Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 174 posts

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#81

Post by patja »

Roritharr wrote: post #29
watmough wrote: post #23

I have a daughter in the local school district. They use Lenovo Chromebooks which are built like brick sh*thouses with proper full-travel keyboards and touchscreens. Chromebooks work, and I am a big fan of them in education. I have a pretty good idea how hard our teachers work, and I'd hate to think of the Windows bullshit being imposed them, like it's imposed on me and my coworkers. Chromebooks free up teachers and…

OneDrive works, if one wants to use it. It just came too late.

I've been through too many OneDrive snafus to invest more effort into making it work or trusting it for anything. Failed syncs, never-ending syncs, and it has hosed up my OneNote notebooks such that I have a whole set of duplicate notebooks I have tried and failed to fix, which all say "This section isn't available yet. It was added from another device. You'll be able to use it when that device syncs. Section was last modified at (some date over 2 years ago)"

And I am a bona fide Microsoft fanboy former employee of 15 years!

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#82

Post by dkarapetyan »

jtraffic wrote: post #66
Eridrus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions definitely come up, and the derivation of the quadratic formula is definitely useful to learn, but the formula itself seems like a mathematical dead end. In general I think being forced to learn things with no clear application is part of why the school system fails…

I see your position. We should acknowledge that both sides of this are well-trodden, and the article even touches on it: "It puts Google, and the tech economy, at the center of one of the great debates that has raged in American education for more than a century: whether the purpose of public schools is to turn out knowledgeable citizens or skilled workers." I guess over time I've started leaning more toward "knowled…

You can do both if the tools being used are commodified but not if they're propietary. Chromebooks and Google applications are proprietary products so they're at odds with creating knowledgeable citizens that can work and think outside Google sanctioned confines.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#83

Post by patja »

skybrian wrote: post #75
dkarapetyan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it is kinda backwards that a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education. This is a symptom of a broken system and instead of praising Google we should fix what is broken about the system. This also creates an interesting precedent if it sticks. Are parents going to beg Google to prop up their schools now?

Are Chromebooks subsidized? Maybe they're just cheaper.

Even if the Chromebooks aren't subsidized, Google Apps for Education is free to use which amounts to some kind of subsidy.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#84

Post by aaron-lebo »

killjoywashere wrote: post #77
dkarapetyan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think it is kinda backwards that a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education. This is a symptom of a broken system and instead of praising Google we should fix what is broken about the system. This also creates an interesting precedent if it sticks. Are parents going to beg Google to prop up their schools now?

This should be a tell that education has value and the government is underinvesting.

You're probably right, but it could just as easily be a tell that education has monetary value, and more invested would only get captured by organizations seeking to make a profit.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#85

Post by dkarapetyan »

WalterBright wrote: post #79
dkarapetyan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not in Google's best interest to have people that think independently of Google. The more woven Google is into the daily fabric of our lives the more profitable it becomes. I don't understand why more alarm bells aren't ringing. A for-profit corporation should not be subsidizing public education. They're not a non-profit. Their motives are always going to be at odds with creating a free-thinking populace. Googl…

Governments have their agendas in public schools other than free thinking, as well.

This is also correct. I mean you're speaking to someone who has first hand experience with how those agendas play out in the U.S. and abroad. Those agendas are exactly why education must not be coupled to proprietary tools. We should be teaching people how to think instead of giving them government or corporate sanctioned thought gardens and patterns.

I don't see how letting Google take the lead is fixing that fundamental issue. It is not in their best interest to do that no matter how you slice it. By Google I mean the corporate entity and not the people working within it.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#86

Post by sdenton4 »

skybrian wrote: post #72
mark_l_watson wrote: post #25

I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google. That said, after reading Dave Eggers' excellent book "The Circle" last year and having watched the movie yesterday, I was reminded of the dangers (even if fictional in the case of the book) of a monopoly controlling knowledge. The book/movie is obviously about Google…

For a historical perspective on the privacy issue, I found this book review interesting. "So from the beginning, kings had an incentive to make the country 'legible' – that is, so organized and well-indexed that it was easy to know everything about everyone and collect/double-check taxes. Also from the beginning, nobles had an incentive to frustrate the kings so that they wouldn’t be out of a job. And commoners, who…

Just a quick +1; Seeing Like a State is one of the best books I've ever read, and is a must read for anyone who uses data to make decisions. (Which, really, should be just about every software engineer...)

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#87

Post by patja »

xbmcuser wrote: post #48

Google I feel has broken Microsoft Office monopoly the difference will be felt 10 years from now though. Earlier everyone had grown up using Microsoft office now most children will grow up using Google Office suite. Though I still think Google sheets is still way behind Microsoft Excel. The day Google can build a convertor that can convert all excel files and macros etc I would shift to Google sheets currently I have…

Isn't proficiency with Microsoft Office still expected in most workplace environments? Google docs, sheets, slides all fall short of the capabilities of their equivalent applications in Office. The Google apps are good enough for many tasks, but really don't cut the mustard if you are accustomed to the depth of capabilities in Office. Are we doing students a disservice by sending them out into the world without proficiency or even familiarity with Office?

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#88

Post by a2decrow »

gravypod wrote: post #80
pmoriarty wrote: post #9

"Free" apps. The only cost is the student's privacy. Gotta get them sucking at the Google teat early, and in to their database as soon as possible.

Well of course! How else will you manage to look at historical trends of your consumers? Gotta start sucking the cash out of the little ones from an early age. I wish someone from the GNU/Linux crowd could make a chromebook-like software set that was really Free software.

Doesn't come with lobbying money, though, so in the end it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#89

Post by Klinky »

coleca wrote: post #45
jtraffic wrote: post #12

> I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it This sounds disingenuous to me. There are lots of things kids and college students and adults learn that have no immediately foreseeable application. I'm sure most people on HN have thought about it. I wonder what the consensus is. My take is that learning how to use technology should not be a class…

The other issue is that these devices have a limited lifetime in comparison to what they are replacing, paper textbooks. We may complain that textbooks our kids have are X years old, or don't have Y or Z fact in them that has transpired since the book was printed, the fact remains that the school didn't have to refresh that book every couple years at great expense. Chromebooks, laptops, iPads, etc. all are fragile an…

Teachers need tools to teach. Books are not exactly better. Texas has had huge influence over the type of books used by US schools. In that case, a Chromebook with Wikipedia is probably preferable.

Re: Google is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps

#90

Post by dhimes »

jorams wrote: post #26
tsm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For basic-to-semicomplex tasks (I'm sure it'd be different if writing a book or something) I've found Google Docs/Slides/Sheets to be easier to use and more feature-rich (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…)

> (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…) You can. It has been in Draw and Impress for a long time, and since LibreOffice 5.0 it's supported in Writer and Calc as well. 5.0 was released 2 years ago.

I agree. I have no problems at all doing any basic stuff in LibreOffice. I've not done any serious programming in it though (db connect to fields in writer etc.)
Post reply on HN