0Via Joss Winn I came across UNIX: The Enlightenment’s Operating System by Bill Thompson commemorating the 40 year anniversary of Unix. A few paragraphs struck me for how they seem to resonate with education.

0 Unix appeals to computer scientists and engineers, and in the thirty or so years since it moved out of the research labs and started appearing on workstations and minicomputers and desktops it has been embraced by those who want to build systems that are open, flexible and expandable, systems that respect their users and administators and acknowledge that they will want to make choices and should not be overly constrained by the tools they have chosen.

0Now, replace "users and administrators" with "students and teachers" and we're starting to describe a rich, fertile educational environment. I want students and teachers to build classes and courses that are open, flexible and expandable. Many of them want that too. They're the edunix teachers and students, and you can spot them doing creative, innovative things in and out of the classroom.

0 As a Linux user (Mandriva's distro, if you're interested), there are a couple additional things I'd like to expand on about why I like it. I like that it's designed so I can get deep down into the inner guts, dig around, and, even though it means I might blow it up, it also means that I can ask the wider community how to rescue it. And in the process, learn some new things that give me greater power and control over my computing environment. (I recently had to learn how to burn a DVD of backup data from the command line) Just like even though some classes sometimes blow up when trying something new, I'd still rather see that experimentation with the confidence that recovery is always possible.

0 I also like having many choices in the tools to use for a particular task, depending on which one I prefer. Can I do this better from the command line, a text editor, or a word processor?

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0If I'm getting particuly fancy-schmancy, sometime I'll use both in conjunction with each other. But I'm a geek that way.

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0Even better, if I find myself with a new kind of task or problem to solve, there are plenty of tools for me to experiement with to see what works best for me. Just pop open the software installer and start browsing for what I need. This is the analogy to the Personal Learning Environment that some educators talk about. It's also pretty clear that what I'm talking about here has a lot in common with EDUPUNK (but might avoid some of the issues that have plagued that term -- yeah, you know who you are :P ).

0Something else Thompson wrote struck me, but this one looks -- unfortunately -- more to what I think dominates in educational environments. Thompson writes that Unix has been successful

0 despite massive resistance to Unix in almost all areas of the industry, especially from Microsoft who wrote Windows NT as a Unix-killer. But Unix has succeeded despite this because it is an operating system that people who understand operating systems like to use. It has succeeded because its core philosophy favours freedom and choice over user control and second-guessing, encouraging questions and investigation and rewarding those who try hard to understand it.

0So, what are the all too successful edunix killers? If I know my readers, you all just shouted "Blackboard!", and we can run a long way with the analogy to Windows NT. Dominance via sketchy, monopolistic business practices. Inflexibility and limitations everywhere. Often doesn't work, but users had no option.

0Here's a scary replacement. If Unix "is an operating system that people who understand operating systems like to use", is the analogy that "edunix is a system of education that people who understand education like to use"? Does the converse of that statement suggest that there are just a lot of teachers and students out there who don't understand education? Or maybe less disturbingly, just like lots of people are intimidated by the term "operating system", people are intimidated by diving too deeply into the guts of what education is?

0 Other edunix killers include good old fashioned resistance to change and resistance to risk. But I'm hoping that the extended analogy I'm working on here can lead into something a little more subtle. After all, the group I work with is profoundly into these edunixy ideas -- hell, I have the fortune of sitting next to Jim Groom, who coined the word "EDUPUNK". Many of the faculty I work with are into the same kinds of ideas. So, if we start with the position that there really is a deep similarity between the spirit of Unix and edunix, why aren't there more Linux users around this group?

0 I'm going to resist the urge to burn off a few Linux DVDs to pass around, and needle into the question instead. I'm forced to confess the possibility that Linux isn't for everybody. It does kinda assume a willingness to get your hands dirty on the command line, at least periodically, especially if something goes wrong. Linux is solid enough to keep millions of web servers up and running, but there's always a system admin on call to watch over things. Most people don't want or need to have that level of responsibility over their computer.

0 Do they, and should they, have the analogous level of responsibility over the educational environment?

0 The analogy with Windows' dominance also can't be ignored. It's simply, unavoidably, what people are used to. Often, it's the first and only operating system people ever know. Especially in K-12 these days, the Windoze-cation system is the only system of education people are exposed to. And Linux is different from Windows. It looks different. It feels different. Just like with switching to Mac, it takes a while to get used to. Unlike switching to Mac, it takes a while to get used to the fact that you have so much control over the environment -- everybody's Linux desktop will look a little different. There are multiple graphical desktops to choose from (Gnome and KDE being the most popular), so you can't look at a screen and say "That's a Linux box" the way you can say that of Windows and Mac. It needs an additional qualifier "That Linux with Gnome" or "That's Linux with KDE". (I use Gnome, btw).

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0 I remember my first year as a professor, and it was a struggle just to get four brand new classes put together for the semester. When I talk about what we do with new faculty members, the things I hear most frequently is "I'd love to try some of that, but after I get the basics of my teaching put together." I don't think I would have been able to handle switching to an edunixy approach, either (though at the time I was still a Windows user).

0 There's also the issue of what a break from the familiar it is. Not only is that kind of break very difficult, and can be counterproductive. In any situation there has to be some amount of common-ground and shared experience to work from. One of the most edupunky/edunixy activities that I've seen folks like Jeff McClurken pull off is starting a class by saying, "Okay, we're going to write the syllabus together". Understandably, that a huge, radical break from what the first-year students are familiar with. But they're still writing a syllabus. That common-ground familiar item is still essential. The control you have with a Linux box is amazingly empowering, but it's hard to push through that break with what's familiar.

0 I don't think that much of this really, ultimately, gets to much of a real explanation for why we don't see more edunix-like systems in education today. But I do think exercises like what I attempted above can be helpful for understanding the obstacles to radical change in how teachers teach and students study. If the analogy between the kinds of educational systems and practices we're trying and encouraging others to try and the systems and practice of using Unix holds, then we might learn about why institutions and individuals are reluctant to switch to new educational practices by examining why institutions and individuals are reluctant to switch to Linux. If you have a friendly neighborhood Linux user/evangelist, but they haven't convinced you to switch, wonder about that, and see if it gives you some insights into why it's hard to convince others to change educational practices.

0 Then burn yourself a DVD of a Linux distro.