Okay, good morning everybody, nice to see you here.
My name is Fierto Omniewissen, and this is my colleague Rauh Kramer, today we'll talk
about public failures and free open source so far for education.
This is our next, just introduce ourselves, email addresses, if you'd like to contact us.
We're a working group of the Internet Society in an Netherlands, and what we're trying to
build is a digital school environment that is really based on public values by design.
So that means you only use free and open source software so that most schools in the Netherlands
do have some kind of document on how they look at the world and why they're founded, and
what they would like to teach children, but most, yeah, that's usually based upon public
values, but what's missing is that they use this public values, this claim to stand for as a design,
starting points to build their IT environment, and that's not happening, but with free and open
source software, that is possible, you could do that.
So that's what we're trying to do.
There's a lot of risks with the current big tech monopolies that are dominating the schools.
So if you send your kid to a school, you can either select, you used to be able to choose
in the Netherlands between a Catholic school, a Protestant school, or a public school.
But nowadays, this choice has changed into, you can select, I send my kid to a Microsoft
school, or to a Google school, or to an iPad school, but there's no free open source software
yet, and also, yeah, schools, again, become very mad at your school, but there's not a
real, there's a lot of nice, very good open source software, but the school's not going to
download all of that, run that on server, integrate it and build their software environment.
So, it needs to be a party that's going to do that and integrate that, and take care of the
digital environment for the schools, so that matches the public values of the school.
There's a lot of public values you can talk about. I will select only a few to zoom into,
because we don't have one a half hour. So, yeah, and if you have all these public values,
if you don't use your public values as a basis to design your IT environment, and you go with
very deep solutions that the tech offers, you have a lot of risks. You can basically chop this risk
up into a few parts. First is privacy. You can also, yeah, but often the bait's only about privacy,
and soon as you call privacy, but you have GDPR, we are compliant, because you have a document,
but there's a lot more than that. And first, look into privatization of collective efforts.
What do we mean by that? Let me tell you an example, in an Netherlands, you have the
application that's called a Reagan term. It's that the learning thing for kids to learn how to calculate.
And what they do is they have a ranking system. You can basically compare it to the tennis competition.
They have each kid has a ranking, and every calculation has a ranking, and then a match
goes to with each other. And it's based upon a scientific research that if a kid has
70% correct score, then it's sufficient to be challenging, and sufficiently difficult enough.
So the algorithm, and that's so that you get 70%. But what happens then is this is
this adaptive learning method that is built on built by a university with public money,
but now it's being commercialized into commercial company, and then sold back to schools with
the proprietary license. And what then happens is that all the kids that are filling out all
the calculations, they train the algorithm on how difficult this calculations are, because term
biggest asset is that huge database filled with calculations, which they know exactly how difficult
this is. So this rating is there asset, but this produced by the kids. So in my opinion,
if the kids make this data set, and it's not privacy invasive, then this data set should be
public domain, so that any software can use that. So basically you pay now three times. First,
there's public money paid for the scientific research to do the math. Then the school is going to
pay for the license to have access, and then the kids pay with their free labor to enhance the algorithm.
All right, you can imagine what will happen with the licenses price, because they're real
they're very popular, schools are very enthusiast about the, about the method. So they'll
conquer the market, and then after the next phase will be ever increasing prices, and no alternative,
because they have the biggest data set.
Now there's the term vendor looking. You probably all know that, but I like to make a distinction
in three different kinds of vendor looking. The first one is for for society at large.
That means at the yesterday, we went out to to have dinner after after force them, and then in
the group someone sends a Google link. So if you want to know where to eat, I need to open the
Google link. And there's lots of, lots of these, these things. You continue to get it,
invite for whatever. In school, a certain working group is made, and as soon as that starts,
someone will create a WhatsApp group. You might not want that, and you're always the critical
person that never wants to cooperate, which is very annoying. So you can try to build your own
life, and live your own life with only free software, but you're not alone, you're in society.
So that's, that's a society you're looking, that continues to get pushed to use proprietary services.
