FreeBox: Students, Visionaries, Citizens Collaborate, Everyone Wins

The FreeBox: Where Where High-Tech meets High-Touch, and Colleges Win

Smaller, innovative schools can re-emerge as educational and technological thought leaders through collaborative research and enterprise  -- without breaking the bank

By Mary Lin

How ready is your college or university to take advantage of or even respond to the following scenario?

Jared P., junior at Alternative U., decides during the college’s three month summer service semester in Kenya to captureaudio and create video recordings of all of his experiences during his stay. On his return to his studies stateside, he creates a virtual learning environment at a major virtualization site(VLE), complete with three-dimensional representations of all he encountered during his studies. He includes a collaborative publication on service learning opportunities in Africa, an electronic portfolio with embedded video and podcasts reflecting on his stay, and a less formal blog site where students, NGOs, community- based African organizations, funding agencies, and governmental bodies from local to national levels can dialogue on the challenges and opportunities of intercultural partnership.

Within days of going onlinelive his virtual siteVLE and blog have become a hotbed of creative sharing and activity, with all of the aforementioned groups represented. Within a month grad students from a sustainable management program at another university approach Jared about co-sponsoring the collaborative publishing venture with their owninstitution.

If your educational institution is like many small colleges, it’s likely there would be one crucial party to the dialogue absent at the table: you.

The colleges where this kind of student-led initiatives are taking place are the lucky ones. At least these schools have clear articulations of student needs demonstrated in projects that drive innovation from the bottom up.

But educational institutions and educators at all levels from preschool to postgraduate find themselves under pressure from without and within to provide education that is not only state-of-the-art,  and relevant in the short and long terms, but enjoyable.

Multiple realms of technology and inquiry are converging at warp speed, creating a time of significant challenges and opportunities for progressive, alternative, and experiential educational organizations. As technology pervades our lives, the processes by which technology is developed, used, shared, and developed have become more intuitive – if you will, more lifelike.(1)

Students seek educational options and products which that are more personalized, socially -connected, fluid, creative, relevant, and flexible both in terms of application during the educational process and relevance in terms of job skills andincreasing their opportunities after graduation. These Wii -playing, cell phone sporting, YouTubing, Facebooking, blogging, and always-connected students/consumers increasingly demand that education and its attendant skills be anextension of the highly-elaborated technological environments in which they live.

Students and their parents increasingly demand not  only that education be immediately relevant in terms of ensuring employability upon graduation, but assurance that their education will develop the creative and flexible mindset and “deeper skills” necessary to navigate an ever-evolving workplace. With thousands of options to choose from, these generations of natural-born consumers  also demand that it be engaging and interesting –“fun.”

Opportunity for  Colleges, Universities, and Other Innovative Learning Environments

These changes in technology pose significant challenges to many institutions, and a special challenge to those institutions that identify themselves as progressive or alternatives to the mainstream.  These tend to be smaller schools, many of them relatively young, having been created in the cultural ferment of the 60’s. They include colleges like the members of CIEL, the Eco League, and the ersatz Union for Research and Experimentation in Higher Education, which gave rise to the University Without Walls movement. These schools are well known for producing not only self-directed, confident, articulate, visionary, creative individuals who are able to move adeptly between realms of inquiry, but also whole new directions in education and culture.

These schools are self-selecting in terms of applicants. They often attract the best and the brightest;  students with whom the typical education simply can’t keep up, who are often more engaged in real-world problem solving, and those who seek to develop themselves and their skills in interdisciplinary, integrative, integral, cooperative, collaborative environments. Often, these same students seek to live more simply and sustainably, and help create a world where resources are understood, used, and shared in a manner that’s more in keeping with natural law, of ecological economies.

The irony in all this is that many of the institutions who have given rise to philosophies of and approaches to education which focus on the development of the individual, social skills and connectivity, self-directed learning, immersive learning environments, and other innovations, the progenitors of the “high touch” component of the new alchemy of educational success, are some of the least technologically savvy.

However, there is a silver lining. By applying their own guiding principles of collaborative and self-directed learning, these colleges can encourage students, staff and faculty to emerge whole new directions in education and culture. While many of these schools have trudged along turning out extraordinary thinkers, a parallel universe of collaborative, visionary, often altruistic productivity and shared learning has emerged in the freeware and open-source technology movement.

These schools can wed high-tech and high-touch to implement existing tools and technologies, many of them extant in the open source realm, to provide for themselves and each other the tools of relevance needed by students and faculty to keep pace with, and as often as not, pull ahead of more technologically- and financially- endowed institutions which may not be blessed with the unique creativity and vision of the students, staff, and faculty of these smaller and in many ways more innovative schools.

How it Works

The good news is, the technology to create all of these things exists, the hardware is relatively ubiquitous for what we describe, and much of the software exists in the open source world, which is growing.  The culture of the open source realm has been well documented and lauded in sources including the Chronicle of Higher Education for its collegial, collaborative creative environments, altruism, craftsman-like pride in products, and resultant benefits to users. These values reflect the missions and values of potential member colleges.

Colleges could capitalize on this “golden age” of free information and the potential for explosive creativity and innovation in a collaboration with research and “sandbox” components, which we’re tentatively calling “The FreeBox” in reference to the long-standing Free Box tradition.

This resource will allow schools and students to: identify needed technologies; test new open source applications; combine applications in unique ways; host lots of content; and own the resource. While there are clearly opportunities now, as the future unfolds, the edge keeps moving. We envision a future when new ideas in technology and its use are being incubated at these (our) schools.  This resource is the key to making that a reality.

