8 ms·

Speaking as a student whose school primarily uses Google's suite (classroom, meet, etc..) but still has a few older solutions, some of which are free software,

Speaking as a student whose school primarily uses Google's suite (classroom, meet, etc..) but still has a few older solutions, some of which are free software, I can say that there's a common argument that schools should focus on pragmatism and working with what they have - the age-old argument that free software still is not accessible or easy to use. I don't beleive that this is still an issue. Out of my current teachers and teachers I've had in the past, almost all of them were vocal about not liking Classroom or just didn't use it. It is basically a small layer on top of Google Drive & Meet that does not integrate anything nearly well enough. Most of my teachers seem to prefer Canvas, a free software solution to this, because it has more features. My teachers primarily cited the integrated quiz/test system as its biggest draw when I asked. Classroom is also is very difficult for less-privileged students to use - speaking as someone who used to rely on a 4 GB of RAM netbook with a Pentium and was still using it for part of this quarantine, even with Linux things really get slow. This could primarily be attributed to relying on a lot of Google tabs at once (for Drive, forms for quizzes, etc) while Canvas I've never had to open more than a few maximum. My only other option is to buy a Chromebook and while my school can afford Chromebooks for every student, many students are relying on just using what they have. With that, I don't think that the proprietary software really has all too much of an advantage in terms of pragmatism (which imo is even more important in schools). I don't think the usual arguments against adoption of free software really seem to hold up, though I assume that cost might be an issue that I'm not aware of seeing my district is rather rich. I'd love to hear more teachers opinions on this. Hopefully this gave you an idea of how education tech is from a student user's endpoint.

