It’s been around for a short while now, but any who are interested in Human Ecology should check out the lastest news, updates, and general information about Human Ecology at HumanEcologyForum.org

If anyone has a story to post, let me know!

Posted by drpooville_Admin as General at 2:20 AM PDT

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Chris Ward
Human Ecology Essay - Draft 2.1
Fall 06/07 - September 15th 2006
Sustainable Education: Human Ecology, Science, and Technology
“The impending destruction of mankind…man cannot violate or transgress the bounds of his humanism, or his human limits without tragic consequence.” Karel Čapek - Utopian R.U.R. (1920)
            I will get straight to the point. If we are to avoid the bleak, resourceless, polluted and war-torn future that many suspect awaits all of our future generations (if they are even to exist), there must be some significant changes made in how our educational system of today operates at the most fundamental of levels. One significant, but so far unappreciated formula to revitalize and remake positive once more the potential fate of the humankind, is the manipulation of the tendencies of the masses by way of injecting a dose of a Human Ecological approach to education into the standardized education models of the world. With Human Ecology becoming a fundamental source for the education of the future generations, it might, just maybe, still be possible to reclaim our children’s future for them once again.
            Currently the public school education system churns through hundreds of millions of students each year, each one destined to be an active citizen of the world in one way or another. Each individual has millions of opportunities in his life to work toward sustaining a world of abundant natural resources, clean water, and calm and negotiable relations, of which are the three most fundamental elements of the human species survival. While on the other hand, each individual has an equal number of opportunities to bring destruction upon his own world and destroy the chances for survival of the future generations too. It is truly “each unto his own,” but the effects are communal.
            It is without a doubt that the choices each person makes throughout their lives are highly influenced by the education received during the first 16-25 years of their lives. It also seems reasonable then, that the education of the people can be analyzed and corrected where errors in logic, or the right’s and wrong’s, relative to the morals we must have to position our choices more in favor of our ultimate survival, and to keep the more consistently on the side where the ultimate survival of the future generations is valued over personal gain and competitive arrogance. Otherwise, choices which are self-centered and destructive are likely to continue dominating the lives of the masses in full-force, as we see they are now across the globe, and they will do so at the loss of the unborn generations to follow. We must exploit this knowledge that we have then of our ability to influence through education to create a natural tendency amongst humans to draw a larger proportion of our choices from the former way of thinking rather the latter.
            Honestly though, there is a lot of work to be done. However regretfully, I can only say that even after an incredibly simple and superficial analysis of the current state of public education, I have to admit to myself that its state is quite pitiful. The reality is that, although it might quack like a duck, it slithers like a snake, and drains the lifeblood from us all like a leech. It’s a horrible contradiction in terms to even call the average public, tax-funded school “a house of education.” When really what it is, is a perfect example of an oxymoron.
            The public school system is (in America at least) built around a tradition to teach how to follow orders, and not how to learn. Very rarely do we leave the catch phrases on posters, synthesized and summarized text-books, uncreative exams and quizzes, and incredibly monotonous and mindless motions of copy, paste, and memorize, except for, of course, that really cool fifth grade science fair project!
            It also lacks a sense of what is right and wrong, relative to how the human species must live in order to continue surviving on this earth through the infinite possible generations we still have to come. Although however, it does in fact talk a lot of the “right’s, wrong’s” and other morals of student conduct such as keeping quite unless spoken to, asking permission from an authority to use the restroom, no missing school without an authorities permission, keeping your shirts tucked in, ceaseless competition against all others, and no sharing information! And this of course is followed up with a full range of uncreative and rather harsh punishments for any “misbehavior.” Of which none of the rights or wrongs actually correspond truly to either the nature of humankind or the nature of the world in which we inhabit. Instead however they correspond to a false nature of authority and dominance that expects absolute submission and control. This is not human ecology.
            Another interesting, but unfortunate fact is that the average education models of today demand that all humankind respect their authority without question, while claiming their own thrown as the most important thing in our lives. Saying loudly and clearly, if we did not have “them,” (the education systems and the authorities within the education systems known as teachers) we would be as good a dead. This, in my opinion, is a completely ignorant, arrogant, disrespectful, and a horribly destructive and violent lie. We are human. We have survived millennia already without any formal or standardized school systems in place. In fact, it is my belief quite to the contrary, that the school system itself, as it has developed and come to be over time what it is today, is a major cause (if not the root cause) of why we are in the rather gloomy place we are with respect to our future chances of survival on this planet as is. It is all the contradictions that that can be found in and around what is today the standard education model, which brings me to say “it might quack like a duck, but it sure ain’t one”. Garbage in, garbage out.
            Take for a concrete example the average public school cafeteria, which I use as a simplified analogy to represent the base standards that the rest of the education system can be assumed to abide by. It is a disgraceful image of the nature of what we face.
            The food is of some of the lowest quality available ever in our history. Mostly manufactured, mass produced, and frozen, it occurs very often that students complain of horrible stomach cramps after consuming it. Students are also left with few alternatives to choose from, except for those who are lucky enough to have parents who have the time, money, and patience enough to prepare food for them everyday to bring on their own, and teach them on their own that eating healthy is one of the first most fundamental aspects to be appreciated in life.
However, even with outside influence, enduring 16 or more years in inescapable close proximity of this “food” and environment influences and teaches even the most health-minded students to except and expect the low quality standards of food and health for the rest of their lives. For everyone else, fast-food diets and candy bars unquestionably become the new standard for which they will live with the rest of their lives, and face all of the consequences too.
            Alternatives that are often available in place of the standard “tray lunch” are also much of the same, horribly fattening, and sweet, fried, or worse still, generally packaged and branded. Therefore it is not only unhealthy for lack of nutritious value, loaded with sugar, preservatives, or lacks in the color green or any natural flavor, it is also purchased from non-local, branded manufacturers at the lowest price possible. A lesson in economics that teaches the future leaders of the world that cheating consumers out of quality and investing outside of ones own community for a higher gain in personal economy are standard and acceptable choices to make. It also teaches the consumers that these qualities are of little or no importance at all. The negative consequences are hardly even made known. And it unfortunately also draws acceptance from an early age to the corruptive techniques of marketing and branding, causing mindless purchasing and consumption of goods by name and brand alone. If it is what they grow up doing without vision of alternatives, it becomes an accepted standard of life. “We are what we eat,” as the old saying goes.
