Learning outside of school and the moral justifications of modern piracy

Hmm...sounds like a good title.

So Basically I was sitting reading a good friend of mine’s blog (http://websterswench.weebly.com/) and really

School Zone

wishing I was going to college.  It would be really nice I think to be able to go to college and just learn.  It may seem odd but that is something I’ve really missed.  In school my education was free.  (For me at least.)  This is a little funny to me given how much I complained that I HAD TO GO TO SCHOOL and how badly I wanted out.  Now I’m dying to get back in.  Funny the way life works isn’t it?

But not being able to go to school, and still having a desire to learn, has taught me a few things.

• You don’t need school to learn
• The library is your friend
• Google can teach you a lot if you know where to look
• Piracy is easily justifiable in the right circumstances.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.  The other day I wrote a snippet of javascript code.  Didn’t know your favorite photographer was also a super geek did you?  Alas it is true, I am.  I love web developing and always strive to merge that with my creative side.  The code was fairly simple, it searched a web page for a special link and if it found that link it disabled it.  But for me it was a learning experience.  I made 2 separate calls, created to variables, and made a function.  I don’t expect you to know what that means, but as I made mention above, Google could help you out.

But I didn’t go to school to learn how to do that.  I can’t afford to go to college right now, but I still learned how.  I looked up references on Google, and applying that information to the basics of programming CSS and HTML which I learned from book I checked out of the Library, I was able to put the below code together.

var LINK

LINK=document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);

LINKHREF=LINK.getAttribute(‘href’);

function whats_this_disable {

if LINKHREF = “javascript:void(“help”)” {parentNode.disabled=true}

else

{parentNode.disabled=false}

};

var LINKLINK=document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);LINKHREF=LINK.getAttribute(‘href’);
function whats_this_disable {
if LINKHREF = “javascript:void(“help”)” {parentNode.disabled=true}
else
{parentNode.disabled=false}
};

And I know I’ve been talking a lot about this code I wrote, and I don’t wanna get too hung up on it, but it was really cool for me, and I was able to figure it out without spending an arm and a leg to do so.

Let’s look at another example

Image by richbai90 via Flickr

I took this picture of some beautiful examples of Native American pottery.  I was really impressed by the intricate detail and design that went in to creating these pots.  Moreover, how many of these artists do you think went to school to learn to do this?  Probably not many, if any.  This is an art form that is passed through generations.  Mothers learn it

from their mothers, fathers teach it to their sons.  This is not knowledge that has to be bought with $500.00 a credit hour. (Roughly the estimate of my chosen university.)

Knowledge is everywhere

Just look at Wikipedia

And I guess that’s my point.  It is not something that should cost as much as it does.  I hate how much an education costs and how difficult it can be to get the education YOU want.

I consider myself very lucky for being able to go to a high school where I was afforded the opportunity to take

couldn’t be a professional photographer, or a movie maker.  I am thankful every day of my life for teachers like MaryAnne Hess, or Ren Shore; Teachers who knew something and took a vested interest in their students.  I learned more at that school from those teachers and I would count Steve, my government teacher amongst them as well, than I did in my entire public school career up to that point.  And they were the ones who taught me how to learn and think

Image via Wikipedia

for myself.  That is a life lesson that not any teacher can give, and I am thankful for them, because now being out of school, learning isn’t as convenient of cheap as it was.  I believe that final point causeways quite nicely into my next section of this blog, which is becoming somewhat ranty I’m afraid.

Piracy

Yaaarg

I don’t really condone the word pirate.  It makes me feel like I’m a vicious, greedy, belly guttin’ scoundrel, who’d sooner kill ya as look at ya.  And really I just don’t fit the role.  Piracy for me, answers the question,  “If I don’t learn to

The Pirate Bay

use the industry technology now, how much time and money will I be using learning it in the field?”  Truly, even in college, the colleges that have the industry leading technology at their disposal, and teachers who can teach you, are going charge you for that knowledge.  They’re the real thieves.  $500.00 a credit hour is obscene, just so I can go to a school and learn.  I understand that teachers have to make money, but I wonder how much of the money is going to the teachers.

Let me give you another for instance.  My girlfriend, whose name, I believe we decided was Jane, has a class where the book alone for this class costs $85.00  That is 85.00 for the book, plus tuition and whatever  else.  But it gets better.  This book has to be a new copy because all the work must be done within the book and torn out.  So why don’t you just photocopy it?  Well because any work that has been photocopied from the book is not valid and will not be graded.  Even better, recording equipment of any kind is not allowed and you will fail the class if you are found with it on your person.  That’s right you can’t even record the lecture.  I mean WHAT THE HECK is the point of technology if we aren’t allowed to use it??  What are we learning in school if we are taught that you can’t use technology like photocopiers and voice recorders to make our lives easier, better, or more productive, than we aren’t progressing.  Why are millions of dollars invested into the research industry to create new products when only the very wealthy are allowed to use them?

I believe that knowledge should be free, and readily accessible.  We have the tools to do it, we just need the minds who aren’t afraid to say that this isn’t right.  We are a new generation; it’s time to make it what we want it to be.

A Perfect World

Imagine with me, my perfect world.  A boy, Charles, walks into school with his school issued laptop he bought through a special program from the school.  He has to lease it out for 50.00 a year.  It’s a 4 year lease (time it takes to graduate) and at the end of that 4 years if he has a diploma the laptop is his to own.  So he walks into class and logs onto the school servers.  On the school servers they have Photoshop.  He logs onto photshop just as though it were a website, but it’s a program, with all the functionality of photoshop, he just doesn’t need to install anything.  The school’s server and all

Photoshop

the applications hosted thereon are completely accessible using his student ID and password, so long as he is on the campus.  So he sits down and begins working as his professor lectures.  Using the hosted web version of Dragon the school also has hosted, he is able to transcribe the lecture to word in the background while working on the project he’s demonstrating in real time.   He also is using screen capture technology to stream his own laptop in real time using

Google Wave

google wave, while his friends who are at lunch or at home are taking notes in real time.  Once the class is over he saves the capture to his desktop and uploads it to his favorite file hosting website rapidshare.com as well as youtube for easy access in the future.  All the while, his buddies are doing the same for their classes.  Thus all the notes are taken, all the reference material is there and more time can be spent actually working on the assignment.  But let’s say that Charles lives at home, well that’s easy.  The lease on his laptop then is 100.00 which includes the cost of an access anywhere password for the school server.

It’s as simple as that.  Books can be downloaded as PDF files for reading on a computer or an Amazon Kindle.  You can do that for less than half the cost of the paper book, and you can rent the actual hard copy book from the school library so long as you have an ID card.  All course material and assignments are available free on the school servers to be printed at the student’s convenience.

Learning is collaborative, and thanks to the help of Charles and his friends, all the lectures and studies are available to the general public free on youtube for anyone with the materials needed.  (See above on Piracy)

Anyways, that’s my feelings on the subject.  I know it’s not going to happen tomorrow, and not because I say it should, but I can be a part of the change I want to see.  I believe that.  I want that for myself, my future, and my family.  There is no reason why what I envision here cannot be a reality, and I will help to make it so.