This post is prompted by some outstandingly depressing UK statistics:
The summer 2008 will see fewer candidates taking GCE Computing than even the previous year's low, approximately 5000 out of the total of 800,000 GCE's, of which barely 600 are female; secondly the drop out rate for Computer Science at University is now the highest of all subjects at over 10% and to top it all our projected industry demand for IT professionals is estimated at a massive 150,000. If all our computing GCE students went to university to do computing they would amount to under 2% of demand.
How on earth do we find ourselves in this position? To set the scene before we look at what actually happens in schools I will remind you that some months ago I predicted Linux will dominate school desktops in 5 years through low cost personal computers. Since then HP and Dell have lined up their own Open Source offerings in this sector so it may be a lot quicker than I first thought. There will be an accompanying growth in demand for Open Source engineering services. If we are to meet this demand for new engineers able to work with Linux then the statistics are even more worrying.
The Rise and Rise of ICT
A survey of school IT qualifications provides the clue. There are today a plethora of examinations relating to using computers in schools. The majority, the overwhelming majority, are ICT qualifications: this is to say qualifications in Information and Communication Technology, a title that needs a little exemplification...
ICT qualifications are offered by various QCA approved awarding bodies: AQA, EdExcel, OCR, E-Skills, ECDL, BCS and INGOTS to name most but not all. The qualifications themselves subdivide into categories: Key Skills, GCSE, GCE (AS A2), GNVQ, CLAIT (cert and diploma), BTec, HND and of course the new Diplomas which are due to replace a lot of them. We are not quite finished with categories; all of the above are divided and united into 'Levels'. Thus CLAIT operates at Level 1 through to Level 3, Key Skills are Level 3, INGOTS Levels 1-2, GNVQs Levels 1-4 and so on. AS and A2 GCE's are levels 3,4. Many have proxy transferable Levels between categories. Confused? I hope so, most teachers are. In any case whatever qualification you get, ICT means 'Office' skills, lots of coursework (mostly institutionalized cheating) with a bit of other social stuff added in.
There are scores of intersecting ICT courses barely differentiable from each other, the vast majority date from 2000 (floppy drives anyone?), all talk about social impact of ICT, none know about social networking; all instruct about copyright, none mention patent issues or intellectual freedom; none except INGOTS know about open standards. It's not all doom and gloom though. Buried deep in the OCR course list is a nugget or two. Did you know that the OCR GNVQ course iPro is a gem or that one of the new ICT Diplomas has a great Sys Admin Level 3 course? I thought not. It's all too complicated. ICT qualifications are manifold because IT literacy is seen as an imperative and awarding bodies make lots of money from qualifications.
What does ICT really mean?
ICT courses mean proficiency in presentation, word processing, e-mail and spreadsheets. Ho Ho, I should have said, MS Power Point, MS Word, MS Outlook, MS Publisher and MS Excel. Actually, unlike a few years ago, no publicly examined course today dare explicitly require a single proprietary package for its qualification (except CLAIT which has no such qualms), but when reality on the ground is taken into account, an ICT qualification in UK schools really means proficiency in MS Office. Nice work Bill, how did this happen and what are the consequences?
The infamous MOU
The great change happened in 1997 when the newly elected Labour Government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Microsoft for ICT in schools. The MOU still exists but Becta is less than happy with it nowadays as I have referred to in previous posts. I can still see a happy smiling Prime Minister and the CEO of Microsoft beaming the good news through my television screen (I no longer own a television just in case). Almost overnight on a wave of funds and 'advantageous' educational licencing, ICT replaced IT in schools. No ICT course has a programming or a systems module, instead students are taught to be mere consumers of technology, and operators of applications. Complex fragile networks in schools also mean that students are locked out of the system and potentially invasive coding activities are deprecated.
Thus in barely one school generation ICT wiped out computing.
If you think I am over egging the pudding, here is a timely reminder courtesy of Labour's David Lammy MP at a launch of a new 'literacy in IT' Government initiative this week. The answer to bridging the divide for the estimated 17 million digitally excluded from ICT is ...Microsoft's Digital Literacy Curriculum ! Yes thanks to a $ 12 million donation from Bill those non-Microsoft users missed out by UK Gov-MS plc will at last get their chance to join the fold.
Ways Forward
Most computer engineers I know are self-taught. You will commonly hear mention of Atari, Commodore, BBC Micro, even Win 95 as platforms on which they cut their teeth. I have yet to hear of XP/Vista script kiddies. Coding and engineering requires open systems (you knew this was coming), the legendary taking the clock apart as an indication of nascent techno behaviour would not have happened if we started with quartz mechanisms; you simply can't get under the bonnet (hood). The same applies to modern appliance like computers you are not encouraged to find out what makes them tick. Open Source software gives us the tools to play with the clock again. Here is my recipe for the success of computing in our schools.
Move ICT courses out of the Level system of the curriculum. The accrediting and examining QA processes just freeze content. ICT is not like chemistry, it changes uniquely and continually and has no core knowledge. ICT courses should live or die according to their usefulness and should not be promoted by the state.
