14 ms·

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

138 points by edtechstrats 9y ago

samtoday 9y ago
Google Classroom has an interesting monopolising effect on schools. Google Classroom has changed the price dynamics hugely; making it impossible for other providers to really compete since they give so much away for free. It is really a shame - Google Classroom (the app) isn't the best LMS as it is quite unresponsive and confusing.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  And the question is how long they will stick to it. There is a good chance they will abandon this at some point.
- dhimes 9y ago
  Exactly. This is an example of the possible downside of relaxed anti-trust enforcement: leveraging your domination in one area to brutalize competition in another. Also, they've been caught once not keeping kid info private. They'll do it again. But, free.
- seastonATccs 9y ago
  Classroom for us is used in elementary,3-5. We use canvas for middle and high. Classroom doesn't have the features yet to be used at higher levels, though it's getting there.
- johnsmith21006 9y ago
  What? Teachers love Classroom and why they pay to use. Something does not dominate as quickly as Google has in k12 unless very good. People do not lime change.
tabeth 9y ago
I'm still on the fence to whether or not the ability for big companies to give away free software is a net good or not. On one hand, schools theoretically have more money now to spend on mission critical things. On the other hand, the theoretically best possible product will in all likelihood will not be free. Such a product could give exponential gains in productivity to teachers, easily offsetting whatever cost is incurred.
- criddell 9y ago
  > exponential gains in productivity to teachers What are you thinking of? What are the big advances in education that have been made in the past few decades? I have kids in high school right now and I can say they are learning things earlier than I ever did. They have a lot more pressure on them as well. I'm not certain that's a good thing though. As far as technology goes, I don't see much change other than acceptance of it. My kids are encouraged to use their cell phones productively (calendar, communication, camera, etc...). But the process of education itself seems about the same as it always has been. Gains certainly haven't been exponential.
- dhimes 9y ago
  Maybe we should pay for schools and watch athletes for free rather than the other way around.
- johnsmith21006 9y ago
  Classroom is NOT free for schools.
  - peder541 9y ago
    Do you have a source for this? Their support documentation says otherwise. "Classroom is a free web service for schools, non-profits, and anyone with a personal Google Account." https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279 https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279 "Classroom is free for all users." https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224 https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224
seastonATccs 9y ago
For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point and we didn't use 50% of the features. Apple Enterprise is a joke though they are making good progress now. Google had just enough of a tool at a price we could really justify to the tax payers. As for Google evangelism we offer Google docs and office 365 online. Students are free to choose as Google and Microsoft have been awesome at cooperation in tools. We also have a training with outgoing seniors about how and why free accounts exist on websites. I've always told them they can used a paid account to retain privacy. To this date no seniors have chosen this. Most don't even convert accounts but just use takeout, the bulk data download tool.
- dhimes 9y ago
  I would be very happy if the kids became conversant in libre office. It has all the functionality they need and they would be comfortable with it going into college.
  - tsm 9y ago
    For basic-to-semicomplex tasks (I'm sure it'd be different if writing a book or something) I've found Google Docs/Slides/Sheets to be easier to use and more feature-rich (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…)
    - jorams 9y ago
      > (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…) You can. It has been in Draw and Impress for a long time, and since LibreOffice 5.0 it's supported in Writer and Calc as well. 5.0 was released 2 years ago.
      - dhimes 9y ago
        I agree. I have no problems at all doing any basic stuff in LibreOffice. I've not done any serious programming in it though (db connect to fields in writer etc.)
  - seastonATccs 9y ago
pmoriarty 9y ago
"Free" apps. 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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gravypod 9y ago
  Well of course! How else will you manage to look at historical trends of your consumers? Gotta start sucking the cash out of the little ones from an early age. I wish someone from the GNU/Linux crowd could make a chromebook-like software set that was really Free software.
  - a2decrow 9y ago
    Doesn't come with lobbying money, though, so in the end it wouldn't make much of a difference.
WalterBright 9y ago
Is there any evidence that computers in the classroom improve results of the 3 R's ?
- ChairmanPao 9y ago
  No. But it lets teachers work even less while collecting solid-gold pension plans.
jtraffic 9y ago
> 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 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.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  > there is no guarantee that whatever tech you learn will stick around. Ok, but there are plenty of aspects of using tech that transcend the lifetime of the actually device you are using. Coding, of course, is timeless, but even the basic idea of experimenting/discovery within a UI is something that many older adults lack from not having tech when they were younger.
- Kholo 9y ago
