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Setting: 1st May outside in Toronto

Participants: Sarah Magnan, Larisa Blasic, Myriam Cea, Stephanie Vilayphio, Andre Castro, Femke Snelting, Andy (on-line), Brent Patterson, 
Alexandre Gauthier-Foichat

# Introduction/what happened last year

## Lara
Lecturer at Westminster and have been at the 3 meetings of 80C. The first i attended the meeting was to identify the large amount of educators, who are hacking the system to disseminate free culture.

Hacking the educational system ... mixed bag: free culture, hybrid arts through computers
Since then I was trying to incorporate FLOSS in different educational contexts. It was complicated as colleagues were not interested in supporting.
Technical support / IT departments were blocking the process, through their power over maintenance software/networks.
IT are not doing interested in hearing about FLOSS, and only interested in "professional packages"
misinformation .

Andre: How do the IT-people argue this when their network tools are often FLOSS?

Andy: Many sysadmins are unaware that infrastructural code is FLOSS

Management believes that Apple and proprietary software are professional industry standards. We are still trying to change this mentality
Now developing MA course - almost formally validated; starting September 2016

Lara is currently writing course handbook - need to find ways to collaborate with the school of computer science.
How can Libregraphics community be used as model to forge collaboration with other "departments"

## Sarah
Part of OSP since three years. Did workshops - not as a teacher. As a recent ex-student, tutors were not aware of anything else out there than Adobe.
The wall is still thick.

Stephanie: It is hard to go anywhere else than where your teachers want you to go .

## Stephanie
Teaching at erg in Brussels for 2 year s .
Teaches in open source course called ' Writing Design '
The current format was not so meaningful, therefore decided to change the format, creating more connections.
Theory plus examples for an hour, and then an exercise. Did not like to be "the teacher". Changed the format. Working with mplayer ... some wanted to do complicated things . "When you want to do something dont be afraid to go into it" : F ind software and document it. Failure is an option, but not lacking documentation. Started later and students are a bit confused. Interested in seeing how it would go next year.

Authority position: guide students through things I dont master.

## Myriam Cea
Talking from the context of Media Lab Prado , outside formal education .
Entrance in LibreGraphics happened while studying graphic design ; a workshop .
Did not understand a word (literally) but understood something important was happening :
The terminal is free and this situation moved me, as a curious person.
Libre software is very good way to involve people that are thinking technology is not for them. It is important to have a free mind and stay in this situation.
If we get stuck to the Adobe paradigm ... nothing moves. If we look at it, it is clear that it cannot be like this. The tool itself is the least important
The most important is to learn and be prepared to make things in "this" direction.

Lara: Not just computers, but also philosophy?

Femke: Are you saying the FLOSS is a way to speak about larger issues, not solely related to computers.

Myriam: You become more aware of your position,
Everything we use, most tools and appliances want us to move more quickly, be more effective.
Students don't want to learn, they want work, for that reason the y do not have the possibility to "loose" themselves (serendipity)
We need to find ways to feed other ways, maybe more organic, allow discoveries.

## Andre Castro
Was student at PZI and is now since a year teaching at PZI (2 year Masters) and WdKA (B achelors course ) . FLOSS at PZI is not mandatory anymore but students decided to make install parties anyways .
Asked to develop a 'publishing station' -- workshops traditionally strong on analog techniques, but school want ed to move/include to digital. Asked to be critical an d bring more basic tools, not just Adobe Suite. Trying to work with existing tools, pandoc for example - need commandline but can integrate to proprietary platforms.

Problem: There is no basis -- css, html. difficult to work in a big institution and create an environment. students are curious and are ok to explore
I was asked to bring FLOSS (they might not really understand). Management sees need to renew thinking, other landscape.

Example: create a webmagazine. Proposed a wiki, talk about mark-up, collaborative writing ... receptive but still a lot of barriers. You become the technician .

## Brent Patterson
Just discovered LGM for the first time . Has been t eaching 7 years FLOSS at schools
Once introduced, students get excited - their work gets better.
And once more interesting work is produced with open source tools, colleagues see the value of open source
Industry asks ... Students got experience with both, so they are more adaptable. Teaching them how to learn
Has b een teaching 2002 and working as designer since 90's
and now are introducing linux to teaching environment, now IT is much more open tools and ideas, but just 5 years ago they were against it.
What changed, I think it has been that the tools have proved themselves.
T he biggest problem I run is people saying that you are not training student for specific software, not giving them the right CV.

Femke: how is conversation with the industry organized?

