Free Software at Albany Senior High School

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Summary
This case study outlines Albany Senior High School's approach to openness in education. ASHS is an open source school, running almost entirely on free and open source software. For more specific details about software and hardware in use, refer to Appendix 1.

Introduction
The school was established in 2009 as New Zealand's first state-funded senior high school. It caters for students Years 11-13 and will have around 700 students in 2011.

Context
The school is situated on the North Shore of Auckland New Zealand, and has a long agricultural and rural history and, more recently, an emerging high-tech, industrial and entrepreneurial sector. The school's vision is stated as: At Albany Senior High School to achieve highly and become good citizens.
 * we nurture each other
 * we inspire each other
 * we empower each other

Goals and Requirements
ASHS's goal was to align e-learning with the school's vision. Every decision comes back to nurturing, inspiring and empowering students; high achievement and good citizenship. ASHS recognised that promoting free tools would allow students to install and use software on any device they had access to, and would allow them to learn wherever, whenever they pleased. Another requirement of e-learning in the school was participation in global communities. Promoting software that i) was free for others to use and ii) promoted open standards and interoperability was important in this regard. Using proprietary software means that collaboration is only possible if your collaborators have the same proprietary software.



Rationale for free software adoption/migration
ASHS wants to create a school and a community where everyone has access to a wide range of powerful tools on every computer at all times. Using proprietary software at school means that either i) students can only work on their learning at school (and not for the other 18 hours a day) or ii) only some people can afford to carry on learning at home. ASHS wants students to be able to compose music, create 3D models, edit video, create databases, record podcasts and do all of the things possible in a digital world without having to pay for the privilege of expressing themselves creatively. Almost all of the tools listed below can be installed on any computer, as often as needed, free of charge. In short: ASHS is an open source school as this approach is the best way to achieve their vision: "We nurture each other; we inspire each other; we empower each other to achieve highly and become good citizens."

Implementation
The school systems were designed from the ground up.

''This section will vary according to the nature of the case study. For some, a "Design" section might be appropriate along with coding, testing and/or systems integration activities ("Implementation"). For others, it might be all about "Deployment", etc. The following suggest some aspects to consider: Planning (to meet specific software-related needs), Savings, etc. What did it take? What went well? What challenges? Any stories of pupils' activities?'' ?


 * Planning: ASHS was in the lucky position of starting the school from scratch. The information systems were built from the ground up and did not have to migrate from locked in, proprietary systems. The planning phase of the project focused on sustainability, usability and interoperability to ensure that the system was easy to maintain and easy to extend as new tools were developed and discovered.
 * Google docs was chosen for collaborative document management on account of the external host (Google) and other features/ advantages described on Google's introductory video "Google Docs in plain english".
 * Moodle is the course management system of choice on account of its wide range of powerful tools, the scale of the support community, alignment with the school's values (openness, transparency and equality), its attributes and features which support the school's aims :
 * web-based and accessible via any connected computer
 * engaging, interactive, multimedia learning activity modules
 * easy-to-use, intuitive user interface
 * focus on quality, co-constructive teaching and learning
 * peer production model.
 * Savings: the savings financially are estimated to be in the order of six figures annually. The actual dollar amount is difficult to estimate, because most schools (with a proprietary mind-set) simply don't offer the breadth and depth of software on account of cost. For instance, very few schools would offer a high-end 3D modelling package like Maya because the cost to them is US$3000 per licence. ASHS is able to offer Blender 3D on any computer at no cost to the school or student.
 * Infrastructure: ASHS has a fibre optic connection to the internet at 100mpbs which means remote hosting most of their core environments is feasible. This, and the fact that the systems used promote open standards and interoperability, means ASHS can shop around for service provision. If another company offers a better deal, ASHS can quickly migrate without having to purchase different hardware.
 * Training: very little user training has been required because staff find the software reasonably intuitive. The fact that most of the open source applications in use at the school have large communities behind them means that web-based support material is plentiful and staff members are often able to help each other solve common problems.
 * Software: ASHS makes available any libre software it can find that has utility in the school including office productivity software, educational and administrative. Appendix 1: Free Software Used at Albany Senior High School (embedded below) outlines the current collection.
 * Evaluation:
 * Choosing to embrace an open philosophy has proved more beneficial than originally expected. The quality of the available educational software is extremely high.
 * Further metrics around the effectiveness of the school's approach are expected in the coming years as research is completed, including a PhD being conducted at Waikato University.

Current status
The current status is: extremely successful!!!!

Future prospects?
Albany Senior High School is committed to the values associated with free software and open education. The school intends to become more involved and more pro-active in contributing to various communities. Specifically, the following are on their agenda.


 * Further develop the suite of free software tools available for students, including things like Big Blue Button.
 * Further develop collaboration with other schools: Moodle hubs, Koha consortium, Mahara e-portfolios, etc..
 * Further develop the teaching and learning materials available in the open education world.

Lessons Learned
Be clear on your vision before you begin, because technology should be a servant of that vision. Openness, sharing, fairness and equity are crucial to the school vision, and free software is the perfect technological enactment of this vision.

Conclusions
Albany Senior High School values openness, transparency and collaboration in learning, which makes OER and free software a perfect fit. The school has embraced the spirit and culture of sharing as demonstrated by its active involvement in related communities of practice (e.g. Moodle hubs, Koha consortium, Mahara e-portfolios).

With no legacy non-free systems, the implementation has been fairly straightforward consisting primarily of installing well supported free software and registering for externally hosted facilities. Training and support requirements have been minimal on account of strong existing free software and OER communities.

The learners have also impressed by developing educational tools for themselves and making them available to wider communities of learners.

ASHS is at the forefront of open education and free software in schools. Its embracing of the associated values, use of web 2.0 social software to support collaboration and sharing (among learners, staff, parents and other schools, etc.) and active participation in the free/open education in New Zealand is set to inspire many other schools to follow suit.

Appendices

 * Free Software Used at Albany Senior High School (embedded above under Software).

Resources

 * Free/libre and Open Source Software at ASHS
 * Students open to new source of knowledge
 * Welcome to our machines - New Zealand Education Gazette (25 May 2009)
 * “Invest in people not software licences” Interface Magazine (Feb 2010)
 * “NZ School ditches Microsoft and goes totally open source” CIO Magazine (25 Jan 2010)
 * “School's open” PC World (August 2009)
 * “Impact Learning” New Zealand Education Gazette (31 May 2010)
 * “Students open to new source of knowledge” NZ Herald (21 Aug 2009)
 * “Auckland: where a FOSS school is a reality” IT Wire (19 Jan 2010)

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Mark Osborne and other contributors to the Albany Senior High School resources on WikiEducator which were used extensively for this case study. Kim Tucker repackaged materials on WikiEducator to compose this case study. Thanks to Wayne Mackintosh for introducing the parties and suggesting this as one of the candidate case studies for the Free Technology Academy.

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