Increase the availability of computing courses at all Levels within the system. Engineering principles have a much longer shelf life and make very good qualifications as it happens.
Becta should do as did Newham Council last week and drop MS's MOU
In summary for as long as school computing amounts to little more than how to use MS Office, our technological base will continue to erode. We cannot hope to compete in the modern world by relying on a few, intelligent self-motivated and self-taught individuals to escape the education system. As a first step in liberating the next generation why don't we give them a tweaked copy of Ubuntu's excellent live Linux distro. On it with all the other usual goodies will be the developer environments for Python, Ruby, Java, Gambas. Go kids, reboot those closed boxes from your live CD and learn about freedom. At least then we may have someone homegrown to recruit in the future.
Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images. McIntyre ran for the post of Debian Project Leader in 2006 but was defeated by Anthony Towns by only six effective votes. In 2006-2007, he was named "Second in charge", a post created for him by Towns. In the 2007 DPL election, he was defeated by Sam Hocevar, again by a small margin, only eight effective votes. In 2008 he again ran for the position of DPL and was elected.
Q: What's your view on the encumbered patent deals that some Linux distributions have signed up to (e.g. Xandros, Linspire)? What do you think will be the effect on Linux in particular and FOSS in general?
I can understand that some companies may feel more comfortable by signing that kind of deal to cover themselves. Some markets like the US are notorious for problems with software patents, and I guess it comes down to a simple business decision to weigh up the costs of doing this kind of deal against the potential costs of a legal defence against a patent attack (baseless or not).
However, I strongly feel that making this kind of deal is a mistake in the longer term. It lends legitimacy to the software patent system and in particular to whatever patents may be mentioned in these
deals. Doing that is bad in and of itself, but it will also lead to reduced support by the community. Free Software and its developers can only be damaged by the software patent system.
Q: Debian is sometimes criticised as being for hobbyists despite evidence that it's used by some very serious organisations for some massive deployments. Do you think the Debian project has some work to do in articulating its enterprise credentials?
I think that there's always scope for us to do more on that front. There will always be some users who won't believe in Debian as an option for the enterprise just because we're not directly backed by a large corporation, and that will be a difficult attitude to change. However, I know of lots of companies today that will provide paid support for Debian where it's required, and we already have a fine reputation for stability. I think that the next trick is to start making more of a positive impact directly in the "Enterprise" space with positive press exposure and good reviews. Maybe that's something that you can help with. :-)
Q: Debian started off as a benevolent dictatorship run by Ian Murdoch and then by Bruce Perens. Is it fair to say that the subsequent democratisation of the project has resulted in more time being devoted to politics rather than technology?
Oh, absolutely. As we've grown in size and changed our governance model over the years, clearly more of our time has been spent on talking to each other rather than *just* working on the technical issues. I think that's an unavoidable consequence of our growth, just like in any organisation. But there is still plenty of time to do the
technical collaboration that we're known for, don't worry.
Q: Debian has traditionally favoured Gnome over KDE? Given the former's support for the passage of OOXML through ISO and the upcoming release of KDE 4.1, do you think this might change?
In the very early days of Gnome and KDE, we did favour Gnome to a certain extent. There were some very public disagreements between Debian and the KDE folks over licensing to start with, so for a while we did not include KDE at all in our releases. But since that problem was fixed (years ago) we've worked well with both the Gnome and KDE developer communities and we have large, active teams working on packaging for both systems. I don't expect to see that change any time soon, to be honest.
Q: What are your hopes from the upcoming Debconf in Argentina?
I'm expecting that we'll have yet another vibrant, exciting conference this year, with lots of cool technical content and (just as important) lots of time for our developers to socialise and get to know each other better. Despite our experience in Debian at harnessing internet communication methods to work together, there's still a great deal of benefit to face-to-face meetings.
There's also still time for sponsors to get involved with Debconf. We're always looking for more money to help pay for the
conference itself, plus we try to help with the travel costs for many of our contributors. Many companies have already seen the benefits of being associated with us.
My principle interest has always been the use of Open Source thin-client solutions in an educational context. Its worth stating, again, what is really the blindingly obvious - thin-client work stations use one twentieth of the power of a typical PC (10-20 watts versus 200-400 watts), require no maintenance or technical per-machine support and Open Source software is free of licence costs.
Thin-client networks should be 'no-brainers' for schools trying to meet carbon targets, giving value for money and eking out scant human resources.
Needless to say thin-client deployments in schools are as rare as hen's teeth!
But thin-client solutions just will not go away, and for good reason, it's just that it is very hard to dislodge the incumbent fat boy PC and their fatter still vendors.
Cries of the death of the PC are frequent and always come to nothing. The only major vendor who has doggedly beaten the thin-client drum is Sun Microsystems with their SunRay workstations.
Microsoft's RDP thin-client servers are admittedly ubiquitous but invariably they are used as remote (expensively licenced) add-ons to a conventional PC network.