  Yup I would agree from what I have seen end up happening at schools that are given tech but don't have the long term resources to utilize it right. Ideally you pay attention to the people who have done some teaching and know something about tech like Sal Khan. He understood what tools kids need only after spending a bunch of time teaching kids. Tech is not magic just like information access is not magic. Libraries have existed for a longer time than schools have but we don't send our kids to libraries cause a good guide makes more of a diff in where kids end up in life than just access and tools.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions definitely come up, and the derivation of the quadratic formula is definitely useful to learn, but the formula itself seems like a mathematical dead end. In general I think being forced to learn things with no clear application is part of why the school system fails so many people.
mafribe 9y ago
“I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” If Mr Rochelle cannot answer this question, and recommends just googling it, he might not be a good person to be anywhere near STEM eduction.
- mathisfun 9y ago
  Only a person who had once learned it before would be able to quickly get back up to speed by googling it. Math is a language not trivia.
- ChairmanPao 9y ago
  This is why the Left wants to add "A" (for art) to STEM making it STEAM. Because they think that math is simply a way to oppress women and certain minorities.
- wolfram74 9y ago
  Also, the most literal answer "solve quadratic equations" is kind of the most meaningless, what a physicist does with it is different than what a graphic designer does with it. The teacher might be saying they don't know in that context and would rather not lie to individual students that it's super important for them in particular way.
  - taneq 9y ago
    That's like saying you don't know what you'd "use a lever" for.
    - wolfram74 9y ago
      And I imagine after answering that question a few hundred times it might take on a level of kafkaesque absurdity.
- eternalban 9y ago
  He is exactly where he is supposed to be. They do not want a thinking general population equipped with cognitive tools. That would be a disaster for that set and the end of their long running party.
WalterBright 9y ago
> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.” 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.
- xnzakg 9y ago
  You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Except the quadratic formula, just as an example, has a lot of positive qualities when taught to children: * The longform is fairly complex, so it is non-trivial to remember or recount. You can't just guess it (at least without knowledge well beyond it). So it looks like "magic". * It is a great introduction to what formulas are. They are non-trivial proofs of concepts that took research and logic to conclude. Learning logic and learning patterns, especially the non-obvious ones like the qf, are what promote analytical thinking. We need more of that, not less. Maybe the problem is more that kids are shown a magic formula and made to mechanically repeat it on a couple dozen data sets than to actually learn how to reach conclusions like the qf. Making kids proof it would probably be more valuable than making them repeatedly use it beyond a few times to assure them it is valid magic math.
    - smichel17 9y ago
      One of my teachers back in high school made a comment to the effect of: "This class isn't about learning math. It's about practicing critical thinking skills."
watmough 9y ago
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 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.
- Roritharr 9y ago
  OneDrive works, if one wants to use it. It just came too late.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    I have an Office 365 Home subscription and OneDrive is a piece of shit. The client is slow and unreliable, had problems with conflicts and the service doesn't do file versioning, thus your files being susceptible to ransomware or random mistakes.
  - patja 9y ago
    I've been through too many OneDrive snafus to invest more effort into making it work or trusting it for anything. Failed syncs, never-ending syncs, and it has hosed up my OneNote notebooks such that I have a whole set of duplicate notebooks I have tried and failed to fix, which all say "This section isn't available yet. It was added from another device. You'll be able to use it when that device syncs. Section was last modified at (some date over 2 years ago)" And I am a bona fide Microsoft fanboy former employee of 15 years!
mark_l_watson 9y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google. 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.
- webwanderings 9y ago
  Did the invention of printing press made them a monopoly? Google does not generate information; they facilitate it. The more the information is free, the more it will be converted to knowledge by these same schools and students. Your comparison of it to your values of buying things for yourself, is misleading.
  - toyg 9y ago
    If Guthenberg had invented the printing press in the current legislative framework, he would have enjoyed a monopoly for decades.
    - webwanderings 9y ago
      Thank you. That's exactly my point.
  - danblick 9y ago
    I'm glad you're questioning that assertion, but I don't think your counter-argument is very convincing. The economics of the printing press were different than the economics facing Google. For example: Google search benefits from network effects (clicks are used to improve future search results). Google mostly provides information goods (zero marginal cost of production), but books aren't really a perfect information good. Google is darn near close to a monopoly on search (at least, Peter Thiel made that the premise of Zero to One), which isn't to say they're also a monopolist in every other field they're in.
omash 9y ago
This is a great business move, the children probably have no option but to provide their personal information to Google.
- bamboozled 9y ago
  What a disgrace!
matt2000 9y ago
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 computers, which are in such bad shape that they just stopped using them. 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.
- gleenn 9y ago
  You should try TestFlight, I think you can have a lot of free users for a large number of poeple.
  - CameronBanga 9y ago
