Last week’s titterversation with Chris Lehmann and Karl Fisch about the benefits of using free web-based tools (commonly known as “the cloud”) vs hosting your own brought up some interesting internal conversations as the week went on.  While most schools – including mine – have embraced free services like Blogger, Edublogs, Wikispaces and Wetpaint, we need to be aware that using these tools should not be without some degree of angst.

Chris, on the other hand, proposes that schools should be putting their resources into digital inftrastructure and hosting these tools themselves.  He says that as these unsustainable tools come and go, so goes with it the legacy and student-produced content.

It’s hard to argue with his reasoning.  I don’t pretend to know the business plan for any of the companies behind these tools – although I assume they must be making money somehow – and sometimes worry that we have many eggs in one or two baskets.  I assume these rickety cauldrons will only become more leaky as the current economic pressures continue to increase.  I mean, if Wikispaces went down, our school would be hard-pressed to retool on a different platform.

Unfortunately, relying on these free tools is often our only recourse.  While the idea of developing and supporting our own tools has much merit, human and technology resources (or a lack thereof) have IS departments reluctant to take on yet another burden.

So, where does that leave us?  For now, we remain dependent on the wealth and generosity of others.  Much thanks to all these companies for doing the best you can to provide us with resources, especially those companies who have expressly provided products they regularly charge for to K-12 education for FREE!!!

In the long term, I think we all (including senior administrators, politicians, IS leaders, etc) need to be forming a plan for the day when we can realistically provide these resources to ourselves.  After all, FREE is not a suatainable business model.

Technorati tags: technology, education, whipple, learning

Photo credit: Theresistancearmy.com/blog; Uploaded to Flickr on June 1, 2006 by veganstraightedge, Creative Commons licensed.