This artifact helped me source for ideas pertaining to the use of free softwares in education. Artifact 3 is presented based on Chapter 4 of Professor Curtis Bonk's book entitled The World is Open where I touched on Opener 3: It's a Free Software World After All. This opener offers various views and discussion on what led to the creation of free software and its benefits in open learning. In other words, it focuses on the viability of open source and its role in education.
Situation
I created several questions based on this presentation to present the situation of my learning experience. Below are my questions:
1. How do free software and open source affect education today?
2. How prevalent are hacking issues today?
3. What is the difference between Sakai and Moodle?
4. What are the benefits of Sakai and Moodle?
5. As the world becomes "smaller" and technologies customised cater to our individual needs, what will happen to ethics?
Task
The questions posted hinge on the notion of ethical use free software in education. The questions above are formulated based on the following tasks for Artifact 3.
1. Presentation of a synthesis of ONE of the chapters in Bonk's book.
2. Report on the current trends and issues mentioned in the chapter selected.
3. Present them in the form of slides which you will upload into Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/).
The slides should display an application of ID principles as a whole as well as individually. There should be about 20-30 slides. Please observe copyright rules, etc. Give credit where due.
Action
In relation to Artifact 3, I went on to researched about the unethical use of free software in online games so as to present a more current viewpoint of unethical use of free software in online games in the case of botting. Botting accounts for the use of applications to perform automated tasks. It relates to a certain degree of hacking which is also the central issue of Artifact 3. Refer to the following link to get a clearer understanding of what botting means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_bot
Result
As a result of this exercise, I became aware of the contribution of free software towards open learning and that free softwares, if used ethically, pave way for learning in the 21st century.
Learnt
Artifact 3 presents the unique value of free softwares in education despite some issues pertaining to hacking etc. From this artifact, I learnt that the availability of free softwares will be more extensive in years to come as learning now takes place on a different platform i.e., e-learning where sharing and collaboration is becoming a norm as a source of knowledge growth. This indicates that learners will be able to widen their networks and form a more comprehensive Personalised Learning Environment (PLE). I also found an interesting presentation by Stephen Downes on connectivism and PLE which is related to this artifact. Kindly click here to view the presentation or refer to my links in my home page of this blog.