    You can only distribute your own apps through TestFlight. This wouldn't work when trying to install an app from the App Store.
- stephenr 9y ago
  isn't this exactly what macOS server and MDM is for?
- ben_jones 9y ago
  My personal experiences is exactly the same. In 2012 my old high school rolled out whatever the Google Apps for Education equivalent program was. They auto-generated usernames and passwords based off first and last name. Not only did this lead to a large number of students and teachers getting """hacked""" but most students ended up triggering the rate limit for incorrect passwords and the teachers eventually gave up on it. 5 years later they seem to be doing better but never underestimate the number of hurdles rolling out tech into an education environment. You either sync 1:1 with AD or convert water into wine, otherwise you are not getting adopted probably.
plg 9y ago
If there was a chromebook that came with a SIM card and an unlimited data plan, worldwide, I would buy it in a heartbeat and replace my Macbook. I like the idea of cloud storage, the ability to instantly log onto a new machine and have everything there. This critically depends on 100% connectivity though.
- kevin2r 9y ago
  The Chromebook pixel from 2013 had 4G LTE, for some reason they didn't include it on the 2015 one.
lumberjack 9y ago
They are also building profiles on every single one of those students which is not only creepy but downright dangerous. 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.
- notatoad 9y ago
  The privacy policy for education and the article both explicitly say they are not doing this.
  - tchaffee 9y ago
    > say they aren't doing this. Well, problem solved! Neither the government nor Google have ever lied to us. ;-)
    - Jabbles 9y ago
      Without an example that shows that Google has a habit of lying your comment just wastes people's time. Do your research and make your comment useful.
      - tchaffee 9y ago
        Oh lighten up. The defendant is already infamous. Whether or not you think Google is "evil" is largely a matter of opinion and definitely not worth anyone's time debating. It's already been done over and over. But it's still my right to distrust any big company or government with my data, along with deciding the odds that current or future leadership will break promises.
      - omash 9y ago
        Street View wifi data.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Right! That’s why Google has never retroactively changed their privacy policies and decided to datamine anyway... Oh, wait, they did exactly that with Gmail.
giomasce 9y ago
> “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.” 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.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  >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. Sorry, but this just sounds like propaganda. As an academic, Google is the single most useful tool at my disposal. It doesn't inhibit original thought, but lets me focus on what's actually new by giving me access to things that are already known and available.
xbmcuser 9y ago
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 too many years of work to move to Google sheets. The next generation of students growing up with Google won't have the same problems.
- patja 9y ago
  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 proficiency or even familiarity with Office?
  - smelendez 9y ago
    I think if students know the basics from Google they'll be fine picking up Office. Lots of people learned Office on the job after coming from Lotus 1-2-3, or electric typewriters.
  - tacomonstrous 9y ago
    Office is hardly nuclear physics. Any college grad can reasonably be expected to pick up what they need within a week or two.
  - johnsmith21006 9y ago
    Totally agree in consumer space. School docs, team roosters, anything was MS forever and basically overnight I only get personal stuff in Google Apps. But work stuff still dominated by MS but some slight cracks. Personally prefer Google Apps now. Btw, kids school they have to use Google as workflow including plagiarism check all based on Google Apps. Pretty amazing and had thought MS Office monopoly unbreakable.
zzzzzzzza 9y ago
With regards to quadratic equation comment, Aside from being one of the simplest non trivial derivations/ uses of algebra you could teach children (and often the derivation is not taught...), the solutions to polynomials have a very important place in the history of mathematics and the development of modern algebra (which of course is also not taught...) Should children all be forced to gain an appreciation for the significance and origins of modern algebra? I think, yes. We force them to learn history of whatever country they reside in, year after year. We force them to learn and appreciate novels and literary analysis (equally "useless"). If they don't have an appreciation for mathematics is or does (and quadratic equation is a simple example leading up to some VERY important developments), how will they really know whether or not they want to have a career involving math some way in the future?
Gaelan 9y ago
15 yo high school student here; we have Google Apps accounts and use chromebooks every once and a while. The district has carts of chromebooks that are brought in when students need to do research or work on projects in class. They work pretty well. (The district also has Mac Minis, which are used by the teachers and in the library; they are imaged to Windows if the teacher chooses.) Happy to answer any questions.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Do you use them for having fun or just for homework? What other computers do you use?
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    We don't take them home, just for working on projects in class. Of course, nobody ever goofs off when given an hour of relative freedom. At school, chromebooks and the Macs in the library. At home, whatever we have--we don't get computers to take home.
thrillerson 9y ago
Chromebooks are much better than iPads for this kind of a task for sure, but I wouldn't want everything my child wrote and looked up throughout his development sent to a major advertising corp. This data should still be maintained by the school or by a company the school partners with with a zero internal or external sharing policy.