The second one is the organizational. This is the classic lock-in of making exit,
hard for organization to do something else. And you do that, I proprietary software, no good APIs,
and usually quite often organization, especially schools, don't have an exit strategy,
so they're locked in. But that's the one you really know. And then there's also the personal lock-in.
If you spend time and effort to learn a specific tool, you're not going to do something else,
because this is what you know, takes time and effort to start doing something else.
And especially with schools, if you learn certain tools, you're not even aware that there's other
options, and you're also never going to have the idea that something might be wrong with the tool that you're
using. So that's the person who, and you can say, ah, but school, as a data processing
agreement, so there's nothing wrong with that. But these data processing agreements,
especially in the Netherlands, they're very famous, but how the Netherlands is aiming big-tack,
well, they're not, because first of all, there's this, they've done a lot of DPS on how to do.
And the result of that is that to either work with any of the big-tack providers, there's a very
thick menu of very handy features that you need to switch off, but no school is doing that.
For instance, a very simple example, ad blockers are mandatory. Well, if I look at the
computers at my ad school or my kids, I go and they don't have an ad blocker, they even see gambling
out of the ad for us in school. So, with these children, how to use all of these proprietary
not things with not such good conditions. And that has a severe effect. If these services are
not a day, maybe if in a school, the data processing agreement would be adhered and would be
totally GDPR okay. Schools, kids are not only in school, they go out of school, they will use the
school, the schools also out in their private life. So, you have all these fantastic values,
yeah. And all these fantastic values that you would like to have, but there's only one thing.
Kids will do outside of school, what they've learned in school, that's why we're teaching them stuff.
But outside of school, they have to click the red big red accept button and they will.
What's going to ask, can you raise your hand if you have a Google account somewhere?
Ooh, all of them. And who has a Microsoft account in, though?
You less, but it's still the majority. And who has read all the terms and conditions?
A few hands, very good, very good. Unsurprised, but, yeah, kids that go to school,
I'll beg you, think the chance is that they will read the terms and conditions and then go,
nah, not such a good idea. Let's find something else. That's not going to happen.
But all of these values are there being thrown off boards because everybody will use the proprietary
services. And now with all the rising fesses that we have, all the fake news and the
tech billionaires, there are even buying presidents. We'll end up in a total nightmare,
dystopian rules, where it looks a bit like this. So, very bad situation, very terrible.
And now I'm going to hand over the microphone to the, oh, who's going to tell us how to fix it?
Trying to tell how to fix it, but first of all, what is quite,
you're different with some different, with some other countries like Germany and France,
is that we have freedom of education. And that brings that if you, whatever religion,
you can start a school or whatever a conviction and state as the fund those schools and the
municipality have to pride buildings. And a minimal curriculum is prescribed. So, it gives a lot of freedom.
And we have, for that, inspectors and they will check if the school is following the kind of norms.
The schools themselves, they decide about the teaching matters, like what kind of direction,
what kind of books you use, but also the environment that's used. What we kind of see is that
that same school inspection, they, they will kind of check if the tables are in order, if the
school rooms are healthy, if the books that I used are well, if the scoring of the kids is up to
par, but they won't really look at the IT system. So, even with great young set, you will see,
like I go to an open day to find the school for my kid. And I see everywhere popping up advertisements
on their Microsoft computers, like no one kind of checks. Next to that, we will get a big issue
with, for instance, co-pilot and that kind of stuff. So, a lot of people will, we're talking
with some scientists in the Netherlands, and they are very worried about it because it changed
changes the way a children will learn. So, again, with the schools that can choose,
it looks like you have a freedom of choice, but yeah, how big is that freedom of choice?
Like, we can choose, like Google, Microsoft, iPads, and as a parent, it's really difficult to
protest against it because that's how the school works, and often the schools are understaffed.
So, yeah, what to do about it. And again, like at schools, there are not really IT specialists that
will understand a GDPR rules, and it's very difficult for them to check everything.
So, often they just get a subscription somewhere to and everyone use it.