            The social environment of the cafeteria is also an interesting and pitiful example of how the public school system teaches our children how to act with arrogance and disrespect towards our own kind. Consider how natural it is for us to look at a cafeteria worker (cleaner, cook, cashier, etc) and see them as something of a lower class. It is natural because this is how the school system itself treats them by way of lower wages, less respectful treatment, and fewer choices for how to creatively work or improve upon their own work for the benefit of their clients, who in fact are their own, and our own children. They are not respected in positions of authority, but instead they are basically given position of mindless laborers, and nothing more.
            Even leaving you with only a few examples of how even in the environment which our public schools provide their students, we can easily see how it denies to the growing generations the ability to see and vision choices that might invite greater opportunity to grow and create a world which acts to sustain life rather than constantly increase mindless consumption. Instead, it teaches that it is best to leave consumption unchecked and unthought of, and the responsibility of any consequences should be left to be dealt with in the distant future rather than the present.
            This leaves us with the famous philosophical “chicken or the egg” question too. It is hard to blame the destructive consequences on the consumers when there are few viable alternative choices given. It seems only natural to get accustomed to expect nothing more than the weekly lunch menu, or the treatment of the workers, or the standards of destructive economic models when we are forced to endure them for so many years without choice. Plus, since self-responsibility, self-reflection, autonomy of choices, respect, and individual and communal health are not made to be priorities in the place that hails itself to be the house of learning, who is to blame in the end, the person being forced to live in the system, or the owners of the system itself?
            The answer to this question, as with most philosophical questions is mute. It does not really matter in the end because what matters is what is happening today and the prospects of the future. If we are to continue into the future for many more generations to come, an integration of responsibility into life itself and the empowerment of the growing minds of the future as both creators and consumers in the ways of sustainable and responsible living for the future must be made. If we are to avoid the pitfalls of exhaustive and destructive consumption, I believe it is essential that responsibility and mindful sustainability must be reconnected throughout all aspects of education on a personal level, rather than being isolated into some general category such as Ethics 101 or as is in many cases, left out completely. We can not continue to abstract responsibility and sustainability into course themes. It must become the fundamental basis of the education system itself.
            My proposition therefore is to integrate into the current education system an approach such as the one Human Ecology provides into the standard methodology and curriculum of teacher training, faculty and staff relationships to the educational process and to the students themselves, and to the formulation of the education models from which the students will exploit to share understanding and knowledge of the worlds inner-workings across all disciplines. Students should be the masters of their own education, and the human ecological model is an approach which destroys the traditional view of student as learner, and teacher as master. Students are encouraged to cross disciplines and integrate theory and practice using hands on learning methods that enable and encourage students to find and exploit their own personal ambitions and understandings of right and wrong through practical and self motivated experiential learning. While students are as well encouraged through the educational process, the curriculum, and the environment in which they learn, to integrate consciousness and respect of the environment and the people in it, as well the realization of the impact we as individuals and as a community have on the eminent future ahead of us (a future which can not be avoided, but can be destroyed if our top priorities are the budget and concerns of authority rather than the health and survival of our progeny).
            There is little room for contradiction, and although it’s hard to avoid, Human Ecology is a method which teaches by way of representing matters as closely as possible to the ways are, and trusting students to have the capacity to make choices which meet the needs of the future generations as opposed to being a living hypocrisy and walking contradiction. There is no reason to hide reality behind a veil of hypocrisy, we are all human, and we all make mistakes. We must take for ourselves the responsibility for our mistakes that might hurt our chances of communal survival, but we must learn to correct them together.
            I know that to have a education system that models the standard citizen to be full of respect and self-responsibility, so that he might make more choices only after considerable thought has been put into understanding the effects of each choice made to make choices more consistently that are sustainable over the long-term might seem a little far fetched and Utopian. However, please, first just consider the fact that even young children are able to learn such concepts even before they can even read.
            Authors of children’s books around the world have taken the lead in ensuring that children are taught how to be responsible from as early an age as their parents begin to read to them. In even the most simple of bed-time stories and fairy tales have general themes such as proper disposal of and the minimization of waste, cause and effect, staying healthy, respecting others and the like that are seamlessly woven in and out of the texts. Each one teaches children how to simply be responsible and treat the world and all the creatures in it with love in their own way. They also teach them how to live and act sustainably so that we can live together in harmony and work together to keep our species alive. Children learn to take care of themselves, while also taking care of the world in which they live. They learn to eat green vegetables instead of those that come from a can, keep their environment clean, help others, share, treat people in the way they would like to be treated, recognize the effects of their choices and try to choose wisely, collaborate to solve problems, and not make things or say things that could hurt others, etcetera.
            The numerous themes which children encounter on a daily basis in their years before they begin there sentence to schooling and their ability to understand and act upon the simple concepts these texts have in them, leads me to believe that the challenge of raising future generations of youth to grow up with the mentality of sustainable living and responsibility through choice is indeed feasible. We just need to dedicate ourselves to keeping these themes in all the texts we read, whether for night-time tales or mathematical and scientific text-books. Moreover, we need to keep them around the students in all the environments were they learn. Nobody learns what is directly taught while in a state of hypocrisy. They only learn that hypocrisy is the norm, so what is being taught can justifiably be ignored.
            On this note I would like to clarify and conclude that I do not intend to suggest that the Human Ecological perspective is the final solution to the world’s problems, nor a guarantee for the survival of the human race. Rather, I believe that many seeds of possibility lie within Human Ecology for rebuilding a more sustainable world. By exploiting the natural human desire for personal survival along side the natural tendency to be highly influenced by the environment in which we live and the “education” we receive, the new strong, sustainable roots the world needs to disrupt the growth of destructive consumption, and immoral and inhuman technological progress has much more opportunity to sprout and take hold. It is in our children’s best interest to do so, even if we can not yet still know their names of feel the warmth of their skin. Sustainability and responsibility must become part of who we are, and with Human Ecology you can learn to quake like a duck and actually be one too.

