12 ms·

> Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. What to your mind would not be rubbish? I'm a Microsoft employee,

by dpark 10y ago

> Chromebooks are rubbish too, so I don't really see the move to them as a positive either. What to your mind would not be rubbish? I'm a Microsoft employee, so I have a vested interest in Windows devices being the dominant choice for schools, but I don't see anything realistic students at the high school or below level couldn't do on Chromebooks. Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7" is not high school in the US. That is distinctly junior/middle school.

eon1 10y ago
Can't speak for OP, but in Australia we only have Primary (K-6) and High (7-12) school. Edit: Yup, their website lists them as being in Adelaide.
droithomme 10y ago
His user profile shows he is in Australia.
ux-app 10y ago
> Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7" I'm in Australia. Nationally we are transitioning to a R-6 = Primary School, 7-12 = High School model. My school is a little unorthodox. We're a private school with a 6-12 shared campus which is why I had experience teaching younger students even though I am HS trained. > What to your mind would not be rubbish? Either Mac or PC is fine in my books. Anything that allows them to install native software is fine. I recently did a small unit on binary data. It was really handy for students to install a hex editor, inspect a flat text file in binary mode and map out the ascii table for themselves. I don't think that's possible on a Chromebook. I also teach Web dev. We use MAMP which is cross platform. We install VSCode, interact with the FS, create a local DB, file uploads, programmatic image resizing etc. My understanding is that this is not possible without jailbreaking (is that the right term?) a Chromebook. I'm also opposed to any device that hides away the file system from the user. It relegates a computer to the dumb appliance category which I think is unhelpful.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dpark 10y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier comment about teaching coding. I think they can probably work there, but you're right that a "real" computer is a better choice for that.
  - ecspike 10y ago
    There are a couple of Chrome apps that can run offline and do coding. I've used Caret and Advanced REST client on occasion for things. It gets a bit tricky if you need something that can't work without a real webserver but there's a lot of beginner stuff you can do with it. crouton unlocked a bit more functionality giving you the possibility of a Linux base layer, albeit likely not a great idea to have kids put the machines into dev mode. But that might be workable if staff did it. I've dogfooded a bunch of the Web Development content we make at Udacity using either a pure Chromebook or Chromebook + Crouton.
    - canuckintime 10y ago
      Please describe your PURE Chromebook setup to take the Udacity Web Development Course. Also is there a PURE Chromebook (or Chromebook+Android apps) setup to take an Udacity Android course?
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Apparently ChromeOS devices are so useful that everyone has to force developer mode with Crouton to make use of them. Never got the point of a browser based OS.
        toast0 10y ago
        A browser only OS isn't for everyone, but it does work well for the many people who literally never use anything other than their browser. If you know someone who never uses office applications and is always ending up with three layers of malware, a chromebook might be good for them. Video chat is a bit iffy too, if you don't care for google hangouts.
arthurfm 10y ago
"Year 7" is not high school in the US. That is distinctly junior/middle school. Year 7 is also the first year of secondary school (high school) in the UK.
- gaius 10y ago
  High school in the US == 6th Form in the UK.
  - foldr 10y ago
    No, 6th form is from 16 to 18 years.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Which is almost exactly what high school is in some parts of the US (that is, in places where it is 10-12 grade.) The thing is, while the US tends to have the Elementary/Middle or Junior High/(Senior) High split in most places, the grade levels aren't the same. I've seen (and this may not be exhaustive) the splits with the following grade levels: 1-5/6-8/9-12 1-6/7-8/9-12 1-6/7-9/10-12
      - ekiru 10y ago
        Two more splits: In my hometown (in Tennessee), the split was originally K-3/4-8/9-12, but around 2000 they completed the construction of a new high school, so the old high school became the new junior high and grades 4-8 got redistributed so that it was now K-2/3-5/6-8/9-12.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
shams93 10y ago
While you could always run python on windows have the WSL is a big deal for education. You can get away with running a pretty modest system and still be able to run ruby on rails and mysql or postgresql on even a modest atom based laptop.
unfamiliar 10y ago
> "Year 7" is not high school in the US. Maybe we could all agree to just use pupil age in these discussions, to avoid the international confusion between "year 7", "4th grade", "primary 6", "middle school", "6th form", and all of the other country-specific nomenclature.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  I don't think that's entirely reasonable in a discussion about schooling as curricula in different countries differ considerably. A 17 year old Chemistry student in Victoria, Australia might be learning about how to read NMR spectrograms and some common industrial chemical processes [0], a 17 year old Chemistry student in Texas, USA might be learning about the chemical processes involved in genetics [1]. 0: http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/chemistry/ChemistrySD-2016.pdf http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/chemistry/Chemistry... 1: https://www.kleinisd.net/users/0138/Chemistry_Scope_and_Sequence_2016_2017.pdf https://www.kleinisd.net/users/0138/Chemistry_Scope_and_Sequ... Different places teach different things at different times, so I don't think equating ages works very well.