- duality 9y ago
  It seems to be maintained by a company the schools partner with with a zero internal or external sharing policy: From [Common questions about Classroom](https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=en https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=e...) Does Classroom contain ads? No. Like all G Suite for Education services, Classroom contains no ads and never uses your content or student data for advertising purposes. Learn more about [privacy and security](https://edu.google.com/trust/ https://edu.google.com/trust/).
  - groot451 9y ago
    https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks... IMHO google is constrained by laws protecting minors here, not because the Google nor even the schools care that much.
- johnsmith21006 9y ago
  Classroom is paid for and not ad driven.
misingnoglic 9y ago
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 the school accounts aren't used in collecting ad data (which they're not) this is a non issue.
- tchaffee 9y ago
  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.
  - misingnoglic 9y ago
    Again,the products are good. It's not like Comcast where I feel screwed when I can only use them. If I want to use a different email provider right now I could very easily, but none of them appeal to me.
    - tchaffee 9y ago
      My problem is that it's everywhere you turn. Phone. SEO. Maps. Videos. Browser. Email. Search. The list is endless, and growing and for a phone is there really an alternative? The other choice is another big company who will collect data about you too. Agreed Comcast is worse. That's not exactly a high bar. :-D
  - johnsmith21006 9y ago
    You are free to use something else. Google does some things better so people use. Gmail Google solved spam and unlimited storage and won. We should encourage companies to do things better. Look at Google Photos now being far better so winning. This is how it is suppose to work.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
chicob 9y ago
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 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.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Zuboff's surveillance capitalism is instructive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc
  - chicob 9y ago
    Thank you for the links, and yes it is. In particular, Zuboff's third law: "Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control."
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  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.
  - chicob 9y ago
    A simple Linux distribution though out for kids, yes.
hanibash 9y ago
Google is providing cheap, stable laptops for education and most people commenting here are painting Google as an evil data-hungry corporation. I get that companies should be subject to scrutiny due to their outsized responsibility and impact, but this is just silly. 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_fig1.jpg https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/69_fi...
- tchaffee 9y ago
  It can be both. They are doing a good thing and they are also a data hungry giant who does questionable things. We should ask the right questions and demand a higher standard for the data of children.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Provide cheap, stable laptops that do not have any bias to any corporation, no integration with Google services, or anything, and this would be true. But this way? Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure altruism.
  - orangecat 9y ago
    Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure altruism. Of course it's not. That doesn't mean all parties can't benefit.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      I’m sorry, but that’s not relevant. A child should never have to enter any such arrangement where they have to give up anything. Anything shy of pure altruism regarding schools for young children should be considered automatically evil. Making profit with children is always bad.
MarkMc 9y ago
> Referring to his own children, he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” In case anyone is curious, this video has a good visual explanation of how to derive the quadratic formula: https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc
rustynails 9y ago
After reading this article, I have no idea about how Google Chrome gives any advantages over paper and pencils. The gist of the article is that it allows students to collaborate. What I don't understand is how the technology is actually being used to extend education. For example, Wikipedia is a dynamic encyclopaedia. Dictionary.com is an online dictionary/thesaurus. I can obtain photos through a Google search. I can find articles by searching for them... so, what does Google Chrome actually provide? I often think back to Alexander the Great. He was taught by Aristotle. What was his teaching technique? It was about a way of thinking, not the vehicle for teaching. Mac/PC/Chromebook. They all offer the same basic opportunities to online resources. The difference (superficially) is cost and admin. My children still generate real world artefacts (eg. Paintings/posters/models). These can't be marked or submitted electronically. This means that it can't be about aggregating student work, unless you only allow electronic work, which would be crazy. We use a tool called seesaw. As a parent, it gives me warm and fuzzies seeing my kids sitting with other kids in a classroom (it's being used as Facebook for classrooms). I never get copies of homework sheets or a good idea of the actual work being done. This is an example of how technology can be used in all of the wrong ways (technology for technology's sake). So I'm back to my original question. Other than cheap cost and simple integration of basic office tools, how does this product actually help students? Disclaimer: I spent several years developing an electronic education system. I asked myself this same question often!
thomastjeffery 9y ago
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.

