51–60 of 214 posts
I've been thinking of ditching Gmail for myself and my business, but what true alternatives are there? I already have O365, but am not particular keen on using Exchange. I'm basically only using Gmail and Calendar. Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?
And for documents, LibreOffice is quite good these days.
Now let's ban MSFT Office365 too. It's of zero use to teach whatever to the kids.
Do you have any reason to say this other than “big corporation bad”? I would argue it is far more helpful for 80%+ of kids to learn excel than to learn advanced maths.
How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns? I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads). Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
It is an open secret if you talk to any Google employee that Gmail data is heavily used to enrich other Google services, including ad placement, even if indirectly. They also can and will give it to authorities thanks to bulk keyword sharing agreements with or without individual warrants. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl... US citizens should take careful note of the fact their data is onl…
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Plenty of open source options that will teach them 90% of what most people will need to know. Taxpayer money should not be going to these corporations.
Maybe what you need to know, but not how to use the programs. I was very anti Microsoft in my school days but had to learn Excel and Word in school. It helped me so much in my first job.
How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns? I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads). Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
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Should we teach kids to use TikTok and Facebook so they will be better prepared to help with future office marketing tasks too? This line of thinking is poison and will only amplify the monopolisic power of whatever select companies make the taught-in-schools list. Proprietary technology has no place in educational institutions.
No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.
Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.
How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns? I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads). Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?
The issue is that the US government is entitled access to all data hosted by US companies. This means data hosted by a US company is not safe according to GDPR.
But only one local county have been forbidden from processing personal data on school chromebooks as they did not do any analysis of the consequences.
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Google has lost the PR war in Europe they are now a political punching bag there. Practically Gmail is probably one of the best choices for privacy with a good track record including attempted breach by China playing a role in their exiting the country. But in principle Google as an ad company will never be acceptable to those who want privacy to be more valued
You might be confusing privacy with security here
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I'd have to disagree here. Teaching kids how to use Word and Excel will help them for the majority of office jobs out there.
Plenty of open source options that will teach them 90% of what most people will need to know. Taxpayer money should not be going to these corporations.