api 6y ago
A major problem isn’t at the user level but the admin level. Cloud SaaS means someone else installs and maintains the backend. Many school districts do not have the in house talent to do this, or what talent they do have is too busy putting out fires. Administrating systems is generally hell. They have to be kept updated, secured, etc. The rise of closed SaaS is in part to free people from the curse of IT and system administration. Can we make IT and admin easier? Yes, but nobody has done the work and it isn’t likely anyone will since there is no economic model.
- snazz 6y ago
  Yes. This is a huge cost for school districts, particularly since both G Suite and Microsoft 365 are free for schools and require practically zero admin time. There's no competition in terms of cost here.
- voxic11 6y ago
  You are equating non-free software and cloud SaaS. There is no reason the software can't be free and also be available as a cloud SaaS offering. This is exactly what Canvas, the application mentioned bt the gp, offers. It is free and open source software but most users opt for the cloud SaaS offering so that they don't need to host it themselves and take on the maintenance and IT costs.
  - solidasparagus 6y ago
    I think it's unlikely that Stallman would consider a hosted offering of Canvas to be 'free software'. But I agree with you that it can be both SaaS and free. Although at that point I question what advantage free software gives you - you can't change it and you are still at the mercy of the hosting company since you aren't able to host it yourself.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Paying someone to run something you can and in the future could run yourself could in theory be wholly compatible with the ideals of free software and user freedom.
- tasogare 6y ago
  This is totally true. My institution is able to deploy software at schools because we are managing it for them. Sometimes we have to host on their own server, but we still do the deployment. Doing otherwise would lead to 100% rejection of using our software (ps: it's research stuff, not commercial).
- narwally 6y ago
  UNC Wilmington had their Blackboard installation go down for nearly a week in 2018 because of hurricane Florence. I know that was a big factor in their decision to switch to a SaaS. Not that they couldn't have moved their stuff into a cloud hosting provider, but like you said, that's a big ask for an IT team to do in one summer when there are off the shelf solutions.
haunter 6y ago
>the age-old argument that free software still is not accessible or easy to use Personally I'd say most of the time the problem is the lack of documentation, help, manuals, guides etc. I had so many times when I had a problem with a software under Linux and basically you have to spend hours in Google trying to find that stackexchange/reddit/askubuntu thread where you might find your answer, or not.
- chrismeller 6y ago
  This works into my other comment about how training is provided for big box purchases. No one in any form of academia has the time or money to develop their own training materials - the tool is supposed to benefit the students, anything that isn’t directly doing that isn’t a priority.
  - addled 6y ago
    I agree with you in principal, but offer a small counterexample: I was a student worker at a university with a documentation / training dept. We maintained a wiki used by faculty and staff. We encouraged adoption with other groups, and built out a library of articles on tech resources, like how to use screen recording software to make and edit videos for the classroom. We also had dedicated hours in one of the computer labs, where one of us would be present to help anyone with questions on using Blackboard, wiki, etc. So in some cases they are trying, but to your original point, we only had 3-4 people, mostly part time trying to provide training and documentation. I think we made a difference, but there was a lot more that could be done we didn't have resources for.
- sidlls 6y ago
  Poor documentation practice is pervasive in the free software world. Much of the issue, I believe, is the rise of sites like Stackoverflow. Documentation these days seems to consist of the bare minimum--docs autogenerated from method/function signatures with maybe one or two trivial, useless examples--and an expectation that people will "tinker" with the software and post/find answers on these sites. Google and Stackoverflow, in other words, are the documentation of choice. I understand: documentation is hard. It's tedious and it's difficult to get right for all the likely/major audiences involved. That's not a good excuse, though. The amount of fad-driven, cargo-cult coding and the like has just exploded in the last few years, much of it essentially copy-pasta from sites like Stackoverflow or whatever a Google search throws up.
chrismeller 6y ago
I think a bigger problem is that there is no training involved. I worked in higher ed (tech side) for a few years, and every time they bought a package (for admissions management, grades, donations, etc) there was training provided as part of the purchase. You don’t get that with free software, and for your average professor/admissions rep/grant writer/alumni nagger that’s a big deal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 100% perfect solution to every problem they have... if they don’t know how to use it.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  Educational software isn't my field, but there is training available for free software in other fields. Occasionally, it's a way to fund development.
- freedomben 6y ago
  This is an interesting observation, thank you! I wonder if there's value in creating open source training as well. This sounds like a great way that non-programmers could contribute.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Yes, there is. Selling books, seminars, and certifications is very common in the Linux world.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      But most of those are targeted to the IT side of things, aren't they? I don't recall having seen much targeting end users.
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        It really depends on what you're looking for. I've found for popular applications there are usually tutorials on Youtube at the very least.
  - 6y ago
atoav 6y ago
As somebody who teaches in university my opinion on this is: 1) the software you teach them should last them for a while. That means it shouldn't be to limiting (even if that means more user friendly). It should additionally be something where you can assume it will be around for a while in that form. 2) It should make it easy for them to work in the field that they are in. 3) The work they create in that programme should be readable for as long as possible (even when the creators of the software are gone) 4) We the technically educated are supposed to teach the societal ramifications of certain software products as well (privacy, surveillance) and how to guard from those. So software that doesn't spy, isn't creepy and etc gets a plus as well Students don't have a ton of money, so if there is a free and open source solution that isn't bad on quality compared to the commercial (or data stealing) alternatives, I'd go for that, because it helps with nearly all the points above. I am however not a friend of teaching people tools they cannot use. So while teaching someone Blender instead of Maya makes a ton of sense, because Blender is great and getting better, teaching someone Cinelerra when Premiere or Avid are a much better choice functionality wise is something I wouldn't do just for the heck of it.
