hi <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Sameer Verma <<a href="mailto:sverma@sfsu.edu">sverma@sfsu.edu</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">jim wrote:<br>
> thank you, ed.<br>
><br>
> it might help that someone remind mr<br>
> negroponte that the medium is the massage.<br>
> in other words, part of one's education<br>
> comes from the values of the channel that<br>
> deliver the educational content.<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>I think mixing the medium and the message is myopic. </blockquote><div><br>I think that both Sameer and Jim are somewhat correct here. I believe that FOSS code itself teaches sharing. For example, please see this clip from the Digital Tipping Point library in which Lena Zuniga, a researcher on FOSS in Latin America, talks about how people in some developing areas in Latin America don't understand that it is wrong to share code. FOSS code lets them take greater control of their lives. Lena explains it much better than I can:<br>
<br><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv100_pa_12_lena_01-03_001.mpg">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv100_pa_12_lena_01-03_001.mpg</a><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Does reading a<br>
paper-based book intrigue people to learn about making paper and learn<br>
about book-binding? </blockquote><div><br>So Sameer has a point here, in that the focus of students at the our local public middle school project is in getting their assignments done, and not how Free Software makes them more free. The latter aspect much be taught. This is the importance of Richard Stallman's message. He says that we need to teach students the civics of the Free Software community, and my experience with the school tends to support that thought.<br>
<br>On the other hand, to return to Lena's point, the presence of FOSS in a community can help some segments of the community understand the importance of community and the importance of have software that is Free as in freedom, not just free as in beer. I can very much tell you that the teachers of Extremadura Spain understand that their distro, GNU/LinEx, is a point of pride for them, because while Microsoft Office is an English word that is difficult for the people of Extremadura to say and understand, they changed the name of OpenOffice.org to Espronceda, which is a local poet of hundreds of years ago, whose work and name are still popular today. So when you say "Espronceda" these people understand that it is their code base. They identify with it. I would give you links to some of this footage, but it is in Spanish.</div>
</div><br>-- <br>Christian Einfeldt,<br>Producer, The Digital Tipping Point