Posts Tagged ‘education’

Importance of women values in FLOSS

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Time has gone since Open World Forum 2010, Paris, but this topic is on stage again. A recent paper appeared in Cepis Upgrade October 2010 issue, entitled “Information Technologies: A Profession for Men?” says: “women are currently under-represented in the technical areas of the IT”. Nothwithstanding they also say: “there is no reason why a profession should have to be balanced in gender terms”, their effort is in “provide the solutions, if any exists, to prevent female talent from being lost to a discipline and a profession which is destined to play a vital role in the progress of our society”.

I’ve many reasons to support the increase of female presence in IT, mainly to help IT to change its image and to foster more comprehensive models that could be able to engage a holistic vision and attract more talents and attitudes. This applies much more to the FLOSS area, where the masculine approach appears to be dominant.

[It’s not a new topic for me. See my previous post about Why women matter in FLOSS].

Now it’s time to offer you the text supporting my speech at the conclusion of the Diversity Summit Think Tank: Why women matter?

You can download the presentation here.

You can find also a post-conference video presenting a round table with me and Margarita Manterola, Debian-Women activist, here.

THE PRESENTATION

A last minute suggestions

The day before the Diversity Summit I participated in the Open Source Think Tank Paris.

During a conversation I grabbed this sentence: “If you have to promote open source, you must tell stories to potential adopters and you must put emotion into your stories”.

As a consequence, I decided to open my talk with this anecdote, asking: “OSS market is dominated by men. Now my question is: are men really able to put emotion into their stories?”

Would you like to know the conclusion of this story? Have a look here! (and now you can see Noiry Shirley’s video presentation here: Saving Life with Open Source).

Introduction

I should introduce myself and my particular interest in this topic. I’m an IT manager at Engineering Group in Italy and in my about 30-year career I’ve led many development teams. In the 80’s, developing in cobol for mainframe, my project teams were about 50-50 percent (male-female). The rate started to decrease approaching java development and distributed computers. Now, I am leading a FLOSS initiative – SpagoWorld – including four projects – the best known is SpagoBI – and many other initiatives. I’m currently leading a team of 43 people, 11 of which are women (9 playing a technical role). I think that nowadays this is a good feminine percentage (25%). Is it good enough?

Figures

This is not a scientific analysis. Nevertheless, any presentation on this topic starts with some figures. Here you can find my figures about the IT sector in the European Union and in FLOSS, where I add some figures about the presence of women in my company and my FLOSS projects (the majority of my professional life).

An analysis, published in March 2010, focusing on women in ICT in the European Union is in Women and ICT Status Report 2009. It publishes many data, referring to 2006 or latest 2007, showing “the fact that women do not show interest for an academic or a professional career in the ICT sector”.

The report focuses on three main aspects: women in ICT employment, women in decision making positions and gender pay gap.

Employment: The 2008 employment rate for women in the EU was just over 59%. Around 25% of the total number of people employed worked in the High-tech Knowledge Intensive Services and only 2,4% of those (160.000) were women. (in my company women employed in 2010 were 2100 out of 6382 – 33%, with a lowering rate of 29% referring just to technicians).

Decision making: looking at the business sector globally, there are only 13 women in the 500 top listed companies by Fortune – only one might be considered to be working in a technical field. Looking at the EU top companies, the rate of women in boards is 8,5% (in my company one women sits on the corporate  board out of 11 with a 9% rate).

Pay gap: in EU female technicians and associate professionals earn 26% less in the private sector and 27% less in the public sector.

I know that these figures may not be significant; they just confirm a trend of a smaller presence of women in the ICT sector, compared with men.

More interesting data comes from FLOSS communities.

The FLOSSPOLS analysis Gender: Integrated Report of Findings, published in March 2006, reported that just about 1,5% of FLOSS community members were women, compared with 28% in proprietary software.

The presence of women in FLOSS leading communities in 2010 was as follows:

  • OW2 Consortium: 0,5% in Board of Directors (1 out of 19) and 3,3% in Management Office (2 out of 6)
  • Eclipse Foundation: 0% in Board of Directors (0 out of 20) and 3,2% (7 out of 22) in Staff;
  • Apache Foundation: 0,3% in Officiers (3 out of 89);
  • Linux Foundation: 8,3% (1 out of 12) in Board of Directors and 25% (4 out of 16) in Staff.