Posted by drpoo as College Of The Atlantic, Peace Works!, Personal Endeveavors at 2:45 PM PST

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There are some new pictures up in the gallery!  

-Chris

Posted by drpoo as General at 5:07 PM PST

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Some quotes, and perhaps a thought or two on a book from which the article “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” comes from.

“Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network schools steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.”

“If performance within these narrow confines is conceived to be the supreme measure of success, if, for instance, an A average is considered the central purpose of adolescent life — the requirements for which take most of the time and attention of the aspirant — and if the worth of the invidial is reckoned by vicoryt or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students, alientate them from their own human nature, and break the natural connection between them and their parents, to whom they would otherwise look for significant affirmations.”

“It [compulsory schooling] divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as “low-class” material. And the bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff!”

This one is impossible not to comment on, considering the truth and sickness of the whole idea. The rest I’ll let speak for themselves.

We are told the main reason to be succesful in school (not necessarily learn) is for the rewards after it that will be more likely graspable. That reward, money…more stuff. Not a stronger family, not more critical minds, not justice or peace, not healthier communities. Money. More stuff. WTF!?

There was always a thorn in my side while at school, and it digs deeper all the time, but now it at least reveals its true self more clearly.

“Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop — then they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, and then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.”

“The heart of a defense for the cherished American ideals of privacy, variety, and individuality lies in the way we bring up our young.

Children learn what they live.

Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; forace them to plead for the natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies; riducle them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale oragnizations are dealy.”

“This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”

-Chris

Posted by drpoo as Peace Works!, Personal Endeveavors at 10:28 PM PST

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Check out some of my 3D stuff HERE

and my Documenary films HERE

Enjoy!

Posted by drpoo as General, Linux / Open Source, Photo Album at 7:51 PM PST

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Chris Ward
Advanced Projects with Gray Cox
Fall 2006 - College of the Atlantic

Methodological Report on Experimental Learning
Curriculum Design

“If the workers do not somehow come to be owners of their own labor, all structural reforms will be ineffective … they [must] be owners, not sellers, of their labor…[for] any purchase of sale of labor is a type of slavery.” Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In the Winter of 2007 I will embark on a project to create a prototype course curriculum for teaching the Free and Open Source software called Blender3D. The course will be offered initially to people in the Mexican state of Yucatan, and to all else whom are interested via the world-wide-web. The courses will initially be made available only in the Spanish language, but this will only be temporary because a crucial design aspect of the courses will be in the extendability across borders.

This paper you are reading here is an outline of the curriculum and course structure itself, along with a bit of commentary on the methodologies and philosophies that I draw from in its creation. The first section will cover many of the details of the curriculum to be designed. Specifics like in what formats will the course be available, the style of teaching, the structure of the lessons and the courses as a whole, and the goals and intentions of my choices. The second section will cover the issues I will need to deal with as far as copyrights are concerned. We will look especially at the role copyrights play in restricting the public’s access to an author’s “work” and how the copyright laws can be exploited to ensure the public’s free access to this work rather than limit it. It is imperative for my consciousness and sanity to broaden free access to learning materials, especially those that I create; everyone has an equal right to learn so access to learning materials should be universal. The third and final section will be an exploration into my mind on the topics of Paulo Freire’s problem-posing approach to education in contrast to what he defines the banking model. We will also peek into the parallels that I can draw between my own curricular approach and Clark Abt’s ideas on play and education.

Curriculum and Course Structure

Curriculum

The curriculum I propose to organize will be accessible in both multimedia format and in traditional class-room formats. Both will cover the same material using the same methodologies and guiding principles. They will be hands-on and project based curriculum that build on knowledge quickly without taking any detours during the lessons to go into any great depth over one particular feature or functionality. Rather, the curriculum will take a broad sweeping style approach to cover concepts, tools and their functionality with the hope that the learner is inspired to imagine new and creative projects possibilities that can lead them onto learn more about the specific aspects of the software on their own. The details of the individual tools and new concepts will be covered on a more personal and individual basis, per each learners needs.

Concepts, tools and their broad functionality will be explained by way of demonstrating how to create the whole of many complete, or semi-complete projects. Complete in this case meaning a project which is more than simply a demonstration of a one tool, but creation of multiple elements per scene where many various concepts and tools are required to be used in conjunction with each other to ultimately render a final result. I call the projects semi-complete because for me it is hard to say when something is complete or not. Complete too is not in quality, but in the content of the scene and the usage of various concepts and tools learned in the lesson.

Each demonstration project (or lesson) will require the understanding of certain new concepts and tools in order to be finished. At the end of the completed lesson the learners will have experienced these new elements and will have a general idea of how they are able to potentially be used since they will have at least one project reference in their mind for using them.

The learners will then be assigned a mini project that will encourage them to explore further on their own the new concepts learned (and new concepts unlearned), the old concepts reviewed, and new project ideas inspired by the new knowledge. The mini projects will act as a means for the learners to review the new concepts (individually or combined in their use) on their own in much greater depth than would be possible in any one lesson. The variation of usage of different tools and concepts is as close to infinite as it ever could be and so only by practicing and experimenting with them will the learners visions ever be reached.

Each lesson will cover the creation of a semi-complete project from scratch. All steps will be included in the lessons, with the new concepts getting the bulk of the attention and old concepts only being quickly reviewed. This means though that all learners should be capable of starting any lesson within the course and complete it without needing to refer back to other previous lessons. However they will not necessarily understand the concepts that are new to them which are only being touched upon in the current lesson because they have already been covered in more depth in some earlier lesson, but they will be able to follow what is being done.

The lessons will be progressive in the concepts and tools that are covered. As new concepts are used they will be further explored in later lessons. Each lesson will cover many new concepts, tools, and their functionalities, and review many previously learned ones as well. Time will be allotted in each lesson for learners to play with and creatively explore (rather than copy exactly) the use of the various tools used in the making of the demonstration project.

Another part of class time will be used for preplanned instruction, explanations and demonstration of concepts, tools and their functionality. During this time the learner will only be absorbing new information rather than trying to recreate steps toward a final result.

The third part of the time spent during the lesson will be dedicated to letting the learners creatively explore the newly learned concepts on their own during the class time. When the lessons are being covered in a classroom, I will be moving about the room answering questions and encouraging the learners to experiment on their own. For the lessons available in digital formats, the learner will be encouraged to pause from the lesson, explore on their own, and ask questions and read other learners comments, questions, and responses regarding their own lesson explorations during this time. There will be space available in a forum on-line created for this purpose, but more details about the forum space will be described later on.

For the assigned mini projects the same as stated above will hold true throughout the whole of the course. Nuances and details of the different concepts and tools will be explored by the learner in organizing and creating their own personally inspired project. Learners will be encouraged to create scenes that are as complete as possible, using the demonstrated project from the lesson as a guide for what concepts and tools to utilize. They will also be encouraged to explore their own local surroundings to find inspiration for the content of their projects instead of trying to mimic the content from the scene which was used in the lesson to demonstrate the new concepts and tools.

Following the completion of the mini projects, each will be made available for peer review. The peer review process will be available both in the classroom, if the course is being taught in a classroom, and on-line. We will use the peer review process to foster continued learning for both the creator of the project and the peer reviewers themselves, encourage constructive critique of content and the use of tools and concepts, and to support the further exploration of project ideas, concepts and tools.

Questions, comments, concerns, confusions, inspirations, excitements, understandings, and explanations will be requested as part of the mini project’s final results. The peer reviewers along with myself will then work with the learner to broaden the understanding of new concepts, tools and their functionality together, for the sake of everyone.

As a side note, the mini projects and the forum will also serve the learners well as the start of a nice developing portfolio of competed works and other works in progress.

