to teach people what
|
|
realistically they are going to encounter in the real world, the workforce and so on.
|
|
There's a good argument for that.
|
|
I mean, it's almost, I dare say, obvious.
|
|
I mean, it's almost, you sound crazy if you have an argument against it.
|
|
It's just kind of that makes sense, right?
|
|
You are teaching people things and the, I guess, the realistic sort of most obvious goal
|
|
of education, if you think about it, would be for people to end up getting jobs in the
|
|
real world.
|
|
And that does, like I say, there's a huge argument for that.
|
|
That makes sense.
|
|
So, if you're teaching someone how to use an office application or a graphic editing application
|
|
or whatever, a whole operating system, then the obvious choice would be whatever is the
|
|
most prevalent on the outside world.
|
|
That's a good idea, right?
|
|
And in some ways, it does seem like it would be a good idea that you wouldn't want to argue
|
|
against.
|
|
If that's what education is going to provide for people, then that's a valuable service.
|
|
Getting people into a secure job so that they can eat and pay rent and things like that
|
|
is a good goal.
|
|
The problem, I think, with this idea is, well, there are a couple of problems actually,
|
|
in my mind.
|
|
The first of all, it's very defeatist.
|
|
You're kind of saying education will therefore never pave the way.
|
|
It will always sort of trail behind whatever happens to be the going trend.
|
|
And by that logic, you could also say it was a very good idea to teach and promote military
|
|
service to people so that they could possibly get into that, because there's a valid career
|
|
path as well.
|
|
You're kind of going different directions with that, and it's very much not taking the
|
|
lead on anything, which granted, I'm not sure that everyone would see a problem with
|
|
that.
|
|
I mean, that may not be an objectionable thing for some people.
|
|
If you're not trying to be an institution that paves the way that sort of forges ahead
|
|
in new directions and teaches people new things and tries to, I guess, change the world as
|
|
cliche as that phrase may be through the people that you're educating, then maybe that's
|
|
not such a big deal.
|
|
Maybe you're okay with that.
|
|
So that is one thing that, me personally, I'm not okay with.
|
|
I think that education should be a little bit more progressive, not everyone does.
|
|
But that's one thing that I thought about that I didn't really, you know, it didn't quite
|
|
sit right with me.
|
|
Another problem I have with the idea of just teaching people whatever happens to be the
|
|
going thing is that it's very, very finite.
|
|
And I realize that there are a lot of things out there in the computing world that really
|
|
seem like they're never going to go away.
|
|
You know, there are some institutions or some companies that simply you just cannot imagine
|
|
them ever leaving the landscape of computing.
|
|
And this may be true, but you can talk to a lot of people who've been in computing for
|
|
a very long time and ask them if they've got any kind of prior, prior instance of that
|
|
phrase, oh, this will always be there.
|
|
Having turned out to be incorrect, actually, it's not always going to be there.
|
|
Actually this company is going to be displaced.
|
|
Actually this company is, this product is going to be discontinued or it's just going
|
|
to fall out of favor.
|
|
I mean, there are a lot of prior examples where that may happen.
|
|
I mean, I think probably a lot of people would have said that about IBM as the, you know,
|
|
the Microsoft vehicle, that was something that, I mean, for a long time, it was sort
|
|
of Mac versus IBM.
|
|
And people would say, well, do you have a Mac or an IBM?
|
|
And IBM was kind of like a Xerox or a Kleenex, you know, it was this term that just meant
|
|
anything running MS-DOS.
|
|
And so you might have, I don't know, I don't really know what else was out then like
|
|
it, whatever, an older computer that wasn't an IBM, you know, it was an IBM clone.
|
|
And then it became later, it became a lot more diverse in the market.
|
|
So that was one example.
|
|
There was of course in the print and publishing world for a very, very, very long time, there
|
|
was a program called Quark Express.
|
|
And this was a page layout program that people in the publishing industry would have never
|
|
given up.
|
|
It was the, it was the tool that they needed that Quark Express would never go away.
|
|
And it's still, I think it still exists, but nowhere near as prominent and kind of must
|
|
have an important and significant as it used to be due to Adobe InDesign having sort of
|
|
swooped in and taken a lot of their market.