These numbers confirm women’s small participation in technical and board decisions; their presence increases in management activities, mainly referring to marketing, communication, administrative and IP processes.

Referring to “my open source projects”, figures are a little more encouraging: 30% (9 out of 30) in SpagoWorld team and 41% (5 out of 12) in SpagoBI team (now this number raised to 46%, adding one more woman: the parity – 50% – is in the radar soon).

A last interesting example is the dreamwidth project. Looking at their Diversity Statement, I became curious to know the team composition. Not surprisingly, women were 82% (14 out of 17)!

Stereotypes

In 2007, a Gartner research (find out more here) reported an independent research of Catalyst, 2005, containing some stereotypically feminine and masculine traits. Reported feminine traits were: supporting, rewarding, mentoring, networking, consulting, team building, inspiring; while masculine traits were problem solving, influencing upward, delegating.

Are these traits (or differences) true or false?

If you think they are true, look at what in 2005 the American Psychological Association published in one of its studies:

  • Men and women are basically alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability and leadership. The similarities are greater than the differences
  • Males and females from childhood to adulthood are more alike than different on most psychological variables
  • Gender differences seem to depend on the context in which they are measured.

And, finally, “children suffer the consequence of exaggerated claims of gender differences”. (For example, the widespread belief that boys are better than girls in math. However, according to her meta-analysis, boys and girls perform equally well in math until high school, at which point boys do gain a small advantage. That may not reflect biology as much as social expectations, many psychologists believe. For example, the original Teen Talk Barbie ™, before she was pulled from the market after consumers’ protest, said, “Math class is tough.”)

My poll: feminine traits

I’m not in favour of stereotypes, even if I think they could be a start-point for reasoning (I usual need a schema to support my reasons and now I’m going to use these stereotypes as a means to drive our reflections in an open way).

The previous ones are general stereotypes. But what do women really think?

I’ve decided to open a poll of women of my corporate team. It has no statistical validity at all (6 respondents out of 12), but could be effective to nurture the discussion.

They suggested that specific feminine traits are:

  • the ability to operate in multi-tasking
  • general focus on co-operation toward a collective result
  • in competitive environments, the attitude for an healthy (unextreme) competition
  • a general attitude for embracing a holistic view
  • the attitude toward self-analysis, i.e.: introspection about their own results
  • attitude for perseverance and patience
  • courage and resoluteness
  • the capability to adapt themselves and to change targets accepting the change (a characteristic particularly underlined by working mothers)
  • a particular focus on solving a problem today, instead of laying a foundation for an exchange tomorrow: men are more interested in results and power, women in the realization of their projects
  • the ability to see, listen and build relationships and in inspiring collaboration
  • the capability to fulfil an objective and achieve a result also beyond job boundaries.

(It’s interesting to point out that, during the presentation, someone told me that many of these suggestions came from men when responding at the OWF Gender Diversity Survey).

I can just add that some of these attitudes don’t foster affirmation and visibility. As a consequence, they are in opposition to the “classic” FLOSS meritocratic model (very suitable for men’s usual attitude).

Sentiment and rationality

What a tricky title for this chapter. An Italian philosopher, Umberto Galimberti, dealing with a different context, outlines different feminine and masculine approaches to sentiment and rationality.

Working out with his words, we can think over the following suggestions.

Femininity gathers the opposite that the thinking way of man divides. In senti-ment (the conscious subjective experience of emotions), a mental activity keeps together (from syn, a greek term) the opposite. Men enter that sentimental system only at intervals.

In other words: men and women use rationality and sentiment in a different way.

This difference must find the right room and opportunities in order to allow the masculine rationality – base of our cultural heritage – face its opposite: the feminine vision of the world, which has no confidence with clear boundary lines.

What’s the target?

Following a sole technological vision, men will maintain the leadership over time. Following a cognitive vision, women over-perform due to their holistic, systemic and relational system.

