::fibreculture:: WebCT, Open Source and Beyond

[Tama Leaver]

Hi All,

If I may weigh in (belatedly) to this conversation by means of a
rather large segue to a story that wrote itself in my teaching today. 
I'm looking after an Honours course in Communication Studies here at
UWA called "iGeneration: Digital Communication & Partcipatory Culture"
and for their major projects the students are doing some sort of
research-podcast (the exact details of which are being negotiated, but
the main aim is to focus on the specifics of digital audio &
distribution while doing something innovative in terms of research). 
Today I presented the students with a choice: we could either dedicate
our lab time to learning a semi-professional audio editing tool which
is already installed on the lab computers which students have access
to 8am-10pm daily (and which requires a paid license to use elswhere)
or use Audacity (an exceptionally good open source, multi-OS audio
editor).  Without exception, the students chose Audacity and when
asked why they all gave the same reason: they can use Audacity on
their own computers now, and in the future, to do whatever they want
and have skills which are useful (without extra cost) for their own
media production elsehwere/when.

Now, I realise that a course which covers such issues as copyright,
the Creative Commons and podcasting is more likely to attract students
who would normally gravitate toward the open source options, but I was
still really impressed that *everyone* chose to use the open source
alternative for reasons which reflect a philosophy of learning and use
beyond the bounds of the university.  These are the sort of student
that make me glad I'm teaching (or, at least, participating in the
teaching/learning/research nexus!).

Oh, and we're also running the course using a blog
<http://i-generation.blogspot.com/> for digital interaction, not
WebCT! :)

Cheers,
Tama

PS I realise this is not about courseware, but I thought this thread
could use an optimistic annecdote about students and open source
anyway!

PPS I'm sure with all of this interest in courseware etc., the FC "New
media, networks and new pedagogies (2006)" issue will have some
amazing articles in it!