|
|
So there was that.
|
|
There were more, most recently, and very close to my industry, there was of course Final
|
|
Cut Pro, which, well, before that, there was Abbott, Abbott was the video editing platform.
|
|
There was no other video editing platform, but Abbott and then Final Cut Pro moved in,
|
|
displaced Abbott.
|
|
And now Final Cut Pro 10 has come in and displaced Final Cut Pro itself.
|
|
So it's, it's a lot of, you know, there are a lot of stalwarts that we kind of assume
|
|
and really, really believe, like in our heart of hearts, we believe these things will never
|
|
go away.
|
|
It's ridiculous to say that they're ever going to go anywhere.
|
|
And yet that doesn't happen.
|
|
That's not the, that's not the trend.
|
|
That's not the example that we've seen.
|
|
And we kind of need, I think, wake up to, to that idea that things in computing, you know,
|
|
may, we say that computers themselves don't last for very long.
|
|
And I think just because of that reference point we think will software certainly does,
|
|
because this package, this office package, or this graphic package, or whatever, has
|
|
been around for so long, it's been through generations and generations of computers.
|
|
So it'll never go away.
|
|
It's here to stay.
|
|
And it turns out that a lot of times that's just not the case.
|
|
There are, there are things that fade and things that come in and, and that's that.
|
|
And my point is that if we're teaching students one thing, one software package, then we're,
|
|
we're, essentially, we're, we're doing two things.
|
|
We're, we're teaching them, assuming in kind of the assumption that when they get out
|
|
of school, that's the software that they're going to encounter in the real world.
|
|
It was, so we're assuming that it's going to still be around, which, which again, in
|
|
my industry, especially that has, has absolutely failed a whole generation, you know, a whole
|
|
set of four-year college students have basically been set up for complete and utter failure,
|
|
or not complete and utter failure, but like a complete and utter surprise and, and some
|
|
amount of failure.
|
|
So it's that they get out of school, they've taken all these courses on one editing thing
|
|
and suddenly they get out and they find that that one editing thing that they were told
|
|
that, that is the industry was not the industry.
|
|
And in fact, it's not even in the industry anymore.
|
|
Well, it is, but I mean, it's, it's, it's on its way out now because it's been discontinued.
|
|
So yeah, big, big surprise there and there was no diversity in education.
|
|
So that kind of leads me to the point, as a, as someone who is involved, you know, sometimes
|
|
a lot, sometimes a little in, in education, to think that at least at the very least diversity
|
|
is required in education.
|
|
So when you're teaching people software, when you're teaching people computer thing,
|
|
this diversity is, is really, really significant because the, the fact is that if you're, if
|
|
you're telling, if you're, if you're painting this picture, this world view for people that
|
|
everything is one, you know, it's, it's run on this platform with this software package
|
|
and there's no variation there.
|
|
Then if they're that student to go get that job where they don't use that platform and
|
|
they don't use that, that whatever software package, then they are, I guess at a disadvantage
|
|
or, I mean, if you don't want to say it's a disadvantage, then certainly the past, you
|
|
know, four years or however long they've been trained on this thing has, has sort of been
|
|
a waste of time to some degree.
|
|
I mean, it might not be for their next, next job or it may, it might be certainly I don't
|
|
recall any kind of education, computer education in my own schooling history that really has
|
|
ever served me well at all.
|
|
It was all basically useless and the most computer education I've ever gotten was sitting
|
|
at home messing around with computers.
|
|
I think there's a lot of wasted time in the really, really poor quality of computer
|
|
education as it is simply because it is focusing on this false world view of this is exactly
|
|
what you're going to find in the real world.
|
|
You have to learn this stuff.
|
|
If you don't, you're going to be at this advantage and it turns out that you're learning
|
|
something that you might not encounter or you that you might not need or that has changed
|
|
drastically by the time you get out in order to use it anyway.
|
|
Two other arguments, I think, for this open source thing that we should analyze.