So, there's only a minimal compliance, and yeah, public values, often also schools have certain
values about how they want to educate kids, like that's not really included in the software package.
So, with our coalition, fair digital education, we try to look at it from three angles,
so one part, and I will tell you more about it, it's our pilots, and that we try to educate
schools and showcase alternative IT. We try to lobby and advocate at national and European level,
and we also work together with Juneres, with newspapers, and they do research, and with that
outcome, we try to enforce legal pressure. And I mean, it would be great, and that's actually also why
we're here, like try to see if we can work together on a European level.
Going back to the schools, there are four IT domains. We have the common clouds software,
like that actually has every package, like Microsoft Google, it's kind of interchangeable.
We also have next cloud, that's also possible, or any other open source cloud solution.
And then we have, and then it gets a little bit more complex, we have the kind of school-specific
systems, like the learning management systems, an example, open source is Gibbon,
and we have student administration systems in the Netherlands, it's very famous, Machista,
and I don't know, I think Gibbon is also could be replaced for Machista for instance.
And then we also have hardware, so my son and my daughter at that school's
a laptop is called a Chromebook, so it's very, like it's a, that's what they have.
But that could also be changed for open source software, and kind of a laptop can be called a laptop,
as it is. And often, offered, that's also not open source, and if you were
telling about the rake in town, is the kind of educational tools that need to be integrated
in the package, often, like it's called Wiki Weiss, or certain mocks, they are integrated in the
Microsoft Google package, but with whatever API they can be integrated in a different stack.
And how we are kind of looking at it is, and for sure, there are other countries that they
have to stop already, ready, but we're looking at it to have a kind of software stack with a chat
version, could be matrix, could be something else, could be delta chat, next cloud of its
office suite, a kind of big blue button, or open desk, or a kitschy, a learning management system,
like given, that's all kind of with an identity, access management solution. And that connected
to, for incident analysis, we have KennisNet where we have the digital, uh, uh,
ballooning packages, uh, and we have, uh, the duo that's a kind of, uh, system where kits
need to be registered if they have education in the Netherlands. And for instance, we would like to
kind of not give the school's responsibility to run it on our own surface, but to see if we can
kind of help and maybe train suppliers to have this as a software as a surface. So that we kind of
help them prepare. We're going to try to pilot it. We are, uh, work on it to build, uh, uh,
the stack, and then help and create documentation as so that other suppliers can host it on a
local cloud, when the Netherlands will be a Dutch cloud. So, uh, yeah, I don't know if, if anyone
here later on with the questions as ideas or has experienced with it, there would be great, uh,
we're also talking, uh, with people from Davian with Davian education to see if we, uh,
Davian A do, if we can run that, uh, on computers and connect it to our own, uh, Dutch, let's say,
educational cloud. Um, and, uh, yeah, for this, we would like to ask you, uh, we have an, uh,
international European chat group in Matrix would be great to join in the conversation. Uh,
we have a website. We are busy with a European website, uh, fair digital education, but that's,
uh, we didn't, it's not an air yet. Yeah. We did translate the front page of our Dutch website
into English now, especially for today, sir. Yeah. Uh, uh, I think we have some time for questions now.
Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay. Anyone else have a question?
Fair. Can you, uh, do? Yeah. Um, what is your, uh, I mean,
you mentioned, uh, the teachers wages are pretty low compared to the, uh, the standard.