- pelasaco 6y ago
  Just to note, that University and the reality from the schools today under COVID-19, where teachers have to come-up with a solution fast are totally different. I see Countries adapting Google Classroom suite with much more success than the State trying to come up with their own custom and limited solution. My Wife is elementary teacher in Germany and we compared the tool that we have here, with Google Classroom and it's just embarrassing how they are using our taxpayer money in name of a privacy issue that really doesn't exist.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Where I live in the US I certainly see teachers using cobbled-together limited proprietary solutions were there is simple superior Free software . Eg. pasting their Zoom links at the top of the Google Classroom stream every day or letting them be buried down below pages of assignments (it seems that Classroom allows only Google Meet links to be included in the header), when leading Free LMSs like Canvas ship with native BigBlueButton integrations. And then using separate services like Nearpod to add interactivity to their Zooms, forcing constant context switching between the two tabs (dozens or even hundreds of times in a single class), when BigBlueButton would allow them to directly upload their slides and automatically detect multiple choice questions for instant integrated polls, and allow students to draw and type directly onto a whiteboard layer over the slides in real time.
boogies 6y ago
I have the privilege of participating in a religious education program using Canvas, and simultaneously the misfortune of using Google Classroom for secular school. For two years my church class was taught by a single elderly volunteer, who I remember providing some simple tech support for during our weekly in person classes — she was not a technical person. But our regular online classes went smoothly, without a technical hitch that I can remember. This year we have a brand new teacher (who also has no prior experience using Canvas AFAIK) and 100% online classes (cause covid), and I had the pleasure of preventing our weekly synchronous classes from occurring via Zoom by recommending BigBlueButton. It has also worked flawlessly. And it pains me every time I have to switch between tabs for the Zoom malware and separate tools like Nearpod in secular school, when BigBlueButton has so much more education-focused functionality baked in. So, while I believe there probably are free software solutions with insufficient support somewhere, my personal experience (as well as others’ anecdotes like those on BigBlueButtons homepage¹ or the MIT Professor/FSF member who teaches his class with purely free software², and the relatively empirical evidence that Canvas claim³) can’t attest to rumors of them being anything more than FUD. 1. https://bigbluebutton.org/ https://bigbluebutton.org/ “Our instructors love BigBlueButton. With our previous web-conferencing solution our users encountered many technical and usability problems that caused a lot of support effort on our part. With BigBlueButton, the support issues are almost non-existent. We are constantly impressed with the level of quality in this open source project and it works without any prior knowledge. ” Marc Matthes Director of Computer Networking Programs and Program Developer, Distance Learning Department, Iowa Central Community College 2. (admittedly he isn’t anywhere near lacking in technical skill, and neither are his students, but on the other hand he was an early adopter during a high-stress time last Spring) https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-only-free-libre-software https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-o... “I am pleased to report that my classes were successfully presented, my students were well served, and we were all reasonably happy with the results.” Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He helped found the Free Software Foundation in 1985. 3. https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ “Canvas is the World's Fastest-Growing Learning Management Platform” “Over 30% of Higher Ed Institutions Choose Canvas”
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
I am uni prof. I would say if the govt of a certain area mandated/encouraged free software usage, and also invested money into development (to fill in missing features) and support and training (to improve teacher skills), then things will work. I agree that using libre software without support is difficult (my self-installed webwork server crashed during the quiz today).
jacquesm 6y ago
Non-free software wins in the one arena where open source will never be able to compete: marketing dollars and advocacy. Nobody is going to visit a school, woo the principal, train the techs and hold their hands at the moment when it matters most: when the decision is made. Once the school is in the boat the cost to switch is dramatic so from there on in the closed software vendor can let them suffer and move on to the next juicy target.
protomyth 6y ago
Classroom is also is very difficult for less-privileged students to use - speaking as someone who used to rely on a 4 GB of RAM netbook with a Pentium and was still using it for part of this quarantine, even with Linux things really get slow. We went with Moodle because it was easier to setup and maintain. It also is much less stressful on the client computer. If you read the Canvas install, its pretty much another group who advertises open source but then has an installation procedure that truly sucks. Canvas wants you to pay for hosting. Moodle is super easy by comparison.
- Avamander 6y ago
  Mine went with Moodle and BigBlueButton, in my personal experience as a student and a teacher it's much better than WebEx, MS Teams, Fleep, Zoom (or similar) combined with Canvas, Google Classroom (or similar).
  - protomyth 6y ago
    We went with Zoom because of peer-pressure. We tried a different vendor for video conferencing, but well, there is a lot of pressure to use zoom. I'm not real impressed, but they are basically the Windows of video conferencing.
- vlunkr 6y ago
  I've worked with Canvas a bunch and concluded that they really don't care about open source. Maybe they did at one point when they were the underdog and it gave them an interesting edge. But now they will provide no support to help you run it yourself. The wiki pages outlining how to deploy are community-maintained and pretty frequently out of date. They're attempting to replace pieces (analytics and quizzing) with closed-source standalone applications.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    You honestly can see the difference when a company gives a crap. For example, look at SpiceWorks in the ticket software area. Their directions are clear and easy. Heck, they have VM images.
mikorym 6y ago
My pragmatic suggestion is to use small OSs running on small hardware like a Raspberry Pi. You start with the terminal and end at GUIs. Unfortunately, this disregards another aspect of a pragmatic picture, which is that to start off with, probably none of the teachers at a random school would even be able to open a terminal on some linux setup... Which leads us to... YouTube! Hmm. I think we are stuck again.