138 points by edtechstrats 9y ago

Google Classroom has an interesting monopolising effect on schools. Google Classroom has changed the price dynamics hugely; making it impossible for other providers to really compete since they give so much away for free. It is really a shame - Google Classroom (the app) isn't the best LMS as it is quite unresponsive and confusing.

maxxxxx 9y ago
And the question is how long they will stick to it. There is a good chance they will abandon this at some point.
dhimes 9y ago
Exactly. This is an example of the possible downside of relaxed anti-trust enforcement: leveraging your domination in one area to brutalize competition in another. Also, they've been caught once not keeping kid info private. They'll do it again. But, free.
seastonATccs 9y ago
Classroom for us is used in elementary,3-5. We use canvas for middle and high. Classroom doesn't have the features yet to be used at higher levels, though it's getting there.
johnsmith21006 9y ago
What? Teachers love Classroom and why they pay to use. Something does not dominate as quickly as Google has in k12 unless very good. People do not lime change.

tabeth 9y ago

I'm still on the fence to whether or not the ability for big companies to give away free software is a net good or not. On one hand, schools theoretically have more money now to spend on mission critical things. On the other hand, the theoretically best possible product will in all likelihood will not be free. Such a product could give exponential gains in productivity to teachers, easily offsetting whatever cost is incurred.

criddell 9y ago
> exponential gains in productivity to teachers What are you thinking of? What are the big advances in education that have been made in the past few decades? I have kids in high school right now and I can say they are learning things earlier than I ever did. They have a lot more pressure on them as well. I'm not certain that's a good thing though. As far as technology goes, I don't see much change other than acceptance of it. My kids are encouraged to use their cell phones productively (calendar, communication, camera, etc...). But the process of education itself seems about the same as it always has been. Gains certainly haven't been exponential.
dhimes 9y ago
Maybe we should pay for schools and watch athletes for free rather than the other way around.
johnsmith21006 9y ago
Classroom is NOT free for schools.
- peder541 9y ago
  Do you have a source for this? Their support documentation says otherwise. "Classroom is a free web service for schools, non-profits, and anyone with a personal Google Account." https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279 https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6020279 "Classroom is free for all users." https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224 https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224

seastonATccs 9y ago

For us Microsoft tools were the highest price point and we didn't use 50% of the features. Apple Enterprise is a joke though they are making good progress now. Google had just enough of a tool at a price we could really justify to the tax payers. As for Google evangelism we offer Google docs and office 365 online. Students are free to choose as Google and Microsoft have been awesome at cooperation in tools. We also have a training with outgoing seniors about how and why free accounts exist on websites. I've always told them they can used a paid account to retain privacy. To this date no seniors have chosen this. Most don't even convert accounts but just use takeout, the bulk data download tool.

dhimes 9y ago
I would be very happy if the kids became conversant in libre office. It has all the functionality they need and they would be comfortable with it going into college.
- tsm 9y ago
  For basic-to-semicomplex tasks (I'm sure it'd be different if writing a book or something) I've found Google Docs/Slides/Sheets to be easier to use and more feature-rich (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…)
  - jorams 9y ago
    > (…you still can't crop pictures in LibreOffice…) You can. It has been in Draw and Impress for a long time, and since LibreOffice 5.0 it's supported in Writer and Calc as well. 5.0 was released 2 years ago.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      I agree. I have no problems at all doing any basic stuff in LibreOffice. I've not done any serious programming in it though (db connect to fields in writer etc.)
- seastonATccs 9y ago

pmoriarty 9y ago

"Free" apps. 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.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gravypod 9y ago
Well of course! How else will you manage to look at historical trends of your consumers? Gotta start sucking the cash out of the little ones from an early age. I wish someone from the GNU/Linux crowd could make a chromebook-like software set that was really Free software.
- a2decrow 9y ago
  Doesn't come with lobbying money, though, so in the end it wouldn't make much of a difference.

WalterBright 9y ago

Is there any evidence that computers in the classroom improve results of the 3 R's ?

ChairmanPao 9y ago
No. But it lets teachers work even less while collecting solid-gold pension plans.

jtraffic 9y ago

> 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 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.

jessriedel 9y ago
> there is no guarantee that whatever tech you learn will stick around. Ok, but there are plenty of aspects of using tech that transcend the lifetime of the actually device you are using. Coding, of course, is timeless, but even the basic idea of experimenting/discovery within a UI is something that many older adults lack from not having tech when they were younger.
Kholo 9y ago
Yup I would agree from what I have seen end up happening at schools that are given tech but don't have the long term resources to utilize it right. Ideally you pay attention to the people who have done some teaching and know something about tech like Sal Khan. He understood what tools kids need only after spending a bunch of time teaching kids. Tech is not magic just like information access is not magic. Libraries have existed for a longer time than schools have but we don't send our kids to libraries cause a good guide makes more of a diff in where kids end up in life than just access and tools.
Eridrus 9y ago
This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions definitely come up, and the derivation of the quadratic formula is definitely useful to learn, but the formula itself seems like a mathematical dead end. In general I think being forced to learn things with no clear application is part of why the school system fails so many people.