|
|
First, the obvious and kind of crude, well, we're teaching people things that they really
|
|
don't have access to and that, I think a lot of Linux and open source enthusiasts are
|
|
hyper-sensitive, I should say potentially hyper-sensitive to this issue in a way because
|
|
I mean, there's this sort of fear I think that we're going to go outside someday and see
|
|
all these young, starving children out on the streets begging for copies of Photoshop
|
|
and MS Office and whatever, and a computer, you know, that they're just not going to
|
|
have access to a computer and honestly, in my personal experience, I haven't really
|
|
encountered that too much.
|
|
I tend to find that people end up having access to computers if they need access to computers.
|
|
They end up obtaining copies of MS Office if they want MS Office or Photoshop if they
|
|
want Photoshop or whatever.
|
|
It's, that's just kind of the reality.
|
|
The people are smart enough now, they know about the wears sites, they know how to get copies
|
|
of things that they need that that happens.
|
|
Now, whether or not we should be encouraging that in schools is completely different question.
|
|
Yes?
|
|
I mean, this is the problem in a capitalist society where we're saying, okay, this
|
|
this thing you cannot have unless you pay a certain amount of money and if you do try
|
|
to get it, then you're breaking the law, then if, and then for teaching people these skills
|
|
that are 100% dependent upon this product that you have to buy, then I really don't see
|
|
how that is something that we should be teaching people at all.
|
|
I don't understand how that's a valid thing in education.
|
|
I don't know about you, but in my couple of years of high school, I was never for
|
|
instance given driving lessons for free.
|
|
You had to learn driving from someone that you knew or you had to pay for driving lessons
|
|
from a driving school in your area.
|
|
There were no free driving classes in high school and I'm assuming part of that reason is
|
|
because they don't feel like that's something that everyone necessarily has access to right
|
|
away or maybe they just don't feel that that's their, that that's their territory to teach
|
|
people, but then why is computing their territory?
|
|
Because certainly in the real world you're going to probably need transportation just as
|
|
much as you're going to need the ability to write a business letter or a resume.
|
|
So I kind of have a strong philosophical objection to teaching people things that they will
|
|
not have access to by default, whereas obviously the well known argument is that everyone
|
|
will have access to Linux because they can put it on any computer that they find in the
|
|
dumpster for free and then they will have access to Libre or open office because it's free
|
|
and then they will have access to GIMP and all these other applications that that we're
|
|
not teaching them, but but it is there.
|
|
And I think I think that the the difference and unfortunately I have not found a graceful
|
|
way to to communicate this to people in in real life because it's usually too much talking
|
|
but I mean the difference isn't isn't that one you just don't have access to to a proprietary
|
|
software versus you have access on open source is that you have legal and you you can
|
|
promoteable you know non liable access to to open source software.
|
|
In other words as a school system if you are promoting proprietary software you are
|
|
probably whether you know it or not promoting piracy and I mean I don't really believe
|
|
in the concept of piracy but I will if it means that people are going to be persecuted
|
|
for it non-stop and that's that is what happens right I mean don't even get me started
|
|
on on piracy and and how absurd it is that Adobe and all these other companies even even
|
|
put forth a famed effort to prevent you from getting their software when it's obvious
|
|
that using their software is great marketing for them and and probably results in huge
|
|
corporate sales later but I won't get started on that because it's not worth talking
|
|
about in this episode.