The questions we must answer are:

  • is Information Technology a particular context separated by the digital world, or is it included in a cognitive ecosystem?
  • are industries for-profit organizations or collective cognitive enterprises?
  • is FLOSS a technological activity (and a business activity, especially in the last years), or is it a way to actively participate in an informed way to a cognitive ecology?

A correct answer to these questions is crucial.

A clear target is crucial to success! All actors involved in this debate (and external audience too) must be aware of it!

Why women matter

In articles and researchers you can find many reasons supporting the request for a greater presence of women in the IT sector. They usually follow a pragmatic point of view, based on the following assumptions:

  • women influence or control upward 80% of consumers spending decisions;
  • in a world dominated by relationships, collective decision making and consumer spending, women are innately better suited than me.

In practice, women are potentially better suited for supporting commercial businesses and promotion than men. It’s becoming a more and more important point for FLOSS projects and solutions.

It’s probably true, but it’s not my point.

I’d like to look at FLOSS from a non-technological point of view, focusing on the nature of communities. A real community relationship refers to a relationship between lovers, where a lover (man or women) reflects himself (his unknown inner desires) in the other one. A community can stably and constantly grow only if its members love it. I.e.: they are aware of the basic emotional/cognitive relations existing among single individuals or in a group. (For a better understanding of my thoughts, have a look at Foundation of community relationships in FLOSS).

Participation, contributions, trustworthy relations and empathy are crucial.

I think that feminine traits matter a lot with team and community building and collaborative development.

Not only more women

The focus is not probably the gender diversity. Neither it deals with the different gender behavioural traits. Differences are not the issue. However, if they exist, they are not deficiencies, but potential values and opportunities to learn (e.g.: even people who are not used to listening to others may improve their listening skills if they live close to people who are willing to listen to others).

FLOSS communities and project teams need peer-support, mentoring, rewarding, networking, team-building, solidarity, empathy, inclusion, problem solving … and more. Do these traits belong to women exclusively? No, but:

we need more feminine values in people.

In other words, we need a wide mix and match of different behavioural traits in people, increasing the ones dealing with team building and co-operation and decreasing the importance of competition and self-promotion. More collaboration and less competition could be the new formula to live in the new knowledge society.

We must revise the FLOSS model, its values and practical rules; once more it could be the leading experimental model.

FLOSS was founded by men. We need more women to revise it!

Main barriers

If we agree that we need more women in IT and in FLOSS, we must understand which barriers don’t allow women to enter these fields, in order to find a way to involve them and to foster different attitudes in people.

You can find many remarks in literature; I’ll summarize the main ones.

With reference to the IT sector in general:

  • IT is perceived as a “boy thing”: girls tend to eliminate consideration of a job in IT in early stages
  • Particularly in IT the everyday communication language is masculine and not inclusive
  • Sexual stereotypes are still alive
  • IT is one of the most competitive industries
  • The syndrome of self-imposed overtime (presenteeism in workplace), due to the seductive and exciting nature of working in technology
  • The imbalance of power in IT industry drives women away
  • Men are more comfortable with men when promoting someone
  • A lack of commitment to involve more women exists both in men and women.

With reference to FLOSS:

  • It’s basically a technological activity
  • It tends to increase the competition in the ICT sector
  • Its meritocratic model rewards technological and business results
  • It’s the hackers’ world; clever men don’t waste their time to teach to entrants
  • Its model is open within its close boundaries
  • A lack of commitment to involve more women exists in IT boards and communities.

(Consider the previous as suggestions, not scientific results. They are not traits belonging just to males. E.g.: this doesn’t mean that technological and business results are suitable just for men. This means that over-esteemed characteristics, typical of the current masculine environment, could be a barrier to entrance for women if we don’t envisage a change in our perspective).

What could help? Recommendations

To be pro-active, it’s time to find out some recommendations in order to foster a change in the future perspective. We can address three domains:

Education

  • Change the current image of the IT word (too much technological)
  • Nurture real values in new generations, promoting a more comprehensive vision of the IT
  • Any initiative to attract more girls, giving them the opportunity to prove their talent, is welcome.