api 6y ago

A major problem isn’t at the user level but the admin level. Cloud SaaS means someone else installs and maintains the backend. Many school districts do not have the in house talent to do this, or what talent they do have is too busy putting out fires. Administrating systems is generally hell. They have to be kept updated, secured, etc. The rise of closed SaaS is in part to free people from the curse of IT and system administration. Can we make IT and admin easier? Yes, but nobody has done the work and it isn’t likely anyone will since there is no economic model.

snazz 6y ago
Yes. This is a huge cost for school districts, particularly since both G Suite and Microsoft 365 are free for schools and require practically zero admin time. There's no competition in terms of cost here.
voxic11 6y ago
You are equating non-free software and cloud SaaS. There is no reason the software can't be free and also be available as a cloud SaaS offering. This is exactly what Canvas, the application mentioned bt the gp, offers. It is free and open source software but most users opt for the cloud SaaS offering so that they don't need to host it themselves and take on the maintenance and IT costs.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  I think it's unlikely that Stallman would consider a hosted offering of Canvas to be 'free software'. But I agree with you that it can be both SaaS and free. Although at that point I question what advantage free software gives you - you can't change it and you are still at the mercy of the hosting company since you aren't able to host it yourself.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Paying someone to run something you can and in the future could run yourself could in theory be wholly compatible with the ideals of free software and user freedom.
tasogare 6y ago
This is totally true. My institution is able to deploy software at schools because we are managing it for them. Sometimes we have to host on their own server, but we still do the deployment. Doing otherwise would lead to 100% rejection of using our software (ps: it's research stuff, not commercial).
narwally 6y ago
UNC Wilmington had their Blackboard installation go down for nearly a week in 2018 because of hurricane Florence. I know that was a big factor in their decision to switch to a SaaS. Not that they couldn't have moved their stuff into a cloud hosting provider, but like you said, that's a big ask for an IT team to do in one summer when there are off the shelf solutions.

haunter 6y ago

>the age-old argument that free software still is not accessible or easy to use Personally I'd say most of the time the problem is the lack of documentation, help, manuals, guides etc. I had so many times when I had a problem with a software under Linux and basically you have to spend hours in Google trying to find that stackexchange/reddit/askubuntu thread where you might find your answer, or not.

chrismeller 6y ago
This works into my other comment about how training is provided for big box purchases. No one in any form of academia has the time or money to develop their own training materials - the tool is supposed to benefit the students, anything that isn’t directly doing that isn’t a priority.
- addled 6y ago
  I agree with you in principal, but offer a small counterexample: I was a student worker at a university with a documentation / training dept. We maintained a wiki used by faculty and staff. We encouraged adoption with other groups, and built out a library of articles on tech resources, like how to use screen recording software to make and edit videos for the classroom. We also had dedicated hours in one of the computer labs, where one of us would be present to help anyone with questions on using Blackboard, wiki, etc. So in some cases they are trying, but to your original point, we only had 3-4 people, mostly part time trying to provide training and documentation. I think we made a difference, but there was a lot more that could be done we didn't have resources for.
sidlls 6y ago
Poor documentation practice is pervasive in the free software world. Much of the issue, I believe, is the rise of sites like Stackoverflow. Documentation these days seems to consist of the bare minimum--docs autogenerated from method/function signatures with maybe one or two trivial, useless examples--and an expectation that people will "tinker" with the software and post/find answers on these sites. Google and Stackoverflow, in other words, are the documentation of choice. I understand: documentation is hard. It's tedious and it's difficult to get right for all the likely/major audiences involved. That's not a good excuse, though. The amount of fad-driven, cargo-cult coding and the like has just exploded in the last few years, much of it essentially copy-pasta from sites like Stackoverflow or whatever a Google search throws up.

