My name is Miriam, I'm a program manager at the Free Software Foundation at the AFSF.
People often ask us how can we bring free software to schools, free software in education.
One of the ways to do that is to go down to schools, high schools, other schools, universities,
and just present what free software is all about to the students and to the teachers.
This is what I want to present today is some teaching materials that we at the AFSF provide you with to get you started.
If you want to do that, go to the school in your area and present free software.
And also a platform where you can upload your own teaching materials to share them with others.
Before I get on to detail with that, I want to present real quick what the Free Software Foundation is, probably a lot of you already know it,
but it always helps to summarize it.
We are non-profit organization and we are almost exclusively powered by individual associate members and donors like you.
Our mission is to promote computer, user freedom, so you have freedom as a user, and our website is FSF.org.
And this year we are turning 40.
And in celebration of that, we have a lot of exciting events going on all over the year 2025.
And if you want to check them out, then go to FSF.org slash FSF 40, and you will see what's on there.
What does FSF do?
We advocate for your rights as a computer user with different campaigns.
One example is the Freedom Letter campaign that has to get people started with Free Software, and then climb up the letter step by step.
And we also have a fight to repair campaign, which is about where we explain why software is Free Software is very important to the right to repair.
The reason is that several devices these days run with software on them, so if you are able to only repair the hardware but can't repair the software,
that often doesn't fix the problems that we at FSF advocate for you being able to modify the software and adapt it and verify fix it.
Then we have an upgrade from Windows campaign, which is reasonably getting more attraction again, because Windows is Microsoft is dropping the Windows 10 support.
So this is throwing attention to that, and we try to convince people to help add us to upgrade to a new Linux system and Free Software.
We have a defective by a design campaign, which is against digital restrictions management, and many, many more campaigns just go to our website and you'll find out.
And our core work is what people know as for advocate for user freedom and to sponsor the new project to maintain the Free Software definitions or what people know as the four freedoms and to publish the new general public license.
That is widely known and used.
But now on topic, I'm here to talk about Free Software teaching materials, I want to start with our videos.
We have a lot of videos on our peer tube channel, which is linked to here, and you can use almost all of them for universities and schools.
Especially for high schools, they're a good way to start a presentation if you're doing classroom visits somewhere.
They're a good way to get into conversation with people, with the students, and they usually like them to have something visualized.
Here on the left hand side in upper left corner, you see our fight to repair video, which is about to repair and why Free Software and software freedom is so important for the right to repair.
Then on the upper right corner, you see our university of customs heroes video, which is about Free Software in education and why it's so important.
And it makes the case at the university where management is trying to implement proprietary restrictive software and then the students stand up for their rights and say they want to.
I want to have Free Software, and that's what's right there for freedom, especially in education.
And on the right hand side, in the lower corner, you have the user liberation video, which is about what Free Software is about and basically a basic simple explanation of software freedom.
Also very handy to use, and then on the last video, here is the put yourself in command interaction to the command line, that's a series of tutorials we are starting.
That is following our book introduction to the command line at the FSF is publishing and it's very short simple videos explaining how you can interact with the command line in this case here how to open the terminals of very basic stuff you need to know.
And this is also something that can be used in workshops at schools.
We also have questionnaires that we provide and that you can download and adapt to your needs and adapt to the lesson you want to give.
It is a thing we like to start a lesson with or give it to people in advance of a classroom visit so that they can reflect on what software freedom means for them because many students don't know a lot about software freedom but they already know what they want.
So we ask questions like, how strongly do you agree or disagree to the following statements?
I would like to be able to copy software and run it on any device I wish.
I would like to be able to study the software I use and find out how it works.
I would like to be able to modify software to adapt it to my needs.
And that's basically about the four freedoms and before we explain what the four freedoms are we ask students how do you feel about that what is important for you in your daily life.
Other questions are have you ever shared a book with a friend or have you ever shared an ebook with your family members.
Have you ever given that a video game or music to a friend have you ever shared a program or source code with a fellow student.
And this helps them to reflect and to get into the topic and then it's also nice and handy to pull it up later after the classroom visit and they can you can discuss.
Yeah, there's anything change after you now know what free software is.
How do you feel about these questions now?
We also provide presentations a ready to use presentation here.
That we used at average high school, which is in the Boston area Massachusetts in the USA.
And we went there to present to 300 cyber security and computer user students and this is why this presentation is a little tailor to cyber security students.
And also to have some aspects about what free software and security how do they relate.