IT industry

  • Improve the number of women at all levels, also as a means to review corporate values and organization
  • Adopt new organizational models focusing on clear values and using practices like: look at how people achieve their results instead of at the results themselves; plan for free time for employees, including mothers; promote the father parental leave, etc.
  • Bridge (or reduce, at least) decisional and pay gaps, when they exist
  • Commit all actors involved (not only decisional boards) to do it.

FLOSS communities

  • Attract more women to FLOSS communities and projects
  • Commit boards to include women
  • Review the rewarding and governance models
  • Focus on real values: remember that FLOSS is a part of the digital cognitive ecosystem.

The perspective

In conclusion, it’s time to underline the general perspective once more.

Our actions are often part of a very restricted vision of the world; this doesn’t allow us to understand the world itself and to find the real meaning of our being.

We must enter others’ world, in order to compare stories, to learn to live in new places, to go along unknown paths, to see beyond our horizon.

It’s all about FLOSS in an ecological (non-technological) vision!

Diversity matters with ecology. The mix of different genders, and as I assumed above, of different gender traits (no matter if belonging to men or women), fosters the growth of a real ecology of value. It’s about inclusion, addition, redundancy sometimes, rather than lack of resources.

It’s all about women and men together!

If all the involved actors don’t share this vision, any effort is useless.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS AND ADJOURNMENT

Last Adjournment

Three months and a half have gone since Open World Forum.

I entered this tricky topic gathering both consensus and opposition. The main criticism is about the affirmation of differences between men and women, my masculine stereotypes, the not requested effort to attract more women in IT/FLOSS field, because the opportunity already exists for everybody.

I accepted to deal with this topic with a humble approach, just rationalizing my way of being and describing my personal thoughts and actions in my daily working environment. I hope not to hurt anyone’s feelings; please accept (or reject) this contribution.

Anyway, in order to be coherent with my premises and recommendations, I’m recruiting more women in my FLOSS teams nowadays.

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Education to foster the Open Source adoption

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Time ago, I wrote something about the need for education in Computer Science and Free Open Source Software in this blog.

Now, I’m going to chair a panel about this topic at fOSSa 2010, at the end of an interesting education track open by a lightning talk by Roberto Di Cosmo.

In particular, the education track will deal with the role of academia in education, focusing on three main aspects: education of the teachers, education of all the university students, specific education of IT students teaching how to work in an environment that is more and more dominated by Free Open Source Software.

Many talks, by Gilles Dowek, Ralf Treinen, Jesus Barahona, Wouter Tebbens, Judith Benzakki, Albert Cohen and Alexandre Lefebvre will introduce a final debate.

My aim is to chair it, both as a traditional panel, asking some questions to any of the above-mentioned speakers, and partly as an unconference panel, involving as many people of the audience as possible. I think that asking questions in advance is a good means to prepare an interesting debate that will rise its end at the conference, and you can do it right now.

Personally, I want to introduce some questions of mine asking for your feedback. Do you like it? Would you like to add anything else? Are they really interesting? Help me in finding the right question for speakers and attendees. I’d like not to have an auto-referential panel, but a place to gather new ideas and proposals to be brought to people that have a role in education at different levels to foster the right way of FOSS promotion.

Here are some questions.

to IT students

Which are the FOSS skills you need more? Technological ones, legal ones, community development, collaborative project management, others?

to students and professors

Which is the most useful subject to be taught at universities? FOSS technologies per-se? How to contribute in FOSS development? FOSS founding values? All of them?

Do you think the previous skills are specific only of a FOSS training course or a master, or should they be inserted into the traditional training program of IT courses?

to enterprises

What are your expectations about FOSS skills in hiring a student coming out from university? Do you care about IT skills only, or do you think that knowledge of FOSS specific aspects (legal, community development, collaboration, etc.) is valuable? Is it just valuable or crucial?

to everybody

How much the knowledge of FOSS by a group of skilled people (students, professors, entrepreneurs) must be supported by knowledge of FOSS values in the broader society? What should we practically do in order to support this dissemination?

