4 ms·

Should we teach kids to use TikTok and Facebook so they will be better prepared to help with future office marketing tasks too? This line of thinking is poison

by lrvick 4y ago

Should we teach kids to use TikTok and Facebook so they will be better prepared to help with future office marketing tasks too? This line of thinking is poison and will only amplify the monopolisic power of whatever select companies make the taught-in-schools list. Proprietary technology has no place in educational institutions.

dx034 4y ago
No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.
- lrvick 4y ago
  I have had a long career with many office jobs all across the US and never once has anyone taken issue with me using LibreOffice or similar as long as I got my job done and documents were exported in compatible formats. Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.
  - ryanmercer 4y ago
    Excel is a far different beast than what Libre Calc offers, and then what Google Sheets offers. It has some formulas that are exclusive (mind you Liber likely has some that Excel no longer has), outside of startups it is effectively the industry standard as well and is used in all kinds of industries and roles. Libre also has different features than Excel which has different features than Sheets, etc, but Excel is the "standard". You're going to see Excel far more than Sheets in the workplace and I've never seen a job listing mention Libre Calc. I know Excel, I started at a startup 4 months ago using Sheets, the first few weeks I had to 'unlearn' half of what I knew and try and figure out how to do similar in Sheets. If I only knew sheets, I'd probably have been even more lost going to Excel because Microsoft doesn't hold your hand like Sheets does with every formula you start to type. I'm guessing something like Libre Calc is worse than Excel and Sheets in that regard. >Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible Sure, but teaching someone to drive a 4-cylinder automatic driver's ed car doesn't prepare them to say operate a manual tri-axle or a an excavator. Sure they understand steering, acceleration and stopping, but all of the unique mechanics of say Excel are different than random free software.
    - easrng 4y ago
      Google Sheets also has formulas Excel doesn't (QUERY, IMPORTHTML, IMPORTDATA, etc.), and IIRC it does arrays differently. (I haven't used Excel much, so I'm not entirely sure about that one.)
    - mavhc 4y ago
      And that's why you only learn to drive an excavator if you get a job that requires it. Nothing at the level students do spreadsheets is different between spreadsheet programs
      - ryanmercer 4y ago
        My wife is a high school teacher, the stuff those kids are doing now in class is beyond anything I did the first decade I worked in an office. I'm 37, high school education of today in no way resembles the high school experience I had - a subset of kids are even graduating high school and simultaneously completing an associates now.
        mavhc 4y ago
        Fair enough, turns out my student who's just finished a GCSE (age 16) in Computer Science had never used a spreadsheet
  - Conan_Kudo 4y ago
    Not to mention, Microsoft Office has supported the LibreOffice native formats nearly perfectly for almost a decade now, because some governments mandate OpenDocument formats over Microsoft ones. In fact, since at least Office 2013, you can configure Office to use those formats by default.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    You must’ve been lucky, because using existing formatted spreadsheets and docs with Libreoffice always has and always will be a hit or miss proposition. It’s not LO’s fault, but you are clearly an outlier.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dmos62 4y ago
  Teach them LibreOffice. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves.
  - nix23 4y ago
    Exactly, my teacher always said: The hard thing is to find the book (with the information you want) and not reading the book itself (that was before google/inet)
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Teach them to read. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves. Pretty sure this is how we wound up where we are.
    - goldenkey 4y ago
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> Should we teach kids to use TikTo The mostly pro TikTok comments here when news of it being banned indicates YES.
raverbashing 4y ago
Teach LibreOffice for all we care, but the principles are important "Office proficiency" is a useful thing to have, and while it is taken for granted by the older generations, it is being a challenge for people joining the workforce now (it's an actual issue, hiring managers are having trouble with this) As in: people can't write a simple text, set a phrase in bold, set the title with a different font size, etc. Or how to do some basic spreadsheet with simple calculations
gdhkgdhkvff 4y ago
1. If basically all office jobs dealt with online marketing, then yes, we should teach facebook and TikTok in school. But almost no office jobs are related to marketing and so no we shouldn’t teach those tools. It’s an apples and oranges comparison. 2. Schools shouldn’t be trying to be in charge of shaping corporations. That isn’t and shouldn’t be a goal of teaching children. 3. That’s an arbitrary opinion you have. No text books either then? No published novels? No proprietary informational videos? Yes you COULD teach without these, but you would deliver a subpar experience. I’d again argue that schools shouldn’t be focusing on trying to push these moral ideals, they should be focusing on preparing our children for contributing to society in adulthood as much as possible.
- goldenkey 4y ago
  Pretty much all marketing jobs involve those social networks. The office job you once knew, no longer exists. Hell, the office doesn't even exist, everything is going remote. In a marketing class, you absolutely would have to involve social media, otherwise your class would be outdated bunk. Traditional advertising doesn't work on new generation platforms. And billboards, TV ads, and magazine ads are expensive, inefficient, poorly targeted advertising, for all but the wealthiest behemoths of companies. The same methods behind TV ads don't translate to social media ads. Social media ads aren't just trimmed down traditional ads.