But it also is a very basic introduction into free software and why you should care about it.
So you can download that and add up the two units as well.
Then we provide handouts.
Apart from the questionnaire, I just showed we have handouts like the four freedoms.
Handout which explains just what the four freedoms are.
And you can also download and end of that to whatever lesson you want to share.
Another handout we like to hand out is the printer story.
It's basically how our founder Richard Stahlman got very upset for printer that wasn't doing well.
It's always got jammed and he wanted to improve it and wrote a piece of software.
I wanted to install that on the printer and then he found out that software the printer signing on is proprietary.
And the company Xerox wasn't didn't give them the source code so they just couldn't improve it.
And that made him start the new project and was the start of the free software movement basically.
Many students can relate to that software, to that story and to that frustration.
Because it makes it really like a real life thing.
So we sometimes hand that out before we go there and give it as an optional assignment for them to read.
And then we pick it up and we talk about it in the talk.
And the most of the students responded positively to that.
So I've been talking a lot about you can download these materials.
It's a word to find them.
They are on our leave a plan at wiki which has had leave a plan at dot org slash wiki slash teaching underscore materials.
You can also find this presentation online by the way on the foster website.
And there you cannot only download materials but you can also upload your own materials.
So we put it on the wiki because you can add it and you can add to it as opposed to our website fsf.org which we only added.
So here you can you're really in charge of uploading stuff and downloading stuff and adding and improving stuff.
And I invite you to do that.
We also have some more materials on fsf.org slash resources slash materials.
And as for example, the four freedoms hand out I just showed that's located there.
Yeah, this is an impression from the last visit I mentioned at Everett High School where we talked to three or four classes of computer science and cyber security students.
And presented a free software to them and why it's important and the free software philosophy mostly.
So this is my colleague Devon and me we're going there.
And most of the students were very interested and really acting positively.
I mean you also see on the photo that they are somewhere distracted by their phones.
That's always the case you have to deal with that as well.
But many were really interested and what was interesting for me when I started this is I found out you really should start from scratch and with the basics of free software.
I was assuming well computer science students they probably know a lot about software in general and probably heard about free software.
But it's not the case with all of them.
So really it helps to start with what are the four freedoms what is free software why is software freedom important and to talk about that.
Other topics to talk about are free social media for example that's what they are very interested in so we talked about mass that on and our mass that on account.
And we also presented our peer cheap channel mobile phone freedom is an interesting topic because these days many people do they are computing with mobile phones of course.
Examples of free software students may already use to make it more practical.
Free software cyber security because we presented to cyber security students but also that's that's a question that coming up often and then importance of free software in a free society.
We recently had a campaign about importance of free software in a free society so if you go to our blogs on fzf.org slash blocks you'll find a lot of articles related to that.
And Apple devices we always bring that or not always but the students often bring that up because at many schools they have Apple devices Apple is pushing their product on schools.
So we talk about that and what are the issues if these devices.
Emo encryption is another interesting topic we have the email self defense campaign at the fzf it's located at email self defense dot fzf.org and there you can learn and the students can learn how to encrypt emails and you can set it up with them together for example.
And that brings me to privacy which is another topic many students are interested in and it's also important of course how to stay private on the internet.
Then the students often come up with their own questions like is it safe to use free software.
They often ask that because I mean the source code is publicly available so they assume well then hackers can exploit that.
They can find vulnerabilities and it's easy for them and so that assumption is that that makes it non safe and we make the opposite case we say well there's a whole community sitting here.
Improving the source code finding the backs and at least now you can have a look into it and know what's going on and what the software is doing and can improve the backs and deal with them.
Otherwise if you have a company that doesn't publish the source code it's proprietary software then you have to trust them that they do a good coding job and that they protected well.
Then what are examples of the software that is widely used is often a question coming up how can I get involved the free software projects so many students are really also interested in volunteering opportunities or internships.
How can you make money with free software is often a question especially in the upper high school classes.
What's the issue with Alexa was often asked.
Yeah those kind of questions.
So I was now talking about a lot about what is free software and how to explain the ethics of free software to students that's also because I'm working on a campaign's team and that's what I'm doing explaining what free software is and why it's important.
But it's another great thing to do to build on top of that is to deliver workshops that really work where you really work with free software and get get the students to do something with free software so that would be the goal.
And here's some examples what are great workshops you can present at schools an introduction to the command line where you could use for example our videos.
And then graphics like anything about graphics editors like in landscape or creator video editing like the blender or creator.