I’ll stop here. Please comment, add more, where you like: on fOSSa forum, fOSSa linkedin group, my linkedin profile and, why not, on this blog!

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Gender diversity: why women matter in FLOSS

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

The agenda of the upcoming Open World Forum, Paris includes a Diversity Summit: Why women matter? The assumption is that “FLOSS still faces gender inequality, to an even greater extent than the wider IT industry which itself is seen as an area where discrimination is widespread.”

About the same topic, Free Software Foundation hosts a caucus about Women in Free Software; they recently published their initial findings and recommendations.

In 2007, Gartner released a research on the wider general topic “Women and men in IT: breaking through sexual stereotypes”, and hosted a debate in a Gartner summit.

I am particularly interested in this topic, mainly because I’m an IT manager and in my about 30-year career I’ve led many development teams. In the 80’s, developing in cobol for mainframe, my project teams were about 50-50 percent (male-female). The rate started to decrease approaching java development and distributed computers. Now, I am leading a team of 43 people, 11 of which are women (9 playing a technical role). I think that nowadays this is a good feminine percentage (25%), but it’s not enough!

So, I will enter the “gender diversity debate” with a particular focus on FLOSS and ecology of value. I’m neither a sociologist nor a psychologist or anthropologist and my contribution is not the result of a scientific research. I just want to share with you my experience and my thoughts about this evergreen topic.

Gender diversity in social choices and opportunities

Psychologists do not universally agree on many gender differences. In 2005, the American Psychological Association published a study pointing out that “one’s sex has little or no bearing on personality, cognition and leadership”. In a word “the similarities are greater than the differences”.

In my perception – which is a shared perception, I guess – differences exist in gender behavioural traits. For example: women understand multiple views and listen to others’ opinion better than men do. You can agree or not, but this is not the point.

The ASA study says that “differences are not deficiencies”.

I think that every difference is a potential value, a new resource for the ecology where we live. Moreover, different attitudes are opportunities for learning. Even people who are not used to listening to others may improve their listening skills if they live close to people who are willing to listen to others (even in boring situations). That’s why it’s important to have a mix of different behavioural traits in organizations, at a peer level. To this end, women’s presence may help (we must just provide them with the right environment for peer relationships).

Women’s role in IT industry

There is a widespread consensus that the number of women working in the IT field is continuously decreasing. In 2007, Gartner reported that the percentage of women in the IT workforce had dropped to around 25%, characterised by a steady decrease. “According to the Information Technology Association of America, the number of women in IT declined 20% between 1996 and 2004, dropping from 41% in 1996, to 32.4% in 2004. Furthermore, there was no noticeable progress in the number of women in professional or management ranks in organizations”.

Fewer women are going to elect computer science programs at schools and universities. In my personal experience (some years ago I was an Adjunct Professor for open source at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science degree, University of Padua, Italy), in 2008 just 2 girls attended the final course of computer science, whose class was made up of about 30 students (about 6%). In my FLOSS training course, 2 women went to final examinations, among 15 students (13% – a little success for FLOSS this time!).

Women’s role in OSS communities

FLOSS is just a piece of the IT industry inheriting the same characteristics. I am currently participating in two of the most important FLOSS communities in the world: OW2 Consortium and Eclipse Foundation. Look at their staff: in OW2 management office women are involved in marketing/coordination roles, in Eclipse Foundation staff you can find women working in the IP management, marketing, support and administration fields. Now, look at the Board of Directors: in OW2 BoD 18 men, 1 woman; in Eclipse Foundation BoD 20 men, no woman. Do you think this is a problem of these communities? I don’t think so. They are real communities living in the real IT world! Once more: IT lies in the real world and FLOSS is part of the IT domain.

What’s the barrier for women in IT?

In some cases, the IT profession is seen as “a boy thing” for computer nerds and geeks (i.e.: male). As a consequence, girls tend to eliminate any consideration of jobs in the IT field in their early stages, right from the beginning of their scholastic path.

Then, the language used in this field is masculine and not inclusive (mainly, excluding women traits). Just one example: look at the usual “war/battle” metaphor and at sexual hints at work.

Moreover, the imbalance of power in the IT industry (reflecting the imbalance of power in the human society) drives women away.

