Blog 4: Education and the control of knowledge: IP and OSD solutions compared
Across the world and even the United States, there is a great education disparity between communities. All of us enrolled at the University of Virginia have unbelievable access to educational resources. With this great privilege comes great responsibility to promote other mediums that help resolve education inequality. Open source technology advances the standard of education in a community because it allows students from different socio-economic backgrounds access to more accurate, current knowledge.
Our current education system and patented teaching materials contribute to education inequality. Traditionally, education is passed forward, meaning we learn from teachers who were taught the material at an earlier point. This constant passing down of knowledge is productive in a society that has access to generations of meaningful educational resources. However, the communities that do not have access to these resources often lag behind causing many generations to suffer. The difference is amplified on a global scale where people in the US have significantly better access to educational resources than people in developing countries. Approximately 1 in 3 children around the world lack access to a quality education [2]. This means that nearly 130 million students haven’t mastered basic subjects like reading and math. [2]. Much of this can be attributed to limited access to quality materials, including patented closed source knowledge like textbooks. The price of textbooks has skyrocketed over the past decade: Textbook costs increased 88 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to the BLS report [6]. As textbook prices rise many lower-income communities are forced to educate themselves with out of date materials because they cannot afford newer editions. A new study by the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report shows how secondary school textbooks from the 1950s until 2011 missed or misrepresented key priorities now shown as crucial to achieve sustainable development [5]. Fortunately, there is a wealth of information on the internet, and many people have made the push to create open source educational resources in order to make it easier for kids to learn helpful technical skills.
Open source technology is a leading force in dissolving education inequality because it helps make knowledge more accessible and cheaper. Traditionally, access to schools was limited by geography and wealth. However, Google and other organizations are trying to change that standard. Google.org continues to support several open source educational resources, contributing more than $110 million over the past five years to help close gaps in education [1]. One organization that Google.org supports is The Foundation for Learning Equality, a non-profit which has committed to making education available to people around the world through a variety of means. The Foundation’s goal is to disrupt the cycle of poverty by attacking the “lack of education” [2]. In order to do so, they have developed a free open source application called Kolibri that makes videos, textbooks, and lessons available to learners available around the world offline. This is the second iteration of this application backed by Khan Academy which gives students access to over 9,000 videos and 26,000 interactive exercises that they can watch in over 160 countries completely free of charge [1]. This advanced open source platform is often provided to users for free in the form of a Raspberry Pi, a small, inexpensive (~$25) computer that can connect via wifi and can hold a wealth of information. Learning Equality mentions that they specifically provide these solutions to communities that are lower income and do not have easily accessible Internet.
Overall, the use of open source technology in education has begun to make an enormously positive impact in spreading educational resources to various regions around the world that need them most. Often times in these regions, even if they have access to educational materials, they are outdated or in a different language. By using the internet and open source technology, we can provide people with more current and accurate information with the hopes of progressing their communities at a faster rate.
Bibliography
- Gosselink, B. H. (2017, March 21). Helping to close the education gap. Retrieved February 26, 2020, from https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-org/helping-close-education-gap/
- Home: Learning Equality. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://learningequality.org/
- Johnson, S. (2018, December 27). Learning Equality Scores $5M From Google To Bring Edtech Offline – EdSurge News. Retrieved February 26, 2020, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-03-21-learning-equality-scores-5m-from-google-to-bring-edtech-offline
- The Untapped Potential of Open-Source for Education. (2019, June 10). Retrieved from https://news.elearninginside.com/the-untapped-potential-of-open-source-for-education/
- Out of date textbooks put sustainable development at risk. (2017, May 1). Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/news/out-date-textbooks-put-sustainable-development-risk
- Valle, G. D. (2019, March 6). A single college textbook can cost more than $100. It didn’t use to be this way. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/6/18252322/college-textbooks-cost-expensive-pearson-cengage-mcgraw-hill
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