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

nytimes.com

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

#91

Post by dhimes »

webwanderings wrote: post #32
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…

Chrome book is indeed a real killer product, not just for schools but for average home users as well. Microsoft used to have a Briefcase icon on desktops for offline file syncing. It used to work for those who used it effectively (it was under used of course). But yes, Dropbox went further than anyone else.

Yes I loved the convenience that the briefcase introduced.

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

#92

Post by gaius »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #65
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…

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?

a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education

You think this is altruism? It's getting kids hooked early. Everything Google does is about getting more eyeballs on more ads, never forget that.

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

#93

Post by dkarapetyan »

gaius wrote: post #92
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?

a for-profit corporation is subsidizing public education You think this is altruism? It's getting kids hooked early. Everything Google does is about getting more eyeballs on more ads, never forget that.

You misunderstood me. I agree it is not altruism and that is why I think for-profit corporate entities must be kept out of education. Their values and motives are misaligned.

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

#94

Post by chicob »

I teach high school kids as a part time.

I have around 15 students, and afaik all of them use Android. Most of them are 13-14 years old. They have absolutely no understanding of how advertising-based businesses work, a poor knowledge of privacy settings or the workings of data deletion, nor do they have any remotely adult conception of why they should worry about those things.

They share everything. Sometimes they even take pictures of my whiteboard doodles.

Google's objective is in plain sight for everyone to see. Imo, this Chromebook move is not good at all.

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

#95

Post by petra »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
xnzakg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.

Teaching formula plugging is about as useless as teaching history as dates and names. Teaching how to derive the formula, why it works, etc., is very useful (even if one never needs to use it in post school life). Googling for answers is not learning. It's like lifting weights with a forklift is not exercising.

Not sure. Most people won't remember how to derive equations any,nor they need it, if they need to derive equations they could probably use some piece of software(symbolic solver?), and that's just takes time they could use to understand statistics, for example, which seems more useful.

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

#96

Post by gaius »

xnzakg wrote: post #31
WalterBright wrote: post #20

> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.” Wow. Back when I worked for Boeing on the 757 design, there were engineers that were "formula pluggers" who pulled formulas out of manuals and used them. Then there were engineers who unde…

You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.

But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.

A system that cuts out a whole range of career paths simply because as a kid someone didn't like maths, is a bad one. Kids don't know what they need in life. That's why our culture takes decisions away from them until they are 18.

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

#97

Post by webwanderings »

danblick wrote: post #69
webwanderings wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what your definition of "perfect information good" really is, but books have been converting information into knowledge for hundreds of years. Before the printing press, scribes used to hand-duplicate. The invention of printing press effectively changed the whole scene (just as the searching on the Internet changed Internet). Irrespective of the concerns of privacy etc, Google provides the best sauce of…

The term "information good" is from economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_good An information good is one for which it's very cheap to produce additional units. Unfortunately, I'm probably abusing the term, since books are listed as an example of information goods. The idea is that most of the cost of producing the book goes into the content (writing, editing, etc.) and actually printing one additional…

The original topic was not on the topic of economics, rather, the monopolies any invention creates. The economics of things have existed alongside everything else in human history. The point was whether Google is a monopoly in the context of information. My contention was to identify the fact that Google only facilitates the information (like what printing press did to the information people were keeping orally, or through scribes).

If Google is the monopoly in the sense that the OP describes, then a unified Internet itself is a bigger monopoly. Break apart the monolith of the Internet itself, and you have more player contending equally in facilitating search etc.

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

#98

Post by bitwize »

webwanderings wrote: post #32
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…

Chrome book is indeed a real killer product, not just for schools but for average home users as well. Microsoft used to have a Briefcase icon on desktops for offline file syncing. It used to work for those who used it effectively (it was under used of course). But yes, Dropbox went further than anyone else.

I remember Microsoft Briefcase. It was one of the new, exciting features you could only get with Windows 95!

Yes, woefully underused. But in those days networked storage was difficult to set up and removable media meant ZIP drives. Today we have The Cloud™, aka PFM that just works.

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

#99

Post by hanibash »

Google is providing cheap, stable laptops for education and most people commenting here are painting Google as an evil data-hungry corporation. I get that companies should be subject to scrutiny due to their outsized responsibility and impact, but this is just silly.

In 2013 only 60% of children had internet access at home in the U.S.[0]

It might not seem like a big deal for HN readers, but computer access is still a really, really big deal for kids in the U.S.

[0]https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/69_fi...

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

#100

Post by CameronBanga »

gleenn wrote: post #33
matt2000 wrote: post #30

A couple personal anecdotes related to this: I volunteer at a school to help maintain around 300 iPads and ~20 iMacs. It's awful. (I am a longtime Mac user at home BTW). The management tools around updating the iPads, installing apps, and configuring users are all terrible, unreliable and old. It leads to teacher frustration and less use of the equipment in the classroom. The only thing worse are the windows computer…

You should try TestFlight, I think you can have a lot of free users for a large number of poeple.

You can only distribute your own apps through TestFlight. This wouldn't work when trying to install an app from the App Store.
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