|
|
So that's that's a thing there's there's there's this whether or not we're going to promote
|
|
people to go out and illegally obtain software and and and if we're teaching the software
|
|
and if we're saying this is how you get stuff done in the real world oh by the way it
|
|
costs hundreds of dollars then we're telling people that they need to go out and get it
|
|
for zero dollars because that's what they're going to do and don't tell me that you have
|
|
any friends with legitimate copies of of half of these software applications because you
|
|
don't or least I don't and you probably don't either because why would you people don't
|
|
purchase these things they're expensive they're not quite worth the amount of money that
|
|
they're going to spend on and there are alternatives out there whether it's just online
|
|
or or or whether it's the free stuff that you and I maybe use anyway I mean it's just
|
|
people don't have paid for copies paid copies of these software packages and yet these
|
|
are the software packages being taught in school so it doesn't it doesn't add up it
|
|
there's a disc there's a disconnect there a little bit of incongruity there why are we
|
|
teaching this stuff when the only realistic way that people are going to get them is by
|
|
stealing it and realistically a lot of them are going to bother because it's just not
|
|
that it's not worth the trouble so there's that and then the well-known that I think possibly
|
|
the other most well-known argument that I encounter when speaking about these things within
|
|
the open source community is that and it's almost it's so well-known it's kind of so so
|
|
so often repeated that I almost started thinking it was a cliche or kind of a buzz buzz phrase
|
|
is that a word buzz phrase instead of buzz word and and the idea is that oh if you teach
|
|
open software you teach the you know the concept and if you teach proprietary software you teach
|
|
the the that that title that software title let's say if you teach open source you teach
|
|
software if you teach proprietary you teach a brand I don't know it's it's not really
|
|
working for me but you heard it before right the idea that somehow magically by teaching
|
|
open source alternatives you're teaching people how to use computers you're teaching people
|
|
how to use all office applications or all video editing applications or all graphic editing
|
|
applications and somehow if you're teaching people specifically how to teach MS office or
|
|
Photoshop or or Final Cut or whatever then you're only teaching them how to use MS office or
|
|
Final Cut or Photoshop or whatever couple of things about this first of all that's a red it's
|
|
kind of a ridiculous statement right I mean it doesn't make any sense it sounds like it sounds
|
|
fake it sounds like that's why I choose I mean that's just what I how I choose to see the world
|
|
I've made this decision and so I'm making this declaration I mean why would that be right I mean
|
|
if we teach if we if we abolished all Microsoft Office education and established LibreOffice
|
|
education then then people are learning LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office and when they get
|
|
to Microsoft Office in the real world they'll be just as confused about how to use it because the
|
|
places are in different menus and things are the things are in different menus and different
|
|
places and the buttons and stuff so it doesn't make any sense until you start really really thinking
|
|
about it and here's what you're thinking about first of all by teaching open source you're very you
|
|
would be very rarely necessarily teaching only one application you would have the the flexibility to
|
|
teach different applications whether or not that's actually useful I don't know because um I
|
|
certainly I don't think that that you can become an expert on something by being taught five
|
|
different examples of that thing but then again are we trying to teach people to become experts at
|
|
anything or are we trying to give them a nice sampling of everything that they might encounter in
|
|
the world and and frankly I think that at that at the at the stage of most educational institutions
|
|
if you're in an educational institution unless you're in a very advanced courses you're not
|
|
becoming an expert on anything you're becoming familiar with with something possibly with a
|
|
couple of different things and I think that is valuable I I I wouldn't say that I was just a
|
|
drop-in thing that we could just all of a sudden do because lesson plans would have to change
|
|
dramatically and I would really not want to teach a class where in the first week I'm teaching
|
|
them Abbey word and in the second week I'm teaching them Libre and then in the third week I'm
|
|
teaching the Microsoft and then in the fourth week I'm teaching them I don't know something else
|
|
I mean that would just be insane so you would have to look at at the at the progression of of
|
|
of all these different kinds of lessons but but would it be useful to to to do a course called
|
|
word processing and have a lot of different options available not options but a lot of different
|
|
solutions available that people would need to become familiar with so that instead of being taught
|
|
this is how to do a business resume which is going to probably change by the time you're out of
|
|
school anyway and and the style and kind of the the accepted thing that you put on resumes is
|
|
going to alter anyway instead of teaching that sort of thing and teach them this is what you do
|
|
when you open up a word processor this is this should be your thought process here's how to figure
|
|
out where to go from starting the application and staring at a blank piece of paper here's what
|
|
you should think about here's the workflow that's a significant difference and that's not what's