Course Structure

The overall structure of the courses will for now at least be contoured to the following outline:

Each course will consist of five individual lessons. Where each lesson covers the demonstration of creating one semi-complete project with an assignment for the learner to complete one mini project based on the newly learned concepts and tools from the lesson. The learned will be encouraged to finish the mini project to their best ability to reach their envisioned projects before the following lesson begins.

The first four of the five lessons of each course will be demonstration projects which cover new concepts and tools as listed in the course goals listing for the course. The fifth lesson will cover a demonstration project that combines all (or many) of the new concepts learned during the previous four lessons into one new final project. The fifth lesson will focus on expanding the learners understanding of the new concepts and tools that they learned during the course by active review while also exploring in greater depth the means for creating using them all in combination with one another.

The goals per each lesson and for the course as a whole will be dependent on the course level being taken. Often times the goals will overlap across lessons but in these cases they will explore new uses of already known tools and concepts to broaden and increase the understanding of their potentiality in practice.

There will be, under normal circumstances, two class sessions per week over a time interval of six weeks. Each session will be two hours long.

The first session of the week will be dedicated to completing the lesson’s project to cover new concepts, tools and their functionality. We will review certain elements that have already been touched upon if any questions or difficulties are encountered. And we will look at and briefly comment on (but not necessarily peer review) completed mini projects from previous lessons.

The second session in the week will be dedicated to reviewing each of the new concepts covered in the previous sessions project demonstration. We will also spend time peer-reviewing of mini projects work-in-progress. And we will work in class on the mini projects, where all peers including me will be around to help complete the assigned project.

In the case of limited time constraints, two sessions will be given per week as usual but both will be to cover lessons and all mini project work will be done on learners own time outside of class. All questions, comments, excitements, ideas, and the like (peer reviewing included) will occur during the class session time. If agreed upon, the class session could be lengthened to more than two hours in order to better meet the constraints of the course curriculum.

Therefore, for all the sessions made available in digital format, the structure of the courses as a whole will remain congruent with that of the live classroom sessions. The only significant difference I can foresee will be in how the second days dedication to mini project development and peer reviewing will occur. Since this aspect of the course will be highly interactive in dialog between all peer-reviewers and learners, new tools and methods need to be employed in order to secure the effectiveness and practicability of taking such an approach to extending learning beyond the classroom.

For this I will organize the use of an on-line forum. Preferably too, it will be one that already exists and is operated by members of the already active Blender3D community. I have some places in mind already that would fit the role suitably well, however I have not secured any contacts for implementing it in practice. This will be a step I shall take in the very near future. Almost certainly I will find a place because of the very open nature of the Blender3D community itself. And if I can not, I will open some new doors to this forum myself.

Primarily, the forum will act as a base location for learners to interact amongst themselves around this proposed curriculum. It will provide space for asking questions, making comments, critiquing works-in-progress, peer-reviewing, praising others work, and collectively developing project ideas. It will also be a blackboard for which learners and peers can collaborate on projects together and contribute to a free commons of project ideas that reflect the communities own interests. Learners will be able to post the results from their exploration of the lessons demonstration projects and from their exploration in the assigned mini projects as well. And they will be able to make contributions to the refinement and modification of the curriculum itself and the extension of it beyond its current state.

The final point being one of particularly high importance. In order for the courses to be truly effective as I desire they will need to be accessible by people to whom I am unable to even speak. One of the first boundaries of communication is language, and since written and oral language both are extremely important in the process of education, it is imperative that the learning materials proposed be modifiable and redistributable to meet these conditions. The forum will be one place for this type of sharing and collaboration to take place.

All of the lessons and course materials will be created and made available to the public in digital formats that can be accessed by anyone with a computer. As well, theoretically, they will be accessible in paper format if they are printed or on a television or radio if they are stored on a tape or digital compact disk (CDROM). However I would expect that if one is interested in learning Blender3D then it is safe to assume that being accessible on a computer is the most important issue at hand. For if one is not able to access a computer then they would also not be able to use Blender3D in the first place and would thus have no particular reason to learn how to use it.

The fact that it will be made available in digital formats means many things and the first of which is how and from where will it be distributed. All lessons will be made available in at least two complementary formats. The first of which will be in a video tutorial styled format. This is a manner in which many existing tutorials are made and I feel it is an extremely effective way of learning on-line.

Video tutorials are digital films that show the recorded activity on screen as it was taking place with the added option of including sound, such as voice over. Video recording software is used to record exactly what is happening on ones computer screen in real-time, and thus can be exploited in demonstrating the creation of the demonstration project as if in real time. I will be leading the learners through the entire lesson using video tutorials, vocally expressing certain concepts, tools, their functionality in a very similar manner to how I will do the same in the classroom setting.

The advantage of video tutorials over other digital formats for learning is that they are extremely visual and aural. The learner is able to follow exactly the steps I take to get through the demonstration project, word for word, and movement for movement. Since all movement is constrained to the virtual space of the computer screen anyway, video tutorials are able to capture it all extremely effectively.

Another advantage of video tutorials is that one can easily edit them to add subtitles or oral translations, and then redistribute them to new audiences. Other peers could for example also easily edit them to add additional textual or verbal comments into the video to clarify certain parts of the lessons if in the future it is found to be needed.

The disadvantage of video tutorials however is their size. Video files tend to be extremely large and are thus less accessible to those whom do not have access to high-bandwidth Internet connections. Although there are means for compressing the video files into smaller pieces, often times this means that the quality of the video is decreased and the video is made harder to follow.

Another disadvantage of video tutorials is that they often times move to fast. I expect this issue to arise and will be experimenting with different methods for adjusting the lessons to cope with this fact. Although I believe this problem is quite mute since video formats have the advantage easily be able to be paused, rewound, fast-forwarded and repeated without limit.

In making the video tutorials I will put great effort into making them as accessible to people as possible. Therefore I will be choosing a non-proprietary video codec (the software which encodes the video to be read by a video player) that can be freely accessed and played on the most number of operating systems possible. My options for such codec are yet to be defined, however this is a constraint that will guide me in my ultimate decision.

The second compatible format that the lessons will be created in is a document format such one might find similar to a digital book. Lessons will be covered in stages with written descriptions that explain each step in completing the demonstration project in appropriate detail. Hints, suggestions, ideas, new concepts and variations of different uses of different tools will be expressed in text along side images that model the things currently being covered.

The major advantages of this format is their size. They are generally small enough to be transferred through the Internet even at low speeds within ten to twenty minutes at max.

Text and image based document styled formats are also easily able to be printed out, which for some makes them easier to follow. It could also perhaps make them more widely distributable.