chrismeller 6y ago

I think a bigger problem is that there is no training involved. I worked in higher ed (tech side) for a few years, and every time they bought a package (for admissions management, grades, donations, etc) there was training provided as part of the purchase. You don’t get that with free software, and for your average professor/admissions rep/grant writer/alumni nagger that’s a big deal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 100% perfect solution to every problem they have... if they don’t know how to use it.

Symbiote 6y ago
Educational software isn't my field, but there is training available for free software in other fields. Occasionally, it's a way to fund development.
freedomben 6y ago
This is an interesting observation, thank you! I wonder if there's value in creating open source training as well. This sounds like a great way that non-programmers could contribute.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Yes, there is. Selling books, seminars, and certifications is very common in the Linux world.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    But most of those are targeted to the IT side of things, aren't they? I don't recall having seen much targeting end users.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      It really depends on what you're looking for. I've found for popular applications there are usually tutorials on Youtube at the very least.
- 6y ago

atoav 6y ago

As somebody who teaches in university my opinion on this is: 1) the software you teach them should last them for a while. That means it shouldn't be to limiting (even if that means more user friendly). It should additionally be something where you can assume it will be around for a while in that form. 2) It should make it easy for them to work in the field that they are in. 3) The work they create in that programme should be readable for as long as possible (even when the creators of the software are gone) 4) We the technically educated are supposed to teach the societal ramifications of certain software products as well (privacy, surveillance) and how to guard from those. So software that doesn't spy, isn't creepy and etc gets a plus as well Students don't have a ton of money, so if there is a free and open source solution that isn't bad on quality compared to the commercial (or data stealing) alternatives, I'd go for that, because it helps with nearly all the points above. I am however not a friend of teaching people tools they cannot use. So while teaching someone Blender instead of Maya makes a ton of sense, because Blender is great and getting better, teaching someone Cinelerra when Premiere or Avid are a much better choice functionality wise is something I wouldn't do just for the heck of it.

pelasaco 6y ago
Just to note, that University and the reality from the schools today under COVID-19, where teachers have to come-up with a solution fast are totally different. I see Countries adapting Google Classroom suite with much more success than the State trying to come up with their own custom and limited solution. My Wife is elementary teacher in Germany and we compared the tool that we have here, with Google Classroom and it's just embarrassing how they are using our taxpayer money in name of a privacy issue that really doesn't exist.
- boogies 6y ago
  Where I live in the US I certainly see teachers using cobbled-together limited proprietary solutions were there is simple superior Free software . Eg. pasting their Zoom links at the top of the Google Classroom stream every day or letting them be buried down below pages of assignments (it seems that Classroom allows only Google Meet links to be included in the header), when leading Free LMSs like Canvas ship with native BigBlueButton integrations. And then using separate services like Nearpod to add interactivity to their Zooms, forcing constant context switching between the two tabs (dozens or even hundreds of times in a single class), when BigBlueButton would allow them to directly upload their slides and automatically detect multiple choice questions for instant integrated polls, and allow students to draw and type directly onto a whiteboard layer over the slides in real time.