|
|
being taught right now whether or not that relies upon it being open source or not probably not
|
|
you could teach the exact same style of lessons with proprietary software but then we go back to
|
|
well what are you promoting here you're promoting stealing the proprietary software since probably
|
|
realistically all the students are not going to have access to that so I think it's more realistic
|
|
to teach yeah the kinds of applications rather than the specific applications wouldn't wouldn't
|
|
say take out your MS office class and drop in a Libre office class because I don't think that would
|
|
serve anyone any better than they would just know a different set of menus and they'd still be
|
|
just as clueless whenever they open up anything else other than the exact same version that they
|
|
taught that they got taught on in school and that's that's not useful another side of this coin or
|
|
or maybe maybe to take it even further maybe it's the same side of the coin but we're going
|
|
further with it is this thing that I have recently come to realize and that has been that me
|
|
myself I have been called upon multiple times in my life to help people learn software or to help
|
|
people bug test or not you they don't call it bug testing but to fix problems that they're encountering
|
|
in in their software a lot of times I mean like very frequently my entire life and probably yours
|
|
to if you're listening to this you're probably a geek you're probably geeky enough to be
|
|
that computer person in your family and in your circle of friends where people come to you and
|
|
ask for help and it's really bizarre that that every time someone has come to come for help to me
|
|
I I frequently have to tell them look I've never used this software before or I've I've used this
|
|
software for a total of 10 minutes in my entire life I am not an expert I'm not the person you want
|
|
helping you fix your problem and and actually I'm wrong I am the person they want me help they
|
|
want helping them on their software and and it's almost invariably I can't think of a time
|
|
there may have been at the time here or there but I can't think of it off the top of my head
|
|
and this is probably very similar for you but they're I cannot think of a time when someone's come
|
|
to me for help on software and I had to actually turn them away because I couldn't fix their problem
|
|
and that's really bizarre when you think that when you realize that on on a lot of these in a lot
|
|
of these situations it's been software that me I have personally never used I have sat down in
|
|
front of software that I have never used and I've taught that software to people or I've fixed
|
|
I've helped them fix problems in their in their project on software that I've never used or that
|
|
I've only used you know for like literally like 15 minutes or 30 minutes just kind of looking at
|
|
it for for fun one day and that that's been very consistent I mean sure there have been software
|
|
applications that I that I know very very very well and I've been able to help people but I'm
|
|
talking about the stuff that I've got no exposure to they just come down and sit in front of me and
|
|
just demand that I'm going to help them and and there's no amount of but I don't know this software
|
|
but I don't know this operating system whatever there's no amount of convincing I'm going to be able to
|
|
do to get them to leave me alone finally I help them and I solve their problem it's there has been
|
|
a little bit surreal sometimes because there's that self doubt you know you sit down you're like this
|
|
is gonna be a disaster I've never used this thing before I'm gonna I am not going to be able to help
|
|
them at all and then it by the end of the session you've changed their life and of course you know
|
|
bizarrely side side bar here bizarrely you know it's it's funny how geeks we geeks we're so smart
|
|
right we're so we're life changing we're smart we deserve such a lot and and praise after we fix
|
|
their problem and the minute we start saying well you really ought to learn such and such you
|
|
really ought to check out you know this open source alternative you should you should check out
|
|
this thing you should back up your data you know all these other like really practical ideas we
|
|
have they're nonsense what are we talking about we don't know what we're talking about we're geeks
|
|
we're we're crazy we we have we have no connection to the real world but then when we help them
|
|
save their project or save their data or whatever we do we're we're we're paramount to to godliness
|
|
but but everything else we say is nonsense open source backup whatever that's all that good
|
|
advice that's nothing but anyway that was a sidebar back to the point so in in your life and in
|
|
my life probably or in my life certainly and probably in your life there have been times where
|
|
people have said okay help me with this software you're going to help me fix it and you do you don't
|
|
know how you did it but you did it you you figured it out for them you can't explain it and I think
|
|
the reason for that is is because whatever happened in our lives as youths we we trained ourselves
|
|
on computers not on a specific software application but on the idea and the workflow and sort
|
|
of the the the the the mind sets the the way of of computing the art of computing and that is of
|
|
course what a school really should be teaching because more than anything what people really need
|
|
to understand is that there are only you know there are only so many different ways of doing
|
|
essentially the same process over and over again it's not really that much of a mystery you know I mean
|
|
okay you've got a video project you need to consolidate or a multimedia project you need to
|
|