This format also allows for the learner to work through the lesson at their own speed, and they are also able to skip ahead, skip backwards and reread at their will.

They would also be very easily editable. Again, allowing for translations, corrections, extensions to content and completeness, and the ability to modify and redistribute to further accessibility to audiences beyond what is originally capable of reaching.

Finally, as I mentioned above with the video tutorial format, the digital document file will be of a type that is freely accessible by all of the major operating systems (GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX, BSD, etc). Meaning it will need to be created using a file format which is freely readable using any of these operating systems, without constraint.

These two formats can be used in conjunction with one another as well to provide an even greater result if the learner so desires. However I believe for the most part this would be overkill and unnecessary.

Next, as far as to where the courses and materials could be hosted, the first option will be to host the lessons and course materials in the same forum space as the learners frequent while they are participating in the course itself. This seems to me to be the most appropriate and practical solution and will be the solution I will attempt to implement. Other ideas and suggestions are welcome.

And this concludes the topic of curriculum and course structure, and brings us to the next point on copyrights and distribution of the courses themselves.

Copyrights and Distribution

According to copyright law defined by the United States constitution, the complete opposite reigns true. According to the University of California,

“…the author’s rights [to copyright] begin automatically when a work is created. Copyrighted works are not limited to those that bear a copyright notice or are registered. These rights prohibit others from using the works without permission or profiting from the sale or performance of these works for a fixed period of time.” They also “[give] authors exclusive rights to copy the works, distribute and sell copies, modify and adapt the works, convert the words into other formats, and publicly perform or display the works [italics mine].” 1

What is being said here in other words is that the moment I take something from within me, whether is expressed orally (vocally), visually (written out or constructed) or physically (acted out), all things that are created in an externalized form (”work”) and recorded in some way are immediately blanket covered by copyright law and are restricted from access by default from all others. This limitation holds true for as long as the author lives, plus an additional seventy to one-hundred and twenty years in many cases, and is generally honored by most countries internationally as long as the “work” can be not be proved otherwise to be an exact copy of some other “work” already done.

Therefore, any expressed work that might come from myself (i.e. this paper itself) will automatically be subject to copyright law and will be forbidden from others to access without special permission from me to do so. No one is legally able to use this work, modify it or redistribute it without my specific permission (you have my permission, so long as you note me as the original author, you note yourself as the author of any changes, and you require anyone else to do the same if they choose to copy it, modify it or redistribute it again). The knowledge and ideas contained within this document are legally off-limits, unless I choose otherwise for them not to be.

Personally, I think that by default, even if for nothing else, at least education materials should be proudly proliferated freely amongst all man because of the absolutely essential role they play in the process of educating. Unless of course–and I say this with ironic sarcasm–if helping others reach new potentials in learning is not our true motive behind why we create materials to educate in the first place, but rather for financial gain.

I also believe in the importance of education to make men and women knowledgeable in areas they were not previously learned in, whether it be for some particular purpose like understanding better how to do some type of job or even if it is simply for one’s own pleasure. To me it is education that in so many ways holds the potential for human growth, and I strive to ensure that my work will always reflect my beliefs. That is why I believe that it is more important more people potentially have equal rights to access any learning materials that I might create than it is to boost my chances of making large sums of money by restricting access and selling it as a limited good in high demand. It is also why I am choosing to demand that everyone has a right to freely access learning materials instead of demand a right to earn significant amounts of profit off them instead.

I obligate myself in my future work and my living conscious to find a means to ensure that as much knowledge as possible that I might bear to create can and will be freely accessible to the greatest number of people as possible rather than be restricted. My major goals are to make all of the materials I create usable for any purpose whatsoever; to make them usable by any person without discrimination; and to demand that they be modifiable, redistributable and accessible to anyone no matter the underlying computer operating system or hardware available, for as reasonably close to forever as possible.

And since I’ve been using the term free so freely here, I will quickly clarify what I mean by this term ‘free,’ since I know the term can be quite ambiguous. Free (or freely) as noted here, means free as in freedom, not free as in zero cost.

To me it is really it is quite unfortunate that in the English language the definition of free is so unclear outside of a specific context. It is even more unfortunate that we automatically assume for the most part that free refers to the cost of something rather than its right to exist without imposed limitations. However it is not surprising since today’s social reality holds the question of whether something is free is referring to its price as being a much more relevant question than whether that same thing allows us to be free, as in freedom. Unconsciously we are drawn to understand free only in its price because we automatically think of all things as products and “works” that can be owned and sold, instead of how those same “works” potentially limit our ability to make free choice.

In the case of my own course materials as a matter of fact, the cost of accessing the courses or materials (mine for example) does not necessarily imply that the cost in doing so will be zero at all, although the materials themselves will indeed have no direct cost and they will certainly be free to the public to use, modify and redistribute.

To the contrary, it is actually obvious that even “free” things have their cost. The computer itself for example is a major cost that must be met in order to access the Blender3D software or any of the learning materials. Or computer time at an Internet Cafe would cost the learner as well. Electricity, support, materials like paper and ink, transportation considerations, pollution offsets, and health consequences are also unavoidable costs in accessing the materials, even if they are very indirect in the counting.

The important aspect in providing the learning materials freely then is not necessarily to save the learner money, but it is to ensure that they will have the ability to access the materials without being forced to sacrifice any freedoms to do so. The learner will not be limited in their ability to share the knowledge contained within the “works” with others. They will be able to change them in anyway and redistribute it in its new form without needing to pay any royalty or other imposed price in order to continue spreading the knowledge it contains.

This means for example that people will be able to translate the materials into their own local languages without the need to pay for royalties or be threatened by imprisonment or fines, and the translators could share the new versions of the materials with others at no cost. They would be able to do it in exactly the moment that they need it, since they would need not to consult the author in doing so. And they would be able to earn money by providing services around the work such as teaching with the materials or packaging it and redistributing it in novel ways (so long as the works is always remains still freely accessible in some way upon request).

The only major limitation that will be placed upon the materials on the other hand is that all redistributed derivatives (changed or unchanged copies) must be released using the same copyright as the original. This insures that someone does not exploit the freedom of others to profit from losses of others. No one will be able to legally take the free materials and license them under a proprietary license that restricts peoples access to the new materials. The materials will in theory, be protected from this for at least as long as the “work’s” author lives and perhaps then even a little more.

Another small limitation will be for example that any changes made to the original must be noted and the authors of those changes must be clearly recognized. This will be done to protect the reputation of all authors. So long as all changes are clearly noted for who made them, the original author will not need to worry of having he or her own reputation damaged by others attempts at vandalism.

Following this, all other limitations will be made in a spirit simliar to these. They will all be made on the order to protect the learners rights to freely learn and share their learning materials with the world.

