I often talk about the difference between free vs. free and open.
There are a lot of great free tools out there: all the Google apps, Photoshop Express, etc., but free is not open. Increasingly as there are free and open alternatives (Open Office, GIMP, etc.), we all consider migrating to them.
Here’s a quote about this that I really love from someone discussing various blogging tools:
“[WordPress] also has the advantage of the school owning the data and access.
Telling students to use Blogger is instructing them to give over their data and browsing patterns to a third party.”
– from Steve O’Connor
Free vs. free AND open
Thanks Karen!
This has been an important topic to me as I see so many direct their students to use commercial web 2.0 tools. I just wrote post on my blog on this matter:
BTW–I out this site on my blog role!
The difference just became clearer with edublog’s latest move puttin inline ads in blogs:
Steve