I really don't like this.
Google Classroom
21–30 of 148 posts
Re: Google Classroom
#22I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Many Universities already use stuff like Blackboard[1] which for the most part is TERRIBLE (at least how I remember it in school.) These pieces of software are already around, and if anything competition in the space will hopefully make things better. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc .
But as far as I know, Blackboard (or Moodle or Sakai or...) data is stored locally at your institution, not housed on a Google server somewhere. I think the data mining possibilities are much lower in that case.
I'm all in favor of disruptive competition in that market, mind you! But I don't think it's easy.
Re: Google Classroom
#23Damn it Google.
Over the summer I approached the government of my country to build a simple learning management system since they were about to start using tablets at the secondary schools here.
Nothing has been finalised yet but I have a working model.
If they go with what I am working on for them they would be able to run analytics across all secondary schools and they would own their data.
Re: Google Classroom
#24I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machin…
While I agree that Open Source can form part of a good solution I think there needs to be a distinction made between proprietary software that the institution controls, and proprietary SaaS solutions like Google offers.
E.g., In the 90s and early 2000's Novell had a big presence in Universities/etc, providing network systems such as eDirectory (their Directory Services stack) Groupwise (email) etc. Yes these were proprietary, but they were also controlled by the customer - if you wanted to switch to OpenLDAP or AD or whatever, you could dump your whole Directory Services tree to LDIF file(s) and import them elsewhere. If you wanted to migrate from Groupwise to something using MBOX or even to Exchange, there were tools to do so, and there was never any need to worry about "well what happens with the data?"
I have no problem with a school or government using proprietary software, so long as the data created remains in the institution's hands, and is in a format that can be easily read by or exported to alternative formats.
I absolutely have a problem when educational institutions say "yeah we're going to use this solution for email because it's free" - the students have no fucking choice, and there is little or no consideration given to how the company uses the data.
Re: Google Classroom
#25I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machin…
I've been working on KnightOS [1], which is like Unix for calculators. I'm hoping to use it as a platform upon which to evangelize open source software with students. Maybe we should have more open-source investment in more parts of the student life? You just have to pick something to improve and get started.
Re: Google Classroom
#26I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machin…
Coming from recent experience in EdTech, and also as a recent grad, this is a little idealistic.
> It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever.
Unfortunately, not many people in Higher Ed are technologists. Even hiring devs to work on open source tools isn't a good solution since most are inept at managing technology. The result of this kind of thinking is Moodle and Sakai, LMS's that have faded and failed. They're terrible to use and incredibly outdated. Horses, Camels, Committees, and all that.
On the other hand, Instructure makes a LMS called Canvas, which is open-sourced under a restrictive license. It's a Rails app on github. The tech is as much of a joy to use as anything in EdTech. They also have an impressive salesforce and have grown remarkably fast. They're due for an IPO soon.
Re: Google Classroom
#27I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machin…
Oh man - government agencies, in many cases, the least equipped to "hire a dozen open source devs".
Think about how many local governments and school districts they are - they couldn't possibly hire developers and manage the development and customization of open source platforms when they can barely keep their own IT running correctly.
In fact, that's a huge driver for the adoption of SaaS in local government - IT is such a scare resource. School districts often have only a handful of IT people for thousands or tens of thousands of students - they certainly couldn't afford to hire developers to customize, nor do they have the skills to manage them.
I understand the open-vs-closed concerns, and agree that open source is better, but SaaS is a godsend for local government.
Re: Google Classroom
#28If this is a Blackboard competitor, that's good news. Google definitely has the bankroll and patent magazine to go toe-to-toe with them, which could open up a lot of options in the higher education space.
I have never heard of or used this Blackboard software that keeps being referenced, but I find it hard to believe that Google entering nay market is "good news" for anyone except Google fanboys.
Google has an atrocious history of entering a market with commercial and open source options, obliterating them all with "hosted, free" solutions, feeding all the new data into their already massive profile building infrastructure, and often, shutting it down after a few years, after the previous solution providers have all had to shut shop because they couldn't compete with free.
Re: Google Classroom
#29I got into the demo over the summer, and I was pretty underwhelmed. They list the features on the front page there, and that's exactly what they have. So in other words, you can manage a feed of assignments ("X is due on Tuesday", "Here is a link to a video!") and some very simplistic google docs control. I really expected something on the level of Canvas or Moodle, but it's clearly just a few convenience features for running GAfE.
Re: Google Classroom
#30I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, b…
Cannot agree more with this. Open source software is a perfect fit with public institutions. I don't understand why any government uses proprietary platforms. It would be cheaper and far more effective to hire a dozen open source devs to cater a particular platform to the public's needs, and have it be open and free to use forever. Developers aren't that expensive compared to software licenses for thousands of machin…
Experience from Denmark: when public institutions make it-systems they almost always fail.
The "exam submission system" for primary schools failed completely the first two times when the pupils was sitting the exam.
The police completely cancelled their new it-system after spending $90 million.
etc.
So when the (Danish) public sector makes stuff that's worse than BLACKBOARD, it might for the time being be the least of the evils to outsource it to the private sector.