This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. This segment featuers Ian Lynch, one of the main moving forces behind free open source software and open standards in the UK. Ian has been influential in bringing free open source software to the UK schools, and his INGOTs program for teaching computer use is revolutionizing the use of computers in the classroom around the world. Ian is one of the earliest members of the Open Document Foundation, and he has also been one of the leads of the OpenOffice.org marketing team.

In this particular segment, Ian introduces himself. He is from Townworth, a town near Birmingham. He has been the Education Lead for OpenOffice.org (OOo). He also has a company, called The Learning Machine" which is based in the UK, and provides equipment and expertise to the UK schools.

Ian thinks that the business theory of Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen can apply to social systems. In particular, he is interested in applying Christensen's theory to schools. He believe that OpenOffice.org (OOo) is an untapped resource for education. He hs created an educational instructional system called INGOTs, as mentioned above, which stands for International Grades in Office Technology using OOo.

INGOTs is a program which teaches children to learn how to learn, rather than to teach children to memorize a rote set of facts and functions tied to one software application. The kids using his INGOTs program must contribute something useful to the community with the OOo tool in order to get accreditation through his INGOTs program. The kids are evaluated by peer review, including children and adults, as to whether the child has contributed something useful to the community. The people reviewing the child's work are not told how old the contributor is, nor that the contributor is a child, so that the child's contributions are weighed on their merits.

He says that the value of open source production and the INGOTs learning method is that it ends dependency on training per se, and emphasizes self-directed learning. For example, he contrasts the way that children will figure out a game console's user interface with the way that adults will approach an operating system's user interface. The children do not refuse to play on a new game console simply because the user interface has buttons in a few different places; whereas adults will be skeptical of changes to a few buttons on an operating system's user interface. The adults will demand to be trained; whereas the children will explore and learn for themselves. He believes that the do-it-yourself mentality of open source can help change this culture of depnency on training by others.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_230

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 001, Ian Lynch
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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