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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

#161

Post by thomastjeffery »

chicob wrote: post #94

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 ev…

It's still better than maintaining windows, or even OS X.

Ideally they would use a nice maintainable linux distro, but no one is doing that right now, AFAIK.

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

#162

Post by thomastjeffery »

patja wrote: post #87
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 profi…

> Are we doing students a disservice by sending them out into the world without proficiency or even familiarity with Office?

No. As long as you understand how a spreadsheet works, and how to use some sort of Word clone, it's trivial to learn the specifics of Microsoft Office.

On the other hand, we are doing the world a service by promoting tools that are more readily available, and less proprietary. It would, however, be more helpful to replace Google Docs with free software like LibreOffice.

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

#163

Post by thomastjeffery »

tchaffee wrote: post #110
misingnoglic wrote: post #71

Honestly, this isn't a big issue for two reasons: 1. The Google stuff works. I would have loved for that kind of organization and management in my elementary school classes. Google docs is also great and means I don't have to beg my not so wealthy parents for a Microsoft word license (or learn in the 4th grade how to pirate it). 2. Let's not kid ourselves, everyone is going to make a Google account anyway. As long as…

Your 2nd point and obedient acceptance of the inevitability highlights just how much of a monopoly it is and how desperately we need alternatives. Or to just break up the monopoly.

I agree that we need to promote real free software alternatives.

That still ignores the fact that Google Docs is quality, usable, and much more readily available than LibreOffice/etc.

What we are really talking about here is the move from Microsoft tools to Google tools. That is a move that is entirely positive. Microsoft Office is one of the most - if not the most - prolific suites of proprietary tools in the world right now. Maintaining Windows is an absolute headache, especially when it is constantly being used by hundreds of children/teenagers. OS X is easier, but still not a good alternative. Out of the options most educators find available, Chromebooks are definitely the best.

To convince the next generation not to rely on Microsoft's proprietary software is a huge step in the right direction. While I share your concerns, they are not new, and I welcome this change.

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

#164

Post by thomastjeffery »

This is a huge step in the right direction. Microsoft Office and Windows are a huge unnecessary and practically unmaintainable approach.

That being said, public education would benefit even more from using a consistent, maintainable, and free Linux distribution.

Public schools but a lot of worthless effort into providing computers for students that are (attempt to be) secure and usable. A good Linux distribution (like NixOS, or even Ubuntu) has tools to provide a consistent maintained operating system for tens or hundreds of systems. This has been the case for over a decade, but administrations have assumed that since everyone uses Windows, that they would be swimming upstream to do otherwise.

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

#165

Post by thomastjeffery »

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…

> corporate solutions

This is why I have always wanted schools to start using Linux.

When I use Windows or OS X, and I want a program to do a thing, I have to sift for hours through half-baked $20 tools that claim to do that thing until I find the free one that does it well. In Debian/Ubuntu/Nix/etc., there's a package for that.

The goal is to maintain these systems. The least maintainable operating systems I have ever used are Windows and OS X. To contrast: the most maintainable operating systems I have ever used are NixOS, Android, Archlinux, and Ubuntu (in that order).

Story Time:

When I was in high school, all the computers were running Windows (XP to 7 depending on the date) and Deep Freeze. Deep Freeze is a "commercial solution" that runs windows like a Live CD (All filesystem writes go to a tmpfs that disappears at reboot). Every time we went to the "computer lab", we would have to wait ~10min. (not kidding here) for windows to boot. If we wanted persistent storage (to save homework), we would need to use our own (USB storage, email, etc.) I, and a few of my friends, learned the password to disable Deep Freeze, so we could have persistent storage, and secretly abused it. "C:\persis.sys\[Starcraft, Warcraft, OpenLieroX, HaloCE, etc.]" stuck around for a few years after my graduation.

The geek that I was, I eventually moved up to carrying around a flash drive with tinycore, and a floppy to boot it (those systems just predated USB boot). When we went to the computer lab, I popped in my floppy and flash drive, and within a minute had Linux running on a ramdisk, and Chrome at my fingertips. At least 5min. passed before anyone else could log in to Windows.