Brent: There is no official conversation.
Adobe is working on dependencies/making you dependent, rather than good software. But instead is creating an ecosystem of dependency.

Brent: My school had to pay 120.000 dollars per year for an upgrade of Adobe cloud for all the stations they have. The IT dept. refused
What I am suggesting is an alternative to this, using open source.

Femke: I s there a way schools can invest part of that money into FLOSS development. If we dont invest in it, as soon as something else cheaper comes along that possibility is lost.

Brent : What strategy would allows get institutions to invest in the development of FLOSS? Shall we have a Libre Graphics Foundation to invest in this?

Femke: If education moves into FLOSS, how  can it do that in a way that helps sustain that community, those tools.

Lara: involvement of IT courses? Can we ponder on some badge system?

Brent: The moment you introduce sponsorship you allow the possibility of corruption.

Femke: I find often frustrating that public schools are not required to use tools that are in line with their mission. Why could in not go through the governments that funds the schools?

Julien: I see Schools "funding" floss by spending time teaching and using it. (Time = money ;) ) The investment a school puts into teaching floss is investment in the propagation, sustainability and perpetuation of that software because students will later tend to use that in their professional context and then increase the possibility of having companies invest in that piece of software. I say this because I always see time as investment. You can pay for a proprietary software that in 3 click of a button does something "nice" or you can spend time learning to use free software to make what you really want do. (It's biased and simplified here, but I hope you get the idea).
In terms of money, there is no cheaper than free (as in beer). So I don't think there will ever be a cheaper solution than free software. As in time, cheaper is quicker. And some proprietary software are good at being "quicker" than floss (depends on what you want to achieve). But this "fastness", which can seem cheaper than floss has a cost.

Andre: What kind of opportunities do we have to fund development, from educational institutions.

Alexandre: It is all very young. Paris University decided to accept FLOSS because they could not afford Adobe.


## Alexandre

A package ... a distribution? More a FLOSS suite for graphical work.
Credibility by packaging. Industry want to sponsor this.
Blender guys are professionals ... can we share forces ..

## Andy (remote on pirate pad)
The Raspberry Pi has been revolutionary in bringing FOSS to my courses. Each student
now gets one at the start of semester, and research journey to discover appropriate tools begins.
The RPi V2 is as powerful as a laptop.
Typical tools suite is GIMP, PureData, GCC, GNU Octave, LaTeX, Audacity
I teach audio engineering, SAE institure London 6+ years.
but it is a mixed arts/technical course

Andy: Part of the philosophy I teach is self sufficiency (non-dependency on IT/ school infrastructure.
We often set up our own ad-hoc networking and use pooled 3G for WAN connectivity.

Andy: Addressing Point 1: Propietary software = training, FOSS = education, I use FOSS to explore principles and wide agendas, later we teach proprietary (Pro-tools, Wwise, Unreal etc) to give skills that improve immediate employability.



# Issues to discuss

How to change perception of proprietary software as industry standard and how to respond to this.

Ask for specific prop packages on their cv

internships and employment, need to be involved in this (there is no organised channel of conversation)

Obsolescence of prop packages, going out of fashion

FLOSS and challenging streamlining learning and production/employability

How to make collaboration between CS departments and design/art departments possible

How students can initiate, change way software/Free Culture is taught; educate their educators

As a student where you'll go when wanting to learn about FLOSS? (Femke:"How do you consider your tools without becoming techno-centric?")

How to teach on/about tools and not become the technician

How do you support students doing their own work when they/you are never going to be expert, to go where nobody has gone before?

Parallel to research in science. You don't know if you are right or wrong, so documenting process is important.

Teaching how to learn yourself. Confidence, fear - against protectiveness

How do you change student/tutor relations to expect not authority/expertness

Answer: more of a conversation and exchange

Critical engagement


(Femke: how do you deal with failure? there is a political and philosophical side to it, but it is also about developing forms of confidence. I dont know if FLOSS incentives this)
FLOSS can be taught in many boring ways
It is a combination of using Free Culture for an approach where you are always learning.

Brent: Students sometimes opposed: "when are we going to do real software", but less and less. Half of courses are mandatory.
The encouragement of taking home free software changes the relationship to the software changes.
They like the ownership.
Putting emphasis on practice. FLOSS is much better for that
FLOSS is effective in discovering, rather than focusing on the product, as is the case of proprietary software
(things are moving around us)



# Final remarks
Involvement of IT department in the development of tools.

Students placed in the position of tutors: Relearn (mix of teachers and students) http://relearn.be/ ; Cookbook from Piet Zwart Media Design http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Cookbook