mafribe 9y ago

“I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” If Mr Rochelle cannot answer this question, and recommends just googling it, he might not be a good person to be anywhere near STEM eduction.

mathisfun 9y ago
Only a person who had once learned it before would be able to quickly get back up to speed by googling it. Math is a language not trivia.
ChairmanPao 9y ago
This is why the Left wants to add "A" (for art) to STEM making it STEAM. Because they think that math is simply a way to oppress women and certain minorities.
wolfram74 9y ago
Also, the most literal answer "solve quadratic equations" is kind of the most meaningless, what a physicist does with it is different than what a graphic designer does with it. The teacher might be saying they don't know in that context and would rather not lie to individual students that it's super important for them in particular way.
- taneq 9y ago
  That's like saying you don't know what you'd "use a lever" for.
  - wolfram74 9y ago
    And I imagine after answering that question a few hundred times it might take on a level of kafkaesque absurdity.
eternalban 9y ago
He is exactly where he is supposed to be. They do not want a thinking general population equipped with cognitive tools. That would be a disaster for that set and the end of their long running party.

WalterBright 9y ago

> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.” 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.

xnzakg 9y ago
You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.
- zanny 9y ago
  Except the quadratic formula, just as an example, has a lot of positive qualities when taught to children: * The longform is fairly complex, so it is non-trivial to remember or recount. You can't just guess it (at least without knowledge well beyond it). So it looks like "magic". * It is a great introduction to what formulas are. They are non-trivial proofs of concepts that took research and logic to conclude. Learning logic and learning patterns, especially the non-obvious ones like the qf, are what promote analytical thinking. We need more of that, not less. Maybe the problem is more that kids are shown a magic formula and made to mechanically repeat it on a couple dozen data sets than to actually learn how to reach conclusions like the qf. Making kids proof it would probably be more valuable than making them repeatedly use it beyond a few times to assure them it is valid magic math.
  - smichel17 9y ago
    One of my teachers back in high school made a comment to the effect of: "This class isn't about learning math. It's about practicing critical thinking skills."

watmough 9y ago

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 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.

Roritharr 9y ago
OneDrive works, if one wants to use it. It just came too late.
- bad_user 9y ago
  I have an Office 365 Home subscription and OneDrive is a piece of shit. The client is slow and unreliable, had problems with conflicts and the service doesn't do file versioning, thus your files being susceptible to ransomware or random mistakes.
- patja 9y ago
  I've been through too many OneDrive snafus to invest more effort into making it work or trusting it for anything. Failed syncs, never-ending syncs, and it has hosed up my OneNote notebooks such that I have a whole set of duplicate notebooks I have tried and failed to fix, which all say "This section isn't available yet. It was added from another device. You'll be able to use it when that device syncs. Section was last modified at (some date over 2 years ago)" And I am a bona fide Microsoft fanboy former employee of 15 years!

mark_l_watson 9y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. Personally, working as a contractor at Google was one of the interesting jobs I have had and I generally like Google. 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.

webwanderings 9y ago
Did the invention of printing press made them a monopoly? Google does not generate information; they facilitate it. The more the information is free, the more it will be converted to knowledge by these same schools and students. Your comparison of it to your values of buying things for yourself, is misleading.
- toyg 9y ago
  If Guthenberg had invented the printing press in the current legislative framework, he would have enjoyed a monopoly for decades.
  - webwanderings 9y ago
    Thank you. That's exactly my point.
- danblick 9y ago
  I'm glad you're questioning that assertion, but I don't think your counter-argument is very convincing. The economics of the printing press were different than the economics facing Google. For example: Google search benefits from network effects (clicks are used to improve future search results). Google mostly provides information goods (zero marginal cost of production), but books aren't really a perfect information good. Google is darn near close to a monopoly on search (at least, Peter Thiel made that the premise of Zero to One), which isn't to say they're also a monopolist in every other field they're in.

omash 9y ago

This is a great business move, the children probably have no option but to provide their personal information to Google.

bamboozled 9y ago
What a disgrace!

matt2000 9y ago

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 computers, which are in such bad shape that they just stopped using them. 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.