consolidate all your media and and keep all of those links in your multimedia project look at the
|
|
paths if the paths don't match what you if you the paths saved in your in your project file don't
|
|
match the paths on the actual computer then yes there are going to be there's going to be missing
|
|
media files and you need to correct those paths now all you need to do is figure out how to correct
|
|
those paths is there a built-in tool for that or or can you just do a quick set on the on the data
|
|
file probably not if it's proprietary but I mean you just need to kind of reverse whatever got screwed
|
|
up and and as long as the path is now matched then your project is fixed that's a real life
|
|
example from a recent disaster that I that I repaired on a software that I've never used before
|
|
but I mean there are plenty of others right there are so many different examples of of things that
|
|
people just seem to get so bewildered by how do I do this thing I don't know look for a button
|
|
with bullet points on it maybe that's how you make a bulleted list how do I do such and such I
|
|
don't know look around in the menus try to find your tab settings and that we're in your ruler
|
|
settings and change that or whatever the case may be that there are only as a couple of answers
|
|
for for pretty much every problem that exists or that arises on you know when you're using software
|
|
and and if schools were teaching that rather than again specific brand name software package titles
|
|
then people would know how to use a lot more again this doesn't necessarily require open source
|
|
to be involved you could always teach these principles like how to compute the art of computing let's
|
|
call it you you could always teach this to people using anything you could say here's an office
|
|
program it's proprietary you can buy it for this hundreds of dollars and here's how you should
|
|
approach you know when you launch it now you're looking at a blank screen now write your content
|
|
and then do the styling and then do this however you want to teach it you can do that and you can
|
|
you can tell them now children there are different office packages out there so you might not
|
|
always encounter Microsoft Office and then there'll be some awareness of that I think it would be
|
|
probably better to have a course on word processing like I said before and and show them a lot of
|
|
different packages so that they actually see yes there are different ways of implementing and
|
|
getting the same results and yes there are differences and yes you have to think outside the box
|
|
and really think about it and and I think this is why programming courses are so universally admired
|
|
in in education because within programming you can sit down and teach people I mean especially
|
|
if you're doing it right I mean you can teach them programming tricks but the minute they start
|
|
to deviate and come up with with brilliant ideas of their own they have to actually think of how
|
|
to implement those ideas you know I mean yes you've taught them what a for loop is or a do while
|
|
kind of loop a while loop I guess you can teach them these things you can teach them variables you
|
|
can teach them all these different things but and they can copy exactly what you've done on
|
|
on you on the projector screen with your computer but the minute they try something different the
|
|
minute they want their little sprite to fall into lava and die and rather than you know or have
|
|
health points rather than permadeath I mean then they suddenly have to think that out and they
|
|
have to think outside of the box from what you've taught them and and invent solutions and I think
|
|
that's that's what computing in general should be taught as there should be there you can't just be
|
|
here is exactly how to write a resume it's got to be here is here are the tools that you can use
|
|
to create new stuff so let's work together to come up with some project ideas and you figure out
|
|
how to get it done and now two weeks from now I'm going to swap the word processor out from under
|
|
you and give you a different one and you can think of some new things to do and come up with new
|
|
ways of accomplishing things and that's really really important so that's where I think computer
|
|
education such as it is in in some schools it's not even a thing at all but I mean that's where
|
|
computer education really really fails and and I really think the computer education these days
|
|
right now it's it really smacks of being some administrators half-hearted effort to just kind of
|
|
make sure that you know it's it there's an allowance there that's like yes we understand that
|
|
people should be aware that computers exist and yeah they should probably be able to write a resume
|
|
so let's let's let's nudge this solution towards them and that'll be that and it's it's not really
|
|
educating it's just making the motions of education and that's a real pity and it's a huge
|
|
disservice to people and it's it's producing people kids who are coming out of school who don't
|
|
know anything about computers and in this day and age I mean the cliche when I was starting to
|
|
teach the one or two classes that I teach the cliche was oh watch out for these kids coming into
|
|
your class they know everything about computers they know everything they'll they'll they'll blow you
|
|
away with their knowledge of computers and I was shocked shocked by the the lack of computer
|
|
experience and the just the lack of logic that that students would have I thought you guys are
|
|
college level kids and you don't know how to do really really simple computer tasks you you can't
|
|
even wrap your mind around why you would need to keep all of your your files consolidated for
|
|
