by edtechstrats on 5/13/17, 12:54 PM with 167 comments
by watmough on 5/13/17, 1:58 PM
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 IT admins from Windows update administration, anti-virus software install and administration at the computer level, and from most other malware other than browser extension malware.
Google Docs is incredible and a huge step forward to the point that where possible, most of my own notes are accessible to me from anywhere I can get into my Google account.
For a child, this means they no longer have to schlep a laptop around. Just an account and a Chromebook or other thin client are needed.
I'm a big fan of Microsoft's recent changes, and generally a pretty heavy Windows user warts and all, but it's interesting that Microsoft have never been able to make say cross-machine sync'd folders work, despite pushing it for like 15 years, whereas DropBox has built a giant business from it.
by matt2000 on 5/13/17, 2:15 PM
An example: To install an app for all students on the iPads, we need to plug them all in to a big USB hub, then connect a Mac with management software to it and run a sync procedure. It fails on about 10% of the devices, so we run it again. Each run takes several minutes. There are over-the-air methods for doing this, but they're corporate solutions not provided by Apple and are pretty expensive.
So given all that, if ChromeBooks promise per-user customization and document storage with much simpler administration, it's no wonder they're taking over.
by mark_l_watson on 5/13/17, 2:01 PM
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 and information monopolies even if the fictional company is named The Circle. Buying the education business with free/inexpensive services definitely increases Google's chance of being the information monopoly.
Personally I like to pay for services. I pay for FastMail and just use GMail as a backup email. I pay for Evernote instead of using free offerings like Keep. I pay for Office 365 to get lots of cloud storage and the Office apps for the rare times when I need them. I pay for using GCP and I buy movies and TV shows from Google Play and Apple. It is a cliche, but I like to be the customer and not the product.
I understand that School districts are on a tight budget, so it is understandable that they make use of free (or priced under-market) services.
by WalterBright on 5/13/17, 1:47 PM
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 understood the formulas - where they came from, what assumptions they were based on, and how to derive them.
The latter used the formulas correctly, the former often blindly misused and misapplied them.
Googling for a formula is not how proper engineering is done.
by mafribe on 5/13/17, 1:42 PM
“I cannot answer for them
what they are going to do
with the quadratic equation.
I don’t know why they are
learning it.”
by jtraffic on 5/13/17, 1:41 PM
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 classroom priority, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that there is no guarantee that whatever tech you learn will stick around. I had a high school teacher insist that we use Ask Jeeves rather than Google because she "liked it better."
It feels as if the adoption of Google products is driven much more by convenience for the school system than by a strong belief that it improves learning. I'm not an expert, but I remember reading more than once that technology doesn't seem to have a meaningful main effect on learning (though perhaps has a mild interaction effect with the teacher.)
The article itself barely addresses the question of learning outcomes, and focuses so much more on privacy.
by seastonATccs on 5/13/17, 1:28 PM
by hanibash on 5/13/17, 4:55 PM
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...
by chicob on 5/13/17, 4:46 PM
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.
by giomasce on 5/13/17, 2:54 PM
To me, this is giving Google much more than your privacy, customer loyalty or ad exposure. Your are giving away some of your very basic abilities: if you only learn to search with Google, you will not learn how to reason on your own. Knowledge stored in your brain is of much better use than that on Google, because your brain is capable to perform much more powerful queries on it.
However, using a brain at its maximum power needs years of training, which is what one would really expect to receive in school. This training requires that your brain works on its own, without external help from a search engine, for more or less the same reason you will hardly become a strong cyclist if you train on a motorbike.
Schools should really be wary of too much computer time for children.
by omash on 5/13/17, 2:10 PM
by xbmcuser on 5/13/17, 2:59 PM
by lumberjack on 5/13/17, 2:35 PM
Imagine if Trump decided he no longer wanted to hire anyone for a public sector job, if they are pro-green politics.
Society will come to regret this and I'll probably still be alive to witness it.
by misingnoglic on 5/13/17, 3:43 PM
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 the school accounts aren't used in collecting ad data (which they're not) this is a non issue.
by pmoriarty on 5/13/17, 1:37 PM
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.
by zzzzzzzza on 5/13/17, 3:05 PM
by samtoday on 5/13/17, 1:23 PM
by thrillerson on 5/13/17, 3:09 PM
by plg on 5/13/17, 2:27 PM
by thomastjeffery on 5/14/17, 5:20 AM
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.
by WalterBright on 5/13/17, 1:41 PM
by Gaelan on 5/13/17, 3:08 PM
Happy to answer any questions.
by MarkMc on 5/13/17, 5:04 PM
In case anyone is curious, this video has a good visual explanation of how to derive the quadratic formula:
by tabeth on 5/13/17, 1:26 PM