And recording and simple audio editing for example with audacity which is getting more important with podcasts these days capturing and streaming videos.
For example mobile phone freedom you could just install fDroid with them and start installing some basic apps or open street map editing is also an interesting topic and we are looking for materials for workshops like these so if you have done workshops like these then it would be great if you could upload some materials and share them.
I forgot what I wanted to say anyway.
And we are not only looking for teaching materials we are also looking for teaching volunteers so we have another page on the leaper planet wiki where you can show your interest in teaching going down to schools and teaching free software.
So you could just write down a nickname and say well I'm available in that area and then teachers can then you can email us and we can connect you with teachers who are interested in having people talk about free software day at schools.
And why it's words are if you are a teacher or had master you can put your school on here and say hey we are looking for people who explain free software who give workshops and then we can connect you.
If you want to support all that work we are doing then I'd be grateful if you could join us an associate member and thanks for all those who are already associate members because as I said we are an organization really supported and powered by almost members and individual donors like you only.
And this is time for your questions. Thanks for listening.
Yeah, go first and then second.
Yeah, interesting.
Thanks for the question the question is do we also have advice how to talk to board members or the decision makers and schools to convince them to use free software at the school on institutional level basically.
Yeah, that's that's a discussion we are still having because it depends on the country it depends sometimes depends on the schools the system is it's very different everywhere.
Last week I was talking to Neil Plotnecker computer science teacher in the Boston area who said well half of this at half of the schools it's just a computer science teachers who decide what's after they use and what's being used and at the other half of the schools it's the IT department or it's the headmaster or so it's very different.
So the first advice is find out who's in charge and who's making the decisions basically talking to people mostly to teachers and students and then work working your way up and.
Yeah, if you if you need support from an organization like the nonprofit organization like the FSF then you can reach out to us and we would be happy to to start that conversation or support such conversations because that's an important topic.
There was a second question here.
Yes, I've got a question you talk another about materials for high schools and I was kind of looking for maybe there are materials for primary schools this is yeah I know that.
The organization made a little book.
I was a title, but that for instance, my children can give a presentation about free software on primary school they can do that about human rights children rise they can download packages and slides and that kind of stuff.
Yes, there's a lot. So my colleague, Evan, who was on a picture at Everett high school he is programming a program called music blocks entirely free software and that's really intended for children at primary school level upwards.
It's a combination of learning music and rhythm and a bit of math with that and programming in the same time and it's that's really on a basic level and we had a lot of workshops already with that that we're quite successful for example I'm happy to connect you with Evan on that project.
Yeah, that's a one example maybe in the room here's others have also example for primary schools and please bring it up the book is probably out of eight and sang a man you were talking about yet that's that's materials from FSE so FSE Europe who published that yeah that's also great book and researchers did that answer your question.
Yes, yes, I think it starts with tinkering like with this music blocks where they really can just experience it I think for at that age and for all us also it's very important to experience what it means and that they can play around it and move it around and yeah that's also an interesting thing.
Yeah, that's also an interesting topic that I only had 25 minutes so that's another talk but we can keep talking on that yeah.
I want to be the school's reaching out to you and asking on would you like to have this presentation about yourself or how do how do I get started and I now would like to do this at a school in my local area for example what's your advice on this.
Yeah, my advice is put your name or nickname or something on the leap of planet wiki teaching volunteers reach out to us and let us know that you're interested and then we are happy to connect you with people that we have.
We also have volunteers reached out themselves to schools and somewhere very successful with that others where declines several times which is really frustrating and so it can have to have to support often official organization like that that's why I'm suggesting that and it can save you from frustration.
If you are a student yourself or at a university then you can also stand up yourself and just give a presentation that's the most easiest way.
Many teachers approach us at the FSF and ask us for talks which is fantastic also so we really like to go to schools but then we are only so many stuff members so our resources are limited so that's why we need you to stand up in your area and go there to schools.
I have so many questions I don't know who was first I'll start from the back.
What can I do as a student to stop because it's like Microsoft to embed a lot in our university.
You can talk to fellow students you can talk to your teachers on to everyone you can talk to at your university and make them aware of the issue at first and you could for example organize a protest.
Or you can and in addition you can also talk to us and we can see if we can do a campaign again together for that we have a campaign actually that many thousand people signed which is asking schools to switch to free software.
So many people supported but it's still difficult to reach the decision makers which is the point we had before okay time is up but we can chat after the talk.
Thank you very much for your questions.