And men are more comfortable with men, and they’re the ones who pick who gets promoted.

Why women matter in the IT industry

In 2007, the above mentioned Gartner research reported some new perspectives that would be critical to success in the challenges of the 21st century business environments. The first one was “consumer centricity or filling the consumers’ wants and needs for usability, convenience, productivity and social connectivity”. Other assumptions were: “women, on average, are better than men at building the trust and collaboration that underline relationships” and “ in a world dominated by relationships, communities, collective decision making and consumer spending, women are innately better-suited than men” while “women influence or control upward of 80% of consumer spending decisions; worldwide, men design upward of 90% of IT products/services”.

Furthermore, Gartner reported an independent research of Catalyst, containing some stereotypically feminine and masculine traits. Reported feminine traits were: supporting, rewarding, mentoring, networking, consulting, team building, inspiring; while masculine traits were problem solving, influencing upward, delegating (wohw!!; women win 7 to 3!).

A final consideration was that “in general, women score better on social skills and understanding other’s views, while the perception of women as being less effective in problem solving will tend to limit their opportunity to take on leadership roles”.

I think that some of them are stereotypes and that there is no general consensus over the above assumption. Each man and woman must be treated and assessed individually, since there is a variety of personalities. But, generalizations can be made with some validity. Most of them make sense.

Why women matter in FLOSS

Looking at the final findings of the Gartner research, we can find a lot of potential women involvement in FLOSS projects activities focusing on building trust relationships between providers and users/customers, market evaluation, promotion.

Gartner mainly focuses on the IT commercial market, which also includes the OSS commercial market. But I’d like to focus myself on IT development and community building now. It deals much more with FLOSS.

In my recent post about Foundation of community relationships in FLOSS, I argued that “a community can stably and constantly grow only if its members are aware of the basic emotional/cognitive relations existing among single individuals or in a group, instead of considering the mere rational element and rough scope. In other words, participating in a community means “loving” it, where the word “love” has to be referred to this specific context. In relation to this, it is important to actively participate in the community, to contribute to its growth and to create trustworthy relations within the community itself and among its members, especially when they are different in nature and dimension”.

I think that the Gartner’s referred feminine traits matter with team and community building a lot. They are also key features in software development.

Gender diversity: a different perspective

How could we solve the issue of gender diversity in organizations? Must we increase the number of women in FLOSS communities and companies (and in IT companies in general)? Must we open the doors to them for leading roles in organizations? Should we create women quotas? We surely cannot change the whole game! But we can make some reflections on this topic.

Is gender diversity the issue? Or does it deal with the different gender behavioural traits?

Going back to stereotypes (are they really stereotypes?), organizations and teams need more feminine attitudes like peer-support, rewarding, mentoring, networking, team building (I can also add solidarity, empathy, inclusion, and … problem solving, looking at the ability of women to solve many and parallel processes in their life, especially when they start to manage a family).

Do these behavioural traits belong to women exclusively?

I know some men who are more feminine than women, looking at these traits (and women with a very masculine attitude, especially the few who get a leading role!)

I think that the key is not to have more women in IT (it helps, obviously), but to foster a spread adoption of the above mentioned traits in people in order to have a wide mix and match of different behavioural traits, increasing the ones dealing with team building and participation and decreasing the importance of competition at work.

More collaboration and less competition could be the new formula to live in the new knowledge society. Once more, FLOSS could provide the leading experimental model.

Why does it matter with ecology of value?

This blog section is about ecology of value. Why gender diversity matters? Because diversity matters with ecology. The mix of different genders, and as I assumed above, of different gender traits (no matter if belonging to men or women), fosters the growth of a real ecology of value. It’s about inclusion, addition, redundancy sometimes, rather than lack of resources.

My personal solution

In conclusion, how can I improve the presence of women (and of women behavioural traits) in the IT domain and in FLOSS communities in my daily work? I don’t have any general solution but, as part of the recruitment team of my organization (SpagoWorld initiative by Engineering Group) I adopt the following rules.