by lrvick 4y ago

dx034 4y ago

No, you only need Facebook and TikTok in very few office jobs (and there probably other interfaces than users typically use). Excel is present in pretty much all office jobs. Maybe not all programmer jobs, but apart from some backend coders I haven't seen many people who never had to work with Word or Excel.

lrvick 4y ago
I have had a long career with many office jobs all across the US and never once has anyone taken issue with me using LibreOffice or similar as long as I got my job done and documents were exported in compatible formats. Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible without teaching students products of whatever specific corporation donates the most money or free licenses.
- ryanmercer 4y ago
  Excel is a far different beast than what Libre Calc offers, and then what Google Sheets offers. It has some formulas that are exclusive (mind you Liber likely has some that Excel no longer has), outside of startups it is effectively the industry standard as well and is used in all kinds of industries and roles. Libre also has different features than Excel which has different features than Sheets, etc, but Excel is the "standard". You're going to see Excel far more than Sheets in the workplace and I've never seen a job listing mention Libre Calc. I know Excel, I started at a startup 4 months ago using Sheets, the first few weeks I had to 'unlearn' half of what I knew and try and figure out how to do similar in Sheets. If I only knew sheets, I'd probably have been even more lost going to Excel because Microsoft doesn't hold your hand like Sheets does with every formula you start to type. I'm guessing something like Libre Calc is worse than Excel and Sheets in that regard. >Teaching the concept of spreadsheets is totally possible Sure, but teaching someone to drive a 4-cylinder automatic driver's ed car doesn't prepare them to say operate a manual tri-axle or a an excavator. Sure they understand steering, acceleration and stopping, but all of the unique mechanics of say Excel are different than random free software.
  - easrng 4y ago
    Google Sheets also has formulas Excel doesn't (QUERY, IMPORTHTML, IMPORTDATA, etc.), and IIRC it does arrays differently. (I haven't used Excel much, so I'm not entirely sure about that one.)
  - mavhc 4y ago
    And that's why you only learn to drive an excavator if you get a job that requires it. Nothing at the level students do spreadsheets is different between spreadsheet programs
    - ryanmercer 4y ago
      My wife is a high school teacher, the stuff those kids are doing now in class is beyond anything I did the first decade I worked in an office. I'm 37, high school education of today in no way resembles the high school experience I had - a subset of kids are even graduating high school and simultaneously completing an associates now.
      - mavhc 4y ago
        Fair enough, turns out my student who's just finished a GCSE (age 16) in Computer Science had never used a spreadsheet
- Conan_Kudo 4y ago
  Not to mention, Microsoft Office has supported the LibreOffice native formats nearly perfectly for almost a decade now, because some governments mandate OpenDocument formats over Microsoft ones. In fact, since at least Office 2013, you can configure Office to use those formats by default.
- yunohn 4y ago
  You must’ve been lucky, because using existing formatted spreadsheets and docs with Libreoffice always has and always will be a hit or miss proposition. It’s not LO’s fault, but you are clearly an outlier.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dmos62 4y ago
Teach them LibreOffice. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves.
- nix23 4y ago
  Exactly, my teacher always said: The hard thing is to find the book (with the information you want) and not reading the book itself (that was before google/inet)
- shapefrog 4y ago
  Teach them to read. Or better yet, teach them how to learn themselves. Pretty sure this is how we wound up where we are.
  - goldenkey 4y ago

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

> Should we teach kids to use TikTo The mostly pro TikTok comments here when news of it being banned indicates YES.

raverbashing 4y ago

Teach LibreOffice for all we care, but the principles are important "Office proficiency" is a useful thing to have, and while it is taken for granted by the older generations, it is being a challenge for people joining the workforce now (it's an actual issue, hiring managers are having trouble with this) As in: people can't write a simple text, set a phrase in bold, set the title with a different font size, etc. Or how to do some basic spreadsheet with simple calculations

gdhkgdhkvff 4y ago

1. If basically all office jobs dealt with online marketing, then yes, we should teach facebook and TikTok in school. But almost no office jobs are related to marketing and so no we shouldn’t teach those tools. It’s an apples and oranges comparison. 2. Schools shouldn’t be trying to be in charge of shaping corporations. That isn’t and shouldn’t be a goal of teaching children. 3. That’s an arbitrary opinion you have. No text books either then? No published novels? No proprietary informational videos? Yes you COULD teach without these, but you would deliver a subpar experience. I’d again argue that schools shouldn’t be focusing on trying to push these moral ideals, they should be focusing on preparing our children for contributing to society in adulthood as much as possible.

goldenkey 4y ago
Pretty much all marketing jobs involve those social networks. The office job you once knew, no longer exists. Hell, the office doesn't even exist, everything is going remote. In a marketing class, you absolutely would have to involve social media, otherwise your class would be outdated bunk. Traditional advertising doesn't work on new generation platforms. And billboards, TV ads, and magazine ads are expensive, inefficient, poorly targeted advertising, for all but the wealthiest behemoths of companies. The same methods behind TV ads don't translate to social media ads. Social media ads aren't just trimmed down traditional ads.