The national curriculum for technology subjects within Australia's secondary education sector makes for very interesting reading. As guidelines for an educational framework it is comprehensive and structured in its approach to outlining the fundamental achievements and milestones that students must reach to graduate in senior ICT subjects. As a guidance framework it does not stipulate specific technologies that should be studied but rather themes and concepts that in and of themselves require technologies to deliver. As a result the use of open source as an approach (a model) or as a platform (a tool) within the education curriculum has escaped inclusion to-date due to the sporadic revision of such "documents". 

In our hypothetical series back in March, Andrew Eddie raised the issue of teaching about open source as a platform for ICT software development in schools.  One of the examples he offered was to move away from teaching proprietary Visual Basic (Microsoft) to something that doesn't invoke potential downstream costs such as the LAMP open-source development stack.

In the first instance there would be the opportunity to save on licence costs, whereas in more mature institutions the concept of undertaking project-based custom development would take ICT education to a new level. Imagine if a student's Year 12 ICT project became the basis for the next Red Hat or Facebook. So as not to be mis-represented as anti-Microsoft, Andrew did point out the benevolence of Microsoft within the world's education system was something to be applauded, however the easy-to-learn feature of VB had now certainly been matched by it's open source cousin.

But the learnings that open source software development offers need not end or even start with ICT. Last month Governator Schwarzenegger outlined an approach to reduce costs in the beleagured Californian state system by utilising digital open source text books for all students. Positioned as a "first-in-nation" initiative, it is one of the first of its kind to leverage the open source business model globally within education.

Beyond the business model, the question of open source as a platform presents another opportunity for government to leverage at a more grass-roots level from changes that have already occured within the ICT industry itself. Just ask IBM and many other "traditional" ICT companies who now have thousands of their own employees contributing directly to open source projects that they have come to rely on.