And so, um, the, uh, the teacher career is not as popular as you've been. Um, so we have a fairly
high average age of teachers. And if I have to bring, I am part of the school council when
I see the speakers, one of the biggest obstacle to come is, hey, but our teachers have habits
about the tool we already use. And you already encountered this, this argument and how
will, if you're the value manager. Yeah. So, uh, the question is, uh, we have, uh, you have teachers,
also an Italy often the teachers are maybe a little bit on the other side, uh, and, uh, not really well
paid. I think maybe that's, everywhere, a national, uh, maybe not in Denmark, uh, but, uh, yeah,
finish the exception, uh, yeah. And, uh, but we, we are also struggling with the same and also because
often schools are understaffed, teachers will move from one school to the other. So, we also struggle
with the, with the situation where they only know how Microsoft works, or how Google works,
because they use them themselves already. So, it's a kind of similar thing. So, we, we also don't
have a direct solution for it, but, uh, yeah. We had, uh, one of our pilot schools quit for that
reason, because, uh, we had two pilot schools. And the first one, uh, stopped because they first of
all they had a new director that doesn't care about software at all, and doesn't see the
any values. That's the main reason. And the argument was, uh, we have lots of teachers and we're
finding it very difficult that stuff in our school works different than what the teachers know.
So, are there questions? Uh, this, uh, this, uh, yes, we have two questions.
Still a little bit about the pilot school and how far have they come in improving this concept?
And, uh, quick question is, how far have you come in your school? Um, first, uh, it's a,
elementary school, and it's a Waldorf school. So, the kids themselves work with pencils,
not with computers, uh, but we did implement, uh, a, uh, a cable. And, yeah, first thing, uh, practical
thing we run into is there's a, uh, API by the, uh, that's supplied by the government where you have
to supply some mandatory, uh, database information, uh, but this API is not yet available in, and it's
not that, uh, in, in, in cable. So, we're going to write it, but it's just a little bit too much work
for volunteer to do. So, it's one of the first thing we're going to solve because now we have a proprietary,
uh, solution next to it and then copy over the data set that needs to be uploaded and use that one to use the API.
So, lots of, uh, this kind of practical, uh, shortcuts, uh, uh, uh, work around, you need to use.
Yeah, we have, uh, uh, uh, uh, what is needed to onboard schools, uh, and what type of schools would be best?
Um, so we have, in the lens, we have, uh, uh, a Kowaldor schools free schools. They, they fit
also a little bit better with, uh, with kind of open source, uh, ethics. So, they can be, uh, uh,
how do you say that, uh, uh, yeah, more prone to, to, to follow it. I would often what we know and we also
discuss, uh, yesterday evening. It's very important that there is an ambassador of open source with
in the school, someone with, in the teachers, uh, and that's sometimes difficult to find, but when you get one,
then then that could be the, the kind of bridge. Uh, also what we now see is the, a little bit
the fear of, uh, like, Kowaldor being switched on, uh, on the computer and that, uh, and then actually,
when you want to control your, your own systems, you should kind of run open source because, yeah,
so we see some, some people, uh, teachers that are worried about it, that that could be prone to, uh,
switch. Yeah. Um, next question, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very, very good question. That's, uh, the question is,
where is their responsibility and for school is very easy to just sign a contract with Microsoft
because they're so fun with it. Uh, we want to be the party that solves all the IT problems of
a school, but then with open source and then showcase how that is done and then we hope that that,
that our solution will be, uh, the open standard solution that other vendors will also offer to schools.
Sorry, we need to, uh, we're, uh, we're, uh, one question. One, one question.
Our last question, uh, I am purple shirt. I'm curious. If you consider to set a, uh, fully
all the sorts of school yourself, like as an example, it's a, for example, if you don't schools get,
uh, but then like, we'll also. No, we're really trying to find, uh, existing schools that, uh,
or new schools, but we're not going to fill just to start a school by ourselves because, uh,
that's another huge project. But it would be good for you. Yeah, if someone really wants,
what wants to do that, we will help. That's for sure. I'm sorry. Did not repeat the question.
The question was, uh, are you looking into starting school yourself? Uh, and the answer is, uh,
that's too much work. Um, uh, I like to have some, uh, closing words. First of all, uh, special
thanks to the main sponsor of this, uh, great event for teaching children that they have no right
to see the soft, uh, so see the source code of the, uh, software they're using and for teaching
an entire generation that they have no control whatsoever over their own data. And thank you for
running project Maven, which is used to, uh, with a lot of AI tools to provide to the Israeli government,
to kill Palestinian children, and actively participating in genocide. So thank you.