boogies 6y ago

I have the privilege of participating in a religious education program using Canvas, and simultaneously the misfortune of using Google Classroom for secular school. For two years my church class was taught by a single elderly volunteer, who I remember providing some simple tech support for during our weekly in person classes — she was not a technical person. But our regular online classes went smoothly, without a technical hitch that I can remember. This year we have a brand new teacher (who also has no prior experience using Canvas AFAIK) and 100% online classes (cause covid), and I had the pleasure of preventing our weekly synchronous classes from occurring via Zoom by recommending BigBlueButton. It has also worked flawlessly. And it pains me every time I have to switch between tabs for the Zoom malware and separate tools like Nearpod in secular school, when BigBlueButton has so much more education-focused functionality baked in. So, while I believe there probably are free software solutions with insufficient support somewhere, my personal experience (as well as others’ anecdotes like those on BigBlueButtons homepage¹ or the MIT Professor/FSF member who teaches his class with purely free software², and the relatively empirical evidence that Canvas claim³) can’t attest to rumors of them being anything more than FUD. 1. https://bigbluebutton.org/ https://bigbluebutton.org/ “Our instructors love BigBlueButton. With our previous web-conferencing solution our users encountered many technical and usability problems that caused a lot of support effort on our part. With BigBlueButton, the support issues are almost non-existent. We are constantly impressed with the level of quality in this open source project and it works without any prior knowledge. ” Marc Matthes Director of Computer Networking Programs and Program Developer, Distance Learning Department, Iowa Central Community College 2. (admittedly he isn’t anywhere near lacking in technical skill, and neither are his students, but on the other hand he was an early adopter during a high-stress time last Spring) https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-only-free-libre-software https://www.gnu.org/education/teaching-my-mit-classes-with-o... “I am pleased to report that my classes were successfully presented, my students were well served, and we were all reasonably happy with the results.” Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He helped found the Free Software Foundation in 1985. 3. https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ “Canvas is the World's Fastest-Growing Learning Management Platform” “Over 30% of Higher Ed Institutions Choose Canvas”

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

I am uni prof. I would say if the govt of a certain area mandated/encouraged free software usage, and also invested money into development (to fill in missing features) and support and training (to improve teacher skills), then things will work. I agree that using libre software without support is difficult (my self-installed webwork server crashed during the quiz today).

jacquesm 6y ago

Non-free software wins in the one arena where open source will never be able to compete: marketing dollars and advocacy. Nobody is going to visit a school, woo the principal, train the techs and hold their hands at the moment when it matters most: when the decision is made. Once the school is in the boat the cost to switch is dramatic so from there on in the closed software vendor can let them suffer and move on to the next juicy target.

protomyth 6y ago

Classroom is also is very difficult for less-privileged students to use - speaking as someone who used to rely on a 4 GB of RAM netbook with a Pentium and was still using it for part of this quarantine, even with Linux things really get slow. We went with Moodle because it was easier to setup and maintain. It also is much less stressful on the client computer. If you read the Canvas install, its pretty much another group who advertises open source but then has an installation procedure that truly sucks. Canvas wants you to pay for hosting. Moodle is super easy by comparison.

Avamander 6y ago
Mine went with Moodle and BigBlueButton, in my personal experience as a student and a teacher it's much better than WebEx, MS Teams, Fleep, Zoom (or similar) combined with Canvas, Google Classroom (or similar).
- protomyth 6y ago
  We went with Zoom because of peer-pressure. We tried a different vendor for video conferencing, but well, there is a lot of pressure to use zoom. I'm not real impressed, but they are basically the Windows of video conferencing.
vlunkr 6y ago
I've worked with Canvas a bunch and concluded that they really don't care about open source. Maybe they did at one point when they were the underdog and it gave them an interesting edge. But now they will provide no support to help you run it yourself. The wiki pages outlining how to deploy are community-maintained and pretty frequently out of date. They're attempting to replace pieces (analytics and quizzing) with closed-source standalone applications.
- protomyth 6y ago
  You honestly can see the difference when a company gives a crap. For example, look at SpiceWorks in the ticket software area. Their directions are clear and easy. Heck, they have VM images.

mikorym 6y ago

My pragmatic suggestion is to use small OSs running on small hardware like a Raspberry Pi. You start with the terminal and end at GUIs. Unfortunately, this disregards another aspect of a pragmatic picture, which is that to start off with, probably none of the teachers at a random school would even be able to open a terminal on some linux setup... Which leads us to... YouTube! Hmm. I think we are stuck again.