1)      I receive very few candidacies by women compared to men. Then, every women sending a curriculum vitae for a technical recruitment gets an answer and mostly a recruitment interview. Then, the process is the same for women and men. Do you think it’s about quotas for women? No, it’s about giving them a chance.

I work to foster the collaborative behavioural traits, in men and women, at home, at work, in speeches, in FLOSS communities. We are living in a world getting more and more commercial, where everything is monetized and people are becoming consumers. We must balance these attitudes with something else. Education is a key to the success in order to nurture different behavioural traits in new generations.

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The need for education in Computer Science and Free Open Source Software

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Investing money in training and research activities is generally considered crucial in this period of crisis and incertitude. The role of training on Information Technology issues since primary education, plays a central role, as it is an important element of the knowledge society as well as the starting point of the new outcomes like “internet of the future”. This is essential to build a liveable future, avoiding plugging the current crisis with old methods, established by a ruling class which hasn’t gone with the times, conforming our political and economic models to the current situation.

Moreover, in the future the scene will be dominated by the digital natives, who are used to technology. They are not interested in the technology itself but in the services that technology can offer. At this rate, we will soon have to face a generation of consumers, also in the technological domain. In relation to this, school plays a crucial role. Students’ education should include those subjects that help them understand the basis of life. For example, biology allows students to understand how flowers open and Computer Science teaches how to turn over the pages of an iPAD… This is part of the current new life!

At this point, I think we should consider the opportunity to:

  • Introducing Computer Science into the whole course of studies, from primary school to university
  • Identifying teaching methods suitable for new generation (Generation Y or Generation Z or whatever next generation …) Probably we must care about not introducing barriers and at the same time teach them the fundamentals of human behaviour, of emotional and cognitive relations and of sciences.

Therefore, it’s particularly important that we start teaching Computer Science to students. I think that do to this it’s normal to adopt Free Open Source Software, not only because it’s low cost, but mainly because it’s available.

Accordingly, teaching how to use this type of software to digital natives would be nonsense.

It mainly offers us the opportunity to teach them the values of Free Open Source Software, which are useful to live in the knowledge society too. I am referring to the ability to use, share, participate and conceive.

At this point, we have to consider the following aspects:

  • The open model, to be used at school, concerning teachers, students, documentation and artefacts, the availability and exchange of information;
  • Different approaches for teachers and for the various categories of students, during the whole education path;
  • Last but not least, the expectations of industry concerning students’ skills.

If we reach this goal, we will contribute to educate next technology consumers, making them aware of how technologies are built, getting them ready to choose between just using and contributing/developing new technologies, between using a proprietary and open source approach or finding out new ones.

In other words, we must have the opportunity to help the education reach its final goal also in the Computer Science domain: make citizens face life being well aware of the reality surrounding them.

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Teaching Open Source

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Teaching Open SourceDo you think it’s possible to teach Open Source? It seems so …
Recently I’ve discovered the Teaching Open Source initiative which aims to teach next generations of software developers, analysts, system admin, etc. the ability to work eficently within Open Source communities.

The concept of “Open Source in Education is extremely unclear”, as stated in the site, and because of that, there they present clear declaration of intents that marks the boundaries of the scope of the initiative:

Teaching students how to contribute to and work within an Open Source project, collaborating with other community members on development, support, testing, documentation, bugfixing, and other collective tasks. This is teaching the “Open” in Open Source, and is the intended meaning of the phrase “Teaching Open Source”.

I really like that vision!

The whole initiative is structured in different projects and makes available, through the site, a set of informative and collaborative tools like blog, wiki, mailing list, an IRC channel, conference calls that allow anyone to contribute to the growth and development of projects themselves.
One of these projects is an in progress book, the Textbook Project, which I started reading pushed by a lot of curiosity. Starting from the early chapters, what struck me was the very practical approach, that can sound like: Students! Look for an open source project that attract you and get into it. This way you can touch with your hands how an open source project works, you can give your time and passion and have back a gain in terms of experience that you will be able to spend wherever you want.

I’ll keep an eye on it and report my comments on that initiative … meanwhile I hope it could be possible to start a discussion on education and maybe how it can produce (high) quality results … let me know what you think.

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