The big software vendors fear loss of revenue from diskless low power work stations. Sun's premium 'blue chip' pricing hardly encourages new customers and MS fear the loss of revenue from their per PC licencing.
In other words the market for thin-clients is repeatedly announced and then killed by the interests of corporate business models.
How thin-clients will change education (really)
You can't keep a good concept down however and there was a inevitability that the Open Source community would be at the cutting edge of innovations in this area.
However let's deal with recent hardware developments first as these impact on the whole scene:
Thin-client Laptops
Even 18 months ago it was a difficult search to find thin-client laptops and notebooks. Today this market is overflowing with offers. Wyse, Lenovo, Comet and even Dell (supplied if not branded) offer disk-less wireless notebooks for businesses and schools. The compelling sales pitch is that these devices contain no persistent data that can be left in the taxi or lost in the T5 baggage handling void.
In other words serial data loss incompetence and the fear of future losses from public services, school databases and others has driven a huge change from the PC Laptop. This alone may ensure the rise of the thin-client solution.
Of course the data and applications for these notebooks has to be stored and supplied by a thin-client server. We will deal with this later.
Cost
It is a while now since highly specified thin-client terminals with decent graphics broke the £99 barrier and became available with power consumptions below 10watts. This trend shows no sign of abating as Intel Atom chip is released and commodity hardware costs fall. £50 and 4 watts should be all an office needs for its everyday work station. As we said above this should be a no-brainer set against a £400 PC with 400 power packs and per seat licences.
Gaming Consoles
Gaming consoles are very much overlooked technologies for those of a certain age. Computer games are played on high spec PC's, MS XBox, Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's Wii. PC's Xboxes and PS3's all use much the same power; 200 watts or so when gaming, 1-2 watts on standby. The tiny Wii however uses 10 watts when gaming and 1-2 watts on standby.
The Wii, which is currently the best selling console, is very much a graphics-competent web-facing thin-client. Opera indeed produced and support a version of its browser just for the Wii. This means that, in effect, regarding Web2 applications the Wii is a modern thin-client for everyone.
Forget 17" monitors and think HD TV instead. From an educationalist's point-of-view there are some very interesting downstream consequences of this development, more of that at the end of this post.
Server Software
Thin client hardware is, of course, nothing without server-side software. In the world of Microsoft we are well used to the ageing RDP server and in the Open Source world we have the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP).
Other new server-side solutions are very exciting indeed:
An Open-Source Hybrid Thin-Client Project from SafeDesk Safedesk is a new Open Source project that uses Debian Live Net to create a Terminal Services Environment. It claims full local device support such as USB, and a full virtualisation of operating systems such Win XP.
openThinClient A free Java 6 product provides the server and client software which can be installed on any existing hardware.
Xandros Server 2 The Linux distributor Xandros has collaborated with NX NoMachine to produce a thin-client server with powerful virtualisation features and a variety of boot options.
Nydio and Userful Two separate offerings based on Open Source software which effectively are PC replicators. One PC is used to run 2, 4 or 10 users using separate keyboards and monitors.
The products above are very intriguing in themselves. On one hand they represent a renewal in interest in the terminal server, with the added twist of the energy saving virtualised server suite, but they also show an innovative approaches to sharing out the excessive CPU power of the single PC.
Whatever the approaches it seems economic and environmental imperatives now mean that mindset has changed and the emphasis is on making best use of computing power rather than building gas guzzlers with huge operating system overheads such as demanded by Vista.
Web 2.0 and Thin-Clients
The Net-pc came and went 10 years ago. Web applications and revenue models had not advanced to the point of usefulness but all that has changed emphatically now. Perhaps the most powerful illustration of how things have changed can be illustrated by the following (actual) scenario:
The home-educated student has logged onto the web and is using the Open Source program Second Life. She is using her Wii as a thin-client web terminal and her HD TV to attend 'school' where, in addition to accessing her teachers' avatars, she can access educational content through the Open Source VLE Moodle and Google's Apps.
Maybe the classroom of the future will come to you via be Open Source software and Nintendo's hardware!
Summary
The death of the PC is predicted once again. Of course I will be wrong like all the others before me. Personal Computing is so seductive that it will morph into ultra-cheap low-powered devices that hybridise the web thin-client with the personal device. Even Dell are aiming to release a sub $100 Linux (Ubuntu?) notebook. What I can say, however, is that the day of the big beige/black box is stone dead maybe it will take a major operating system vendor with it.
This post is prompted by some outstandingly depressing UK statistics:
Steve McIntyre is a software engineer and a long-time Debian developer. His best known contributions have been in the field of creating Debian CD/DVD images; he is the debian-cd team leader and is responsible for generating the official images. McIntyre ran for the post of Debian Project Leader in 2006 but was defeated by Anthony Towns by only six effective votes. In 2006-2007, he was named "Second in charge", a post created for him by Towns. In the 2007 DPL election, he was defeated by Sam Hocevar, again by a small margin, only eight effective votes. In 2008 he again ran for the position of DPL and was elected.