by dpark 10y ago

eon1 10y ago

Can't speak for OP, but in Australia we only have Primary (K-6) and High (7-12) school. Edit: Yup, their website lists them as being in Adelaide.

droithomme 10y ago

His user profile shows he is in Australia.

ux-app 10y ago

> Also, where do you live/teach? "Year 7" I'm in Australia. Nationally we are transitioning to a R-6 = Primary School, 7-12 = High School model. My school is a little unorthodox. We're a private school with a 6-12 shared campus which is why I had experience teaching younger students even though I am HS trained. > What to your mind would not be rubbish? Either Mac or PC is fine in my books. Anything that allows them to install native software is fine. I recently did a small unit on binary data. It was really handy for students to install a hex editor, inspect a flat text file in binary mode and map out the ascii table for themselves. I don't think that's possible on a Chromebook. I also teach Web dev. We use MAMP which is cross platform. We install VSCode, interact with the FS, create a local DB, file uploads, programmatic image resizing etc. My understanding is that this is not possible without jailbreaking (is that the right term?) a Chromebook. I'm also opposed to any device that hides away the file system from the user. It relegates a computer to the dumb appliance category which I think is unhelpful.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dpark 10y ago
Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier comment about teaching coding. I think they can probably work there, but you're right that a "real" computer is a better choice for that.
- ecspike 10y ago
  There are a couple of Chrome apps that can run offline and do coding. I've used Caret and Advanced REST client on occasion for things. It gets a bit tricky if you need something that can't work without a real webserver but there's a lot of beginner stuff you can do with it. crouton unlocked a bit more functionality giving you the possibility of a Linux base layer, albeit likely not a great idea to have kids put the machines into dev mode. But that might be workable if staff did it. I've dogfooded a bunch of the Web Development content we make at Udacity using either a pure Chromebook or Chromebook + Crouton.
  - canuckintime 10y ago
    Please describe your PURE Chromebook setup to take the Udacity Web Development Course. Also is there a PURE Chromebook (or Chromebook+Android apps) setup to take an Udacity Android course?
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Apparently ChromeOS devices are so useful that everyone has to force developer mode with Crouton to make use of them. Never got the point of a browser based OS.
      - toast0 10y ago
        A browser only OS isn't for everyone, but it does work well for the many people who literally never use anything other than their browser. If you know someone who never uses office applications and is always ending up with three layers of malware, a chromebook might be good for them. Video chat is a bit iffy too, if you don't care for google hangouts.

arthurfm 10y ago

"Year 7" is not high school in the US. That is distinctly junior/middle school. Year 7 is also the first year of secondary school (high school) in the UK.

gaius 10y ago
High school in the US == 6th Form in the UK.
- foldr 10y ago
  No, 6th form is from 16 to 18 years.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Which is almost exactly what high school is in some parts of the US (that is, in places where it is 10-12 grade.) The thing is, while the US tends to have the Elementary/Middle or Junior High/(Senior) High split in most places, the grade levels aren't the same. I've seen (and this may not be exhaustive) the splits with the following grade levels: 1-5/6-8/9-12 1-6/7-8/9-12 1-6/7-9/10-12
    - ekiru 10y ago
      Two more splits: In my hometown (in Tennessee), the split was originally K-3/4-8/9-12, but around 2000 they completed the construction of a new high school, so the old high school became the new junior high and grades 4-8 got redistributed so that it was now K-2/3-5/6-8/9-12.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

shams93 10y ago

While you could always run python on windows have the WSL is a big deal for education. You can get away with running a pretty modest system and still be able to run ruby on rails and mysql or postgresql on even a modest atom based laptop.

unfamiliar 10y ago

> "Year 7" is not high school in the US. Maybe we could all agree to just use pupil age in these discussions, to avoid the international confusion between "year 7", "4th grade", "primary 6", "middle school", "6th form", and all of the other country-specific nomenclature.

Veratyr 10y ago
I don't think that's entirely reasonable in a discussion about schooling as curricula in different countries differ considerably. A 17 year old Chemistry student in Victoria, Australia might be learning about how to read NMR spectrograms and some common industrial chemical processes [0], a 17 year old Chemistry student in Texas, USA might be learning about the chemical processes involved in genetics [1]. 0: http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/chemistry/ChemistrySD-2016.pdf http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/chemistry/Chemistry... 1: https://www.kleinisd.net/users/0138/Chemistry_Scope_and_Sequence_2016_2017.pdf https://www.kleinisd.net/users/0138/Chemistry_Scope_and_Sequ... Different places teach different things at different times, so I don't think equating ages works very well.