for later for for archiving it later whatever so yeah it's it's not it's not serving anyone it's a
|
|
huge disservice to the people that that these think that these educational institutions are
|
|
claiming to to be educating so how does open source figure into it all again I think that open
|
|
source technology because it's exposed because it's open because it it is really really open like
|
|
you can look at code you can look at mailing lists discussing certain decisions I mean everything
|
|
is out in the open that encourages exploration and in computers exploration is really important
|
|
like I just said about the programming classes you know I mean part of the idea about computers
|
|
is that there are no you that there aren't just not that many set set ways that you have to do
|
|
things there are so many different ways to do things I mean there are certain tasks where yeah
|
|
there's only about five different varieties of of menus or buttons that they could possibly be
|
|
but in terms of like actually producing something new there are so many different ways to do
|
|
things and people should be encouraged to explore those ways and find find out how computing can
|
|
work for them rather than that rather than having it such that every time they sit down in front of
|
|
the computer it's a fight and for a lot of people that's exactly what it is it's a fight and they
|
|
can't make the computers do what they want and they can never think outside of the box enough to
|
|
to imagine some new way of making it happen open source also of course is available and that's
|
|
important you can promote proprietary software all you want you can say that hey that's what they're
|
|
gonna encounter in the real world hey it may or may not be I don't know how the future is going
|
|
to turn out but I don't think it's a if I don't think it's a valid excuse or valid reason to say
|
|
well that's just what's big right now so that's all we should ever teach that that doesn't make
|
|
any sense and besides that you're teaching stuff that people do not have legal access to which in
|
|
in some kind of extremist kind of lawyer way although I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice
|
|
that's probably makes that educational institution sort of and what do they call it an accomplice or
|
|
you know like an enabler you know that they're they're telling people hey we taught you this
|
|
package of software so you have to go get it and if you can't afford it right now there are ways
|
|
there are other ways to get it so that's not a good message to send I don't think uh the
|
|
open source stuff is freely available it's legally available people should be encouraged to seek
|
|
that out rather than to go steal stuff instead and yeah that might not be with the encounter in
|
|
the real world I mean it might be in the future I don't know but that might not be with the encounter
|
|
but again if we've educated them such that they are explorers of computers and and know how to
|
|
use computers like computerists then yes they can they can they will be able to learn the the
|
|
other software and and with the exception of a few very specialized classes I have yet to
|
|
witness someone coming out of school with real like solid ready for the real world knowledge
|
|
of even the most specialized software applications there might be some exceptions there and certainly
|
|
there are exceptions when you're talking about specialized software like where they've actually taken
|
|
three advanced courses just on this software package but I don't know in my experience so far
|
|
I have seen people who you know without that real world experience all they've got is an intro
|
|
to that software anyway it just doesn't matter it takes it takes real world every day usage of
|
|
software to really become an expert on on the way that most industries that I'm aware of actually
|
|
use that software I could give examples but it would be tedious so yeah I don't think that you're
|
|
I don't think we're really teaching people the the proprietary software anyway I mean not in a
|
|
useful way we're just kind of introducing them to these ideas and if that's all we're doing then
|
|
there's no reason really that we shouldn't swap out the open source alternatives because they're
|
|
not going to become experts on it and when they go into the real world and encounter some other
|
|
software package it's not going to be scary it's not going to be a a deal breaker for them it's
|
|
going to be something that they can sit down in front of and figure out just like me and you
|
|
and other computer geeks and as much as I'd like to think that I was that much smarter than the
|
|
average Joe I really don't think that's the case and if I can sit down and figure out applications
|
|
that I've never used before simply because I know how to use a computer then soak in anyone else
|
|
as long as they're taught that way and that my friends is why open source in education is really
|
|
really important this has been a heck of a video my name is Kat too thank you very much for listening
|
|
I will talk to you next time you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public
|
|
Radio does our we are a community podcast network the releases shows every weekday on
|
|
the free Friday today's show like all our shows was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself
|
|
if you ever consider recording a podcast then visit our website to find out how easy it really is
|
|
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the economical and computer cloud
|
|
HBR is funded by the binary revolution at binref.com all binref projects are crowd-sponsored by
|
|
luna pages from shared hosting to custom private clouds go to luna pages.com for all your hosting needs
|
|
unless otherwise stasis today's show is released on the creative commons attribution share a line
|
|
3.0 license
|