The reason I have chosen to do things this way–if it has not been clear up to this point–is so that the materials will be accessible without being forced to sacrifice any freedoms to make use of them (freedom to learn from, modify and share learning materials). This is my intention anyway, since the choice will ultimately be up to the learner in what he or she chooses to do in order to meet an ends. There are always many optional choices you can make leading up to actually accessing the materials, and each of these choices could risk your freedom in one way or another. However having the materials released under a free / libre copyright license at least provides the opportunity for one to access them without losing any freedoms if the right route can be found to do so.

Note : For a more extensive look at some examples of where the importance of copyrights come into play in the realm of computer software and learning materials, see Iaya and Ombdi in the Appendix.

Teaching Methodology and Philosophy

In bringing Blender3D courses to bear, I am forced to address the various methodological and philosophical theories and practices that have influenced me in their creation or that have parallels implied in their approach as well. The first of which I will touch upon is Paulo Freire’s problem-posing approach to education and its distinction from the banking-deposit approach.

Paulo Freire states that the dominate form of education in today’s world is closely akin to how the standard model for financial banking operates. Where students are banks for knowledge, and teachers are the depositors. It is implied by this method that only by teachers depositing information into the students are the students able to learn. A dependence on the teacher as expert and student as ignorant listener becomes strictly defined and students are designated as the receivers of deposited knowledge, while teachers are the depositors of that knowledge so highly valued.

An alternative approach to education that he offers in contrast to the banking model is known as the liberating problem-posing approach. This approach dissolves the hierarchical relationship between the student and teacher into one where both are critical learners on equal planes. “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialog with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow”2 Problems are posed by both the learners and the teachers about the world and together they reflect upon them in critical and engaging ways and “[people] teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ‘owned’ by the teacher.”3 Ultimately turning any educating act into a movement for the liberation of oppressed people by contradicting the structures of hierarchical oppression that cause them to exist in the first place.

My own course curriculum for teaching Blender3D draws many parallels to Freire’s own, although not perfect ones. For example, the contrasts between the banking model approach verses the approach I am taking on my own. In the courses I have proposed, I will be acting only as a guide in concretely demonstrating some potentialities of the software. I also try to be quite clear that I expect to learn from the students as they learn from me; we will work on projects together and teach each other in the process. Everyone see problems differently and so everyone can potentially find new and unique solutions to each one. It would be impossible for me not to learn from other learners unless I locked them into the banking model approach to teaching and demanded the learners only memorize and regurgitate bits of knowledge rather than encourage them to creatively explore in areas of their own interest, especially in areas of the unknown.

I want to explore with others all the different possibilities that we can come up with and I wish to stand clear from any top-down imposing of ideas. I also want to make the course dynamic and responsive to the needs and inspirations of the learners. Hence the noted importance of working collaboratively on the extension and redistribution of the learning materials themselves. I feel it is very important that the learners are able to explore and learn Blender3D using projects of their own inspiration rather than projects defined for them that might be completely out of context to their own world, personal experience and interests.

Certainly, just by using the software students are able to learn. But I want the learners to work on projects that “evoke new challenges, followed by new understandings” that are interesting to them even if it is interesting to no one else, so that gradually the learners “come to regard themselves as committed” to the projects (and learning) in their own hearts rather than simply to go the the motions for some final result they can call complete. 3

So to conclude this part on Freire I would like to say that I feel as though Freire’s heart and my own beat with a harmonizing rhythm for the most part, although I can not say they always meet at all the major chords. Freires problem-posing approach to education rebels against mainstream society and sociopolitical norms by nature; mine does too by going against the restrictive system of copyrights in order to freely share knowledge more broadly. Freire attempts to bring men and women a new conscious recognition of themselves and their power as humans to make changes in the world for bettering themselves and all those that surround them without reenacting any form of domination; so do I. I am attempting to help forge a new social reality where sharing and collaboration of and for knowledge are the most fundamental building blocks rather than competition for money and power. However, Freire and I diverge in rhythm a bit because he believes it in his heart that it is actually possible to change mankind’s natural oppressive order into a new form of non-oppressive consciousness by making changes in how we approach education; I do not, though contradictory enough, it is this exactly that I work for (and hope to prove myself wrong about) in the end anyway, even though I do not believe it is possible.

It is my belief, in contrast to Freires, that in order to truly liberate humankind from oppression we humans must actually liberate all people including ourselves in our entirety at once. Otherwise the recursive cycle of oppression, rebellion, oppression, will continue on forever, no matter what approaches could be taken to education; our natural tendencies towards oppressive hierarchical social structures is too strong to overcome.

Sadly enough, I do not personally believe that the massive and all encompassing change we need to have in order to turn the tables against oppressive social structures will ever occur. People naturally form hierarchical structures in life, and even in the basic family structure oppression reigns supreme.

We always tend to take for ourselves good things and try to keep others from being able to share them with the rest of the world; up to and including the abstraction of knowledge itself. It is part of who we are as the human species to do this, and unless we evolve a new chemical or physiological makeup of ourselves that redefines this aspect of us all (meaning we need a gamma ray burst from the sun to completely morph the whole worlds genetic structure to cause the changes in how we live and interact with each other as humans), I do not believe we will ever see changes occur in our lives that are not just temporary and socially illusioned.

However, I must again reiterate that I do believe that Friere’s consciousness to working on formulating and practicing his problem-posing approach is wasted effort; it is only done in vain, as is any work of my own. If anything could ever occur in making changes in our most fundamental human forms of existence, taking action as he suggests will be one of the greatest sources of change ever. That is why I feel it very closely tied to his ideas and approaches toward education and why I appreciate his work. I know I can not live happily unless I try to prove my own fatalistic beliefs wrong, and so I think it is extremely important that we have others like Freire who keep their head high and fight hard for true freedom and equality for all.

Moving on though, the second approach to education that I can draw parallels to in my own course curriculum is Clark Abt’s ideas about how games and imagination can be integrated into educational methods by encouraging learners to play with knowledge as if they were experts. The idea being that if the learners engage themselves deeply into their learning experience, as if they were solving problems as an expert, they will become much more critically engaged in learning and will be much more invested in the result.

Playing as experts when one learns also allows for learners to be both learners and teachers at the same time. Experts are experts at learning things needed to solve unsolved problems at hand while simultaneously being experts in the problems they have already solved.

Play, in its essence can be defined as moments in time when one is absorbed in a realm of imagination that is both taken seriously and known to be false to the actors at the same time. It is an engaging experience where one ‘becomes’ something that they are not (or believe themselves to not be) in actuality, but play as if they were. The mind is taken on a trip through an awoken dream, where viewing the world, exploring it and learning about it happens from the viewpoint of that which is being played-as rather than he or she who is playing.