Essentially, we are proposing a not-for-profit organization which would start in it’s very earliest phase as a sponsored a project of one of the host schools.  Minimal staffing would include administrative and technical functions – perhaps co-directors, one with a technology focus and one with a focus on developing the organization, who work within a sponsored project of one of the partner colleges while developing funding proposals and relationships with other collaborators. These host colleges might fund or partially fund staff for a two-year period, or would consider the staffer’s time an in-kind contribution towards eventual dues or fees which would be shared by member colleges and organizations.

Phase One

In year one, FreeBox would create and distribute a research instrument to member schools assessing technology needs and interests, possibly using SurveyMonkey or some other no-cost or low-cost utility.

Simultaneously with the distribution of the survey, member schools would collaborate on developing funding for FreeBox. (Note: schools which come into the project at this point would be considered a “FreeBox Founder,” and would join by contributing as a “Founding Member” at a set fee, or contribute in-kind through staff time, with development staff working on collaborative grant funding proposals).

Freebox would then develop a specification for and then develop a technology sandbox. The sandbox would be equipped with the latest hardware, high-speed connectivity, and a bevy of software that the members could share that would likely be hosted in an established datacenter.

This sandbox could be used for members to try out new administrative software as well as for students and faculty to experiment with technology like mash-ups, e-portfolios, immersive learning environments, and streaming media with their own teaching and learning.

Phase Two

The second phase could involve members engaging in further collaborative experiments in using technology in teaching and learning.  Students and faculty could be involved in designing cross-institution projects and experiments to develop new applications of existing technology and possibly new technologies to meet the specific pedagogical needs of the member institutions.  Moreover, the union could provide fellowships and research opportunities for individuals inside and outside of our institutions to further the progressive use of technology in education.  The resulting incubator would provide a stream of projects and experiments that could be the basis for larger grants.

Grantwriting collaborations would continue between partner schools or would be eventually taken on as tasks of FreeBox staff as the organization grows.

Phase Three

During Phase Three, the incubator would be made available to other communities of learners, including primary and secondary schools and like-minded civic organizations around the world. This phase is of most benefit to the Founding Colleges, due to the wide media exposure and recognition of the thought leadership of the host institutions: direct exposure to the mission and benefits of the hosting colleges through strategically placed messaging at the FreeBox site; and the new innovations, connections, research and industry collaborations, ideas, and funding which could be generated by use of the site.

In Conclusion

While some technology collaborations between colleges and open source resources have emerged, they are few and partial in comparison to the vision outlined here. Some notable collaborations include the Sakai Project, an open source Collaborative Learning Environment; the collaboration between Moodle and SecondLife in creating student-friendly online learning environments; the New Media Consortium’s collaborative virtual campus on SecondLife. The Sloan Consortium provides a clearinghouse of information and data gathering about online education. NITLE provides some of the services and initiatives proposed here, but the member institutions are largely very traditional undergraduate colleges. FreeBox would build on the model of these existing collaborations, but would spring from the experiences and values of the member institutions to develop more comprehensive and ultimately more useful collaborations.  

Perhaps most importantly, at least initially, a collaboration like this could conduct research which would clarify the cutting edge technology needs of these smaller, like-minded institutions. A simple, twice-yearly or annual survey to students, staff and faculty that gathers input as to what technologies are in play, and most importantly, what technologies students and faculty would like to either use immediately or learn how to use, would be invaluable to colleges in improving both academic quality and recruitment competitiveness.  

Finally, a single-source technology resource for developing trainings and education in the use of new technologies could be tailored to the needs of the member schools.  This source would be a valued addition to and extension of the technology resources and IT departments of member colleges.

By working together, smaller, student-centered institutions can harness the same technology that larger, traditional institutions are using to enhance teaching and learning.  Moreover, through collaboration, these institutions can combine their unique pedagogies with leading edge technology to create progressive approaches to the use of that technology in teaching and learning.  And, with an organization to facilitate that collaboration, the results can be shared with others and continue to foster interest in these unique institutions and their vital role in higher education.

Chris Riddell contributed to this paper.

This project has emerged from the graduate work of Mary Lin, M. Ed.
Mary Lin dreams of using such a sandbox to create collaborative artwork and art learning opportunities, to create and submit an e-portfolio in completion of her MFA ,and - in fulfillment of a lifelong dream - to serve as the technological support for  a collaborative “New Renaissance” in  education.

Chris Riddell dreams of collaborating with others who share the values democracy and experiential learning to create new uses for information technology.  Both have long been involved with progressive and alternative education and share both Goddard College and Marlboro College as alma maters.

NOTES

1. Visionary enterprises like MIT’s Oxygen forecast and are working towards the day when computing is not only ubiquitous and organically embedded in daily life but virtually free. Oxygen predicts that within a few decades we’ll be surrounded by a living, wireless system of interconnected information flow between ourselves and our devices and our environment. This will serve countless needs of micro-customization and accommodation of our environs to our comfort, needs and even safety.

2. Engineering and computing are converging with the life sciences as artificial intelligence systems and educational models derive validation if not inspiration from ecology, and exotic sounding hybrids like evolutionary psychology, ecospychology and social learning theory. These models are in place at many of the so called experimental and progressive institutions.

RESOURCES

NITLE website, nitle.org
Sakai open source collaborative learning environment website; sakaiproject.org
The Sloan Consortium of Online Learning Environments, Sloanconsortium.org
MIT Oxygen website
Educause’s 2008 Technology Horizon Report (A project of the New Media Consortium)
University Without Walls website
Chronicle of Higher Ed article on ethics of open source
Various Campus Technology articles
    Taking the “A” out of asynchronous, July 2008, by Matt Villano
    MUVE-ing Forward, August 2008, by Matt Villano
    Campus Technology Innovators, August 2008