End Story Time

Windows has gotten much more maintainable, and usable, but still hasn't even approached what Ubuntu was more than 10 years ago. The fact that Microsoft software is the status quo sickens me. We have failed our communities by letting that perpetuate. We have wasted thousands upon thousands of tax dollars on this issue when free software has been readily available, and far superior. There is no excuse.

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

#166

Post by thomastjeffery »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #134
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…

>The only thing worse are the windows computers, which are in such bad shape that they just stopped using them. Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly. I have experience with small (~200) and large (~6,000) professionally maintained Windows installations. They operate like a finely tuned engine, allowing you to focus on your core work. And that's the key. There are hacks who call themselves "IT…

> Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly.

That is the heart of the issue. Maintenance should not be so difficult. It has generally been a non-issue for most Linux distros for over a decade. Windows maintenance is difficult on purpose. There is an entire economy based on windows maintenance. It's not just a headache, it's like shooting yourself in the foot.

> There are hacks who call themselves "IT" and there are true IT folks who have the training and knowledge to do things right the first time around.

Since we are talking about public schools, I accept the reality that there will, more often than not, be a "hack" employed. Even so, their job should be that easy. The reason that it is not is that Windows promotes a culture of "hacks" and misinformation. GNU/Linux has the opposite culture, and it's free.

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

#167

Post by matt2000 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #166
rebootthesystem wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only thing worse are the windows computers, which are in such bad shape that they just stopped using them. Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly. I have experience with small (~200) and large (~6,000) professionally maintained Windows installations. They operate like a finely tuned engine, allowing you to focus on your core work. And that's the key. There are hacks who call themselves "IT…

> Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly. That is the heart of the issue. Maintenance should not be so difficult. It has generally been a non-issue for most Linux distros for over a decade . Windows maintenance is difficult on purpose. There is an entire economy based on windows maintenance. It's not just a headache, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. > There are hacks who call themselves…

And in my case, there are no IT employees at all. For some reason there is budget available to buy the hardware and none to maintain it. This is changing slowly but for the moment it's the unfortunate reality. So it's up to teachers and volunteers to try and make things work, and as you were saying if things are too difficult they just stop using them.

And a side note, I was a Windows user for a decade and have now been a Mac user for a decade and the level of maintenance required for a Mac is _easily_ an order of magnitude less than Windows.

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

#168

Post by code777777 »

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…

Office 365 can also be used in a browser so you get a similar experience. Our state university system switched a couple years back.

All of our documents and apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive) are available in any browser.

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

#169

Post by thomastjeffery »

matt2000 wrote: post #167
thomastjeffery wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like they are old and haven't been maintained properly. That is the heart of the issue. Maintenance should not be so difficult. It has generally been a non-issue for most Linux distros for over a decade . Windows maintenance is difficult on purpose. There is an entire economy based on windows maintenance. It's not just a headache, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. > There are hacks who call themselves…

And in my case, there are no IT employees at all. For some reason there is budget available to buy the hardware and none to maintain it. This is changing slowly but for the moment it's the unfortunate reality. So it's up to teachers and volunteers to try and make things work, and as you were saying if things are too difficult they just stop using them. And a side note, I was a Windows user for a decade and have now b…

> I was a Windows user for a decade and have now been a Mac user for a decade and the level of maintenance required for a Mac is _easily_ an order of magnitude less than Windows.

That's still generally the case, but it's worth mentioning that over the last decade, Windows has improved significantly. It's still the worst OS, but it's a lot closer to OS X now.

After decades of innovation, we now have operating systems like NixOS and Guix that are inherently maintainable in ways Windows and OS X can only dream of. If we had a user-friendly NixOS (or Guix) for schools, etc. it would be trivial, even for teachers and volunteers, to maintain hundreds, or even thousands of systems.

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

#170

Post by sofaofthedamned »

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…

As near as 5 years ago tech-illiterate friend of mine did a 'computing' course in the UK. Most of it was using a word processor, which is fine, but the 'exam' consisted of knowing exactly which menu/shortcut key was used in Word 97 to achieve a goal - bold some text, etc.
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