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"Therefore, we do not endorse, fund or promote specific resources or activities for use in schools." Holy crap, nobody else agrees with this? This is a govern
by wccrawford 15y ago
"Therefore, we do not endorse, fund or promote specific resources or activities for use in schools."
Holy crap, nobody else agrees with this? This is a government entity refusing to grasp more control than it should have! They are actively saying that they trust their school system to improve itself organically, and they aren't not going to slow it down by mandating the tools used.
Had he left it at 'We need to promote computer understanding, not just usage', they might have bit on that and considered it as part of their mission. But instead, the mention of the Raspberry Pi made it sound like a sales call, and they don't do that. They aren't going to mandate or even recommend individual tools.
- ErrantX 15y agoTrue; and I agree this is theoretically a nice thing. However the net result of this is that, to take an example, school IT services range from the sublime to the dire. Almost all of them are hugely expensive contracts to major firms (say, BT) and tend to consist of poorly paid tech staff (often shared amongst a school district), old out-dated technology and overly-complex infrastructure. At my mum's school, a primary, the teachers had 3 "new" laptops each one year, because they could not get the infrastructure right... This is mirrored across the whole system; no one has a proper budget or equipment recommendations from the DOE. And as a result you get a hit-and-miss situation, with some schools well equipped and others a mess. More often than not teachers will spend out of their own pocket just to be able to adequately teach a subject. Mandating every aspect of education would be bad, I agree. But affirmative action to end the waste, provide support for equipment purchase etc. would be very welcome!