gleenn 9y ago
You should try TestFlight, I think you can have a lot of free users for a large number of poeple.
- CameronBanga 9y ago
  You can only distribute your own apps through TestFlight. This wouldn't work when trying to install an app from the App Store.
stephenr 9y ago
isn't this exactly what macOS server and MDM is for?
ben_jones 9y ago
My personal experiences is exactly the same. In 2012 my old high school rolled out whatever the Google Apps for Education equivalent program was. They auto-generated usernames and passwords based off first and last name. Not only did this lead to a large number of students and teachers getting """hacked""" but most students ended up triggering the rate limit for incorrect passwords and the teachers eventually gave up on it. 5 years later they seem to be doing better but never underestimate the number of hurdles rolling out tech into an education environment. You either sync 1:1 with AD or convert water into wine, otherwise you are not getting adopted probably.

plg 9y ago

If there was a chromebook that came with a SIM card and an unlimited data plan, worldwide, I would buy it in a heartbeat and replace my Macbook. I like the idea of cloud storage, the ability to instantly log onto a new machine and have everything there. This critically depends on 100% connectivity though.

kevin2r 9y ago
The Chromebook pixel from 2013 had 4G LTE, for some reason they didn't include it on the 2015 one.

lumberjack 9y ago

They are also building profiles on every single one of those students which is not only creepy but downright dangerous. 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.

notatoad 9y ago
The privacy policy for education and the article both explicitly say they are not doing this.
- tchaffee 9y ago
  > say they aren't doing this. Well, problem solved! Neither the government nor Google have ever lied to us. ;-)
  - Jabbles 9y ago
    Without an example that shows that Google has a habit of lying your comment just wastes people's time. Do your research and make your comment useful.
    - tchaffee 9y ago
      Oh lighten up. The defendant is already infamous. Whether or not you think Google is "evil" is largely a matter of opinion and definitely not worth anyone's time debating. It's already been done over and over. But it's still my right to distrust any big company or government with my data, along with deciding the odds that current or future leadership will break promises.
    - omash 9y ago
      Street View wifi data.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Right! That’s why Google has never retroactively changed their privacy policies and decided to datamine anyway... Oh, wait, they did exactly that with Gmail.

giomasce 9y ago

> “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.” 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.

tacomonstrous 9y ago
>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. Sorry, but this just sounds like propaganda. As an academic, Google is the single most useful tool at my disposal. It doesn't inhibit original thought, but lets me focus on what's actually new by giving me access to things that are already known and available.

xbmcuser 9y ago

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 too many years of work to move to Google sheets. The next generation of students growing up with Google won't have the same problems.

patja 9y ago
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 proficiency or even familiarity with Office?
- smelendez 9y ago
  I think if students know the basics from Google they'll be fine picking up Office. Lots of people learned Office on the job after coming from Lotus 1-2-3, or electric typewriters.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  Office is hardly nuclear physics. Any college grad can reasonably be expected to pick up what they need within a week or two.
- johnsmith21006 9y ago
  Totally agree in consumer space. School docs, team roosters, anything was MS forever and basically overnight I only get personal stuff in Google Apps. But work stuff still dominated by MS but some slight cracks. Personally prefer Google Apps now. Btw, kids school they have to use Google as workflow including plagiarism check all based on Google Apps. Pretty amazing and had thought MS Office monopoly unbreakable.

zzzzzzzza 9y ago

With regards to quadratic equation comment, Aside from being one of the simplest non trivial derivations/ uses of algebra you could teach children (and often the derivation is not taught...), the solutions to polynomials have a very important place in the history of mathematics and the development of modern algebra (which of course is also not taught...) Should children all be forced to gain an appreciation for the significance and origins of modern algebra? I think, yes. We force them to learn history of whatever country they reside in, year after year. We force them to learn and appreciate novels and literary analysis (equally "useless"). If they don't have an appreciation for mathematics is or does (and quadratic equation is a simple example leading up to some VERY important developments), how will they really know whether or not they want to have a career involving math some way in the future?

Gaelan 9y ago

15 yo high school student here; we have Google Apps accounts and use chromebooks every once and a while. The district has carts of chromebooks that are brought in when students need to do research or work on projects in class. They work pretty well. (The district also has Mac Minis, which are used by the teachers and in the library; they are imaged to Windows if the teacher chooses.) Happy to answer any questions.

skybrian 9y ago
Do you use them for having fun or just for homework? What other computers do you use?
- Gaelan 9y ago
  We don't take them home, just for working on projects in class. Of course, nobody ever goofs off when given an hour of relative freedom. At school, chromebooks and the Macs in the library. At home, whatever we have--we don't get computers to take home.