In designing the initial versions of the courses I have proposed, I have put special attention to this idea. The entire course structure is based on the learners ability to act as an expert on solving the problems he or she bumps into during their work. By demonstrating certain aspects of the Blender3D I intend to give them starting point ideas of what are some possible ways one could solve a particular problem, while also demonstrating possible uses of given tools. They will then be given assignments to create projects of their own design using the demonstrated concepts and tools as a guide for what can possibly be done, and their own inspiration will guide them in the completion of their own projects for themselves. I will ultimately stand in only as another peer available for helping them accomplish their own goals; and I will encourage all but the most superficial learning to be done on their own. We are all experts if we play as such, and that’s how we will learn together.

Conclusion

There is no shortage of learning materials out in the world. There is only a shortage of freedom to access them.

I believe it deeply in my heart that learning is a right of all mankind and no one has the right to take away or limit anyone else’s rights to learn. That is why I have taken it upon myself to ensure that when at all possible, any materials I might release to the general public will indeed be made freely accessible by the audience intended. No language barrier or superficial resource demands should disable one from being able to learn, and neither price to the learner or profitability to me the author should be an issue to accessing the materials either. Learning is a universal right and so it should be made accessible universally as well.

All learning materials that I create will exploit the copyright laws to protect the peoples rights to freely access the materials, modify them, and redistribute them to places that were unreachable before. I will create a community around which this accessibility can be fostered. And I will create a curriculum that attempts to be expandable in it’s very nature.

These are the visions I have. Now it is time to turn them into a reality.

1: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright/ownership.html
2: Freire: Chapter 2.
3: Freire: 81.

Appendix:

Iaya and Ombdi

Let us say that there is one woman who is interested in learning how to use Blender3D. She is an architect who needs to design computer generated models for her architecture firm, and she also is very interested in learning Blender3D to express herself in a modern form of art. Although really, why she is interested is of no importance.

Her name is Iaya and she lives quite far from any city or even big town. Her rural location does not give her access to the Internet, although she does have a computer at home. Since she wants to learn Blender3D, she must get the software onto her computer first, and second learn how to use it. She is able to get the software onto her computer freely, although it will not be for free(zero cost). Equally she will be able to learn how to use the software, but it will not necessarily be for free either (zero cost and regarding freedom).

First off, there are many costs in the purchase of a computer. Transporting the computer, electricity that is used in operating the computer, hardware and software support costs in configuring the computer, etc. These all add up to being unavoidable parts of the costs to use and learn Blender3D.

Then, in order to get a copy of the Blender3D software itself she has a few options. The first is that she could order the software and have it sent directly to her in some digital format like on a CD. She would certainly be charged for this, although it would likely only be the cost of shipping plus the cost of the media being shipped (the CD). Since Blender3D is also free (as in libre) software, it is very easy to get the software for little more than what it costs to get the software from one place to another. If she so chooses to use them, Iaya will have the option to learn how to use Blender3D using the materials I will make available for her, and this will be free (as in libre) as well.

She will have access to the materials themselves for no charge whatsoever. However, she will likely be responsible for the costs of getting that software from its residing location to her own home personal computer. Perhaps she will ask a friend who has the Internet to download these materials for her and put them on a CD. There will be costs involved in this. She could also go to an Internet cafe to download the materials and put them on some media to bring them home. Costs will also be incurred in doing this as well. She could subscribe to some form of Satallite or dial-up phone Internet service to access the courses on-line herself. Again, costs will be incurred in doing this too. Or as well she could go to a class on Blender3D that is being offered in a town near by her to access the materials and courses instead of accessing them on her own. Charges will almost certainly be incurred in the provision of educational services, and any materials printed or otherwise converted into physical media will likely be charged for, but the materials themselves will of course be made free (zero cost and libre).

So it seems that no matter what Iaya will be responsible for some costs in accessing the courses I am to offer and to Blender3D itself. However she will not be asked to sacrifice any freedom to doing so. Let’s extend this example a little more to explain this idea a bit further, and say that Iaya has a friend who only speak Zulu, named Ombdi. He also wants to learn Blender3D, but in doing so he will face a few more difficulties than Iaya.

We know that the course materials are only available at the time he is looking for them in Spanish and English. We learn that Ombdi only has access to an old style Mac at home that is not up-to-date with the latest software of the day, but he can visit Iaya whenever he wants to use her more up-to-date computer too. However, even though he is able to visit Iaya anytime he likes, Ombdi wants to read the course materials at his own home, and use Iaya’s computer only to practice with the software during the weekends. This is a simple right that we should all have, the freedom to access education materials in the privacy of our own homes.

The fact that Ombdi has an antiquated computer that is no longer supported by mainstream developers always spells trouble for most people if they want to access something that has been created using software unavailable to the system. Ombdi is left with only a few options.

He could not for example learn to program in order to update the software on his old Mac. Most likely any software he might be interested to use on his old Mac will be highly restricted in this regard. Access to software source code is extremely limited to nonexistant and if it is available for proprietary software, it is surely limited for usage in very defined and definite purposes, with no legal permission given to modify it without paying some fees or royalties.

He also could not ask Mac to update his computer for him in order to access the course materials. They have specifically dropped support for older software and discontinued development on it as well. This is common practice with proprietary software developers, and code is turned to unrecoverable waste in the process.

Therefor the only option Ombdi is left with if he is to depend on the proprietary software route is to upgrade his computer in its entirety because the old versions of the software were also tied in extremely tightly with the underlying computer hardware. This means that in order to use the new software, you must also use new hardware. But again, this is not an option for Ombdi, he can not afford a new computer nor would he want one when he is able to use Iayas whenever he wants. He just wants to be able to freely read the materials in the privacy of his own home.

Another option Ombdi has then is to learn to program himself and create a new software program that runs on his old Mac so that he is able to access the course materials as he wants. It is an option that most would not wish to be forced into taking, however, it is a viable option.

Software and hardware is changing so rapidly that if you do not have the resources to continuously buy the new upgrades for new hardware and software on a three to five year cycle, you will be left in the dust if you can not program and depend on old hardware. Software manufacturers like Microsoft, Novell, SCO, and the like are all creating software that fits the most advanced computing needs with a delay of approximately 5-7 years between when products are made available and when they are discontinued and left completely unsupported. Software is brought into existence along with hardware and quickly both are made obsolete and thrown away into the copyright trash bin. No one is able to continue to develop these bits of software even if they still have great use value because the copyright holder disallows them to do so. They are in other words attempting to force Ombdi to upgrade out of necessity since they assume he will not know nor want to know how to program software to do what he wants done for himself. A logical and very reasonable assumption; though it is still possible that he could in fact want or need to access something on his old unsupported and discontinued computer system that he is motivated enough by to learn to program.