thrillerson 9y ago

Chromebooks are much better than iPads for this kind of a task for sure, but I wouldn't want everything my child wrote and looked up throughout his development sent to a major advertising corp. This data should still be maintained by the school or by a company the school partners with with a zero internal or external sharing policy.

duality 9y ago
It seems to be maintained by a company the schools partner with with a zero internal or external sharing policy: From [Common questions about Classroom](https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=en https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6025224?hl=e...) Does Classroom contain ads? No. Like all G Suite for Education services, Classroom contains no ads and never uses your content or student data for advertising purposes. Learn more about [privacy and security](https://edu.google.com/trust/ https://edu.google.com/trust/).
- groot451 9y ago
  https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks... IMHO google is constrained by laws protecting minors here, not because the Google nor even the schools care that much.
johnsmith21006 9y ago
Classroom is paid for and not ad driven.

misingnoglic 9y ago

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 the school accounts aren't used in collecting ad data (which they're not) this is a non issue.

tchaffee 9y ago
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.
- misingnoglic 9y ago
  Again,the products are good. It's not like Comcast where I feel screwed when I can only use them. If I want to use a different email provider right now I could very easily, but none of them appeal to me.
  - tchaffee 9y ago
    My problem is that it's everywhere you turn. Phone. SEO. Maps. Videos. Browser. Email. Search. The list is endless, and growing and for a phone is there really an alternative? The other choice is another big company who will collect data about you too. Agreed Comcast is worse. That's not exactly a high bar. :-D
- johnsmith21006 9y ago
  You are free to use something else. Google does some things better so people use. Gmail Google solved spam and unlimited storage and won. We should encourage companies to do things better. Look at Google Photos now being far better so winning. This is how it is suppose to work.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago

chicob 9y ago

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 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.

walterbell 9y ago
Zuboff's surveillance capitalism is instructive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc https://youtube.com/watch?v=0QwPHinDdOc
- chicob 9y ago
  Thank you for the links, and yes it is. In particular, Zuboff's third law: "Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control."
thomastjeffery 9y ago
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.
- chicob 9y ago
  A simple Linux distribution though out for kids, yes.

hanibash 9y ago

Google is providing cheap, stable laptops for education and most people commenting here are painting Google as an evil data-hungry corporation. I get that companies should be subject to scrutiny due to their outsized responsibility and impact, but this is just silly. 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_fig1.jpg https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/69_fi...

tchaffee 9y ago
It can be both. They are doing a good thing and they are also a data hungry giant who does questionable things. We should ask the right questions and demand a higher standard for the data of children.
kuschku 9y ago
Provide cheap, stable laptops that do not have any bias to any corporation, no integration with Google services, or anything, and this would be true. But this way? Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure altruism.
- orangecat 9y ago
  Sorry, but after the past years you can’t honestly believe this is pure altruism. Of course it's not. That doesn't mean all parties can't benefit.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    I’m sorry, but that’s not relevant. A child should never have to enter any such arrangement where they have to give up anything. Anything shy of pure altruism regarding schools for young children should be considered automatically evil. Making profit with children is always bad.

MarkMc 9y ago

> Referring to his own children, he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” In case anyone is curious, this video has a good visual explanation of how to derive the quadratic formula: https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc https://youtu.be/EBbtoFMJvFc

rustynails 9y ago

After reading this article, I have no idea about how Google Chrome gives any advantages over paper and pencils. The gist of the article is that it allows students to collaborate. What I don't understand is how the technology is actually being used to extend education. For example, Wikipedia is a dynamic encyclopaedia. Dictionary.com is an online dictionary/thesaurus. I can obtain photos through a Google search. I can find articles by searching for them... so, what does Google Chrome actually provide? I often think back to Alexander the Great. He was taught by Aristotle. What was his teaching technique? It was about a way of thinking, not the vehicle for teaching. Mac/PC/Chromebook. They all offer the same basic opportunities to online resources. The difference (superficially) is cost and admin. My children still generate real world artefacts (eg. Paintings/posters/models). These can't be marked or submitted electronically. This means that it can't be about aggregating student work, unless you only allow electronic work, which would be crazy. We use a tool called seesaw. As a parent, it gives me warm and fuzzies seeing my kids sitting with other kids in a classroom (it's being used as Facebook for classrooms). I never get copies of homework sheets or a good idea of the actual work being done. This is an example of how technology can be used in all of the wrong ways (technology for technology's sake). So I'm back to my original question. Other than cheap cost and simple integration of basic office tools, how does this product actually help students? Disclaimer: I spent several years developing an electronic education system. I asked myself this same question often!

thomastjeffery 9y ago

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.