Depending on whether or not Ombdi wants to learn to program than will be the determining factor in the success of this route. He certainly has the option of either programming a piece of software in it’s entirety that functions to open and access the media file format as it is, or he could partake in one of the many already existing communities of people working to develop software that could do the same.

This would work too because of the nature of how the format the materials will be released under. In order for the materials to be accessible to people without anyone needing to sacrifice any freedom for them, the materials will be created using a file format that is also released as under a free / libre license. This implies that the code that makes up the file format itself (not just the content which it contains, i.e. the materials for the proposed courses) will be freely available to everyone, allowing anyone to learn how the software reads the file format and enables anyone to create software to read the code for themselves.

However, let’s suppose for a minute that Ombdi does not in fact want to learn to program, he simply wants to access the materials on his computer without having to learn how to create software to do it. Let us look again at what else is possible.

Since there is no option of having software that could read the course materials in their current media format(no software already exists that can read the new version of the file format being used to hold the content of the materials), a conversion of the media format then is the next most viable option. This indeed too seems like an obvious and easy thing to do as there must be generic, freely accessibly media format that one could convert the materials into that functioned well on the old style Mac computer system. Unfortunately there is not. Ombdi can not use for example Microsoft Words old doc format, or Corels own document format either because he can not find this software to open and read these formats anymore in the first place. These versions of each company’s software have long been discontinued, and they are no longer available to the public, nor have they been available for many years. Ombdi will not be able to get his hands on a copy of the software for this reason, and if he did, it might cost him more money than he would be willing to spend anyway if some company was going to release the software to the public again for such a purpose. All he wants to do is access already existing learning materials in the first place, and these tools are more than fully capable of doing so if permission would be done to allow for it. Plus, if he was able to get an old copy of the software from a friend, he would be illegally accessing the software and would risk possibly being sued, fined or sent to jail for ‘pirating’ since most software of this type are licensed only to be used by the original purchaser’s computer (a one-seat license). Ombdi of course would not want to break any law in order to read these materials in his own home so he will decide not to use the software even if he finds it.

Okay then, let us say instead that he already had Microsoft Word or some other similar document reader on his Mac. Could he not just convert the materials to meet version requirements of this older version of the document reading software? Well theoretically yes, but more likely no for the same reasons as noted above. Each company creates newer and newer media file formats to meet the needs of new features implemented in their progressing software. This is expected, and so the new software readers begin to discontinue supporting older file formats such as the one Ombdi would need to have the materials converted to in order to read them on his old Mac.

The problem arises not when the old versions of the medial file formats are discontinued in the newer versions of the document readers. The problem arises when the old versions of the document readers and file format versions themselves are pulled from the market and are made unavailable for public use and no one is given permission to continue to use the software developers “work”.

In Ombdi’s case, he would need to find an old version of the document reading software in order to export to an old version of the file format, but would be hard pressed to find one. He would also need to figure out a way to get the document reader to be able to read the newer format without being able to modify the proprietary software document reader, which would be a challenge since he does not have permission to modify the software since it is proprietary.

One would think he could ask the original authors themselves for a copy of such software, but they would more than likely deny this request; they have no incentive to oblige it. One would also think that the software could be found somewhere else, pehaps one of the hundreds of thousands of software repositiories on the Internet, but the chances are just as slim since this software has actually been pulled from the market and been made inherently useless and undistributable.

He could also perhaps ask the developers of the proprietary software to custom build the feature into the software, but this will cost a lot of money and will take a long time.

Since trying to use the proprietary software’s own creators as a solution will not function, perhaps Ombdi could instead use an explicitly nonproprietary though very super generic media file format such as a TXT file that only supports text to read the materials. Well, he could, but this would not allow for him to fully access the materials as they were intended to be accessed. The materials include many photo references throughout for example, and a TXT file format is unable to recognize them as anything more than text. TXT format is functional as a generic media format, but lacks even the most simple of features that make digital document files really useful as a means for distributing learning materials. Again, another option that is viable, although it would severely limit Ombdi’s ability to learn from the materials as they were meant to be learned from.

Finally then there is one more potential solution to Ombdi’s problem (though I have not necessarily exhausted all other possibilities). He might be able to simply print out the course materials from a different computer that is more up-to-date and so can read the media format that the materials are provided in, assuming perhaps that Iaya has a printer at home. But this only superficially solves Ombdi’s problem, and in fact it goes exactly against what he set out to do in the first place. Having this option also does not guarantee either Ombdi’s freedom to access the materials using the resources he has available to him anyway, even though without a doubt those same resources could easy be evoked to accomplish the task he wishes to accomplish.

This option only proves that when there is will, there is a way. If Ombdi really wanted the materials badly enough, he could also just copy them by hand. But why should he have to be forced to such a level when the tools are able to function but are just allowed to be used to their fullest extent. He should not. That is the point.

All Ombdi really wanted to do was use his computer to access the digital resources that he had, using the resources he had. But he is practically and morally unable to do so because of the social restrictions and limitations put on all the computer system components themselves (both software and hardware). The materials should have been easily accessible by even such an old computer as Ombdi had since the sophistication of the materials was so low. We have been able to access document files with text and pictures for many many years, even before Ombdi’s computer was top of the line.

However we will always run into these same problems though when (in this case) software is restricted by copyrights that negate by law the users freedom to use it in any way they might need to in order to use it to its fullest extent. Ombdi needed to be able to read a media file format that was not originally anticipated when the software was developed (how could they unless they saw the future). He could could not access this format though because he was not given permission to make changes to the software reader itself, nor was he allowed to access software that could have enable the conversion of the document format itself into one that then would allow for the software to read the document without needing to be modified.

Which lead ultimately to the situation where even though this software and computer hardware was purchased by him to be usable as a tool to do just this–read documents–he was unable to successfully yield the tools for this purpose because he was not also given the freedom to use the tool along with it. Instead he bound by limitations and restrictions on his freedom.

In my mind this is be equivalent to buying a hammer that is limited in how you are able to use it. Take for example a scenario where the new hammer you just purchased is only able to be used when hammering a certain type of nails in a certain configuration on a certain type of wood, even though the hammer is more than capable of being used with many other diverse configurations and types of nails.

Personally, I believe this to be a morally wrong practice in and of itself. I believe strongly that Ombdi for example, has the right to access learning materials without the need of knowing how to program himself per se, nor with any dependency on a certain type of hardware or software that he anyway is unable to access.

Posted by drpoo as General at 5:55 PM PST

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