4 ms·

The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely use

The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. Germany, somehow, is a decade behind most of the other Western industrial powerhouses in terms of digitizing. I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back.

dijit 4y ago
> The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. That's a really bad argument when history shows the inverse. Name a FOSS program that no longer exists and I will give you 5 proprietary programs that suffered the same. Even in the same lineage as Teams there is: Communicator, Lync and Skype for Business. Now, they simply do not exist. However I can still run `vim` from the 80s and OpenOffice from the mid-00's without issue, even if there is limited support: it still works.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  We're talking about O365 as a whole, not just Teams. Chat in general is a bad example, because it's a product far more in flux and pretty easily replicated/replaced. Show me how not learning Excel is beneficial. Excel is one of the most important programs on Earth, and students should suffer by not learning it...and instead learn LibreOffice? Then they go to their jobs as adults and don't know how to use what most every other company on the planet uses? When we discuss education, we must also look at what the world does, not just what we -wish- it did. It's cheaper for the schools to have O365 licenses than singular program license for various products that helps to power the global economy. Just like you wouldn't teach a kid command line on some new experimental OS, you'd teach them on UNIX or Windows, same thing. The whole point of schooling is to build real world skills. Much of the O365 suite is used widely, so are some GSuite products. It's just the reality, like it or not.
  - dijit 4y ago
    Even within the very well-worn "core" products of the MS office ecosystem: huge UI design changes de-skill millions of workers. they're not optional. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-2007s-ribbon/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-20... I can easily imagine a world where other office apps are shutdown, you have the golden children like Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint. Which change UI and design language or change features over the years. Then there's things like Office Whiteboard, VIVA, Bookings, Lists, Planner, Power Automate, Yammer, Sway. Who knows how long they'll last?- even mainstays such as Microsoft Access have been deprecated, and I bet you didn't know that you had half of those tools. I mean, I learned graphics design on Macromedia Fireworks. Can I use that now? no. It was the industry standard for raster graphics that were not digital photos- but it's dead now. Even staying with Excel: Excel on Windows and Excel on MacOS are similar, but not the same. Many features available on the Windows version are simply unavailable on MacOS. Where-as something like Libreoffice Calc works consistently across platforms. So, yeah, learning Excel only means that you're Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office for your entire professional career. Which is great for microsoft, because you will always take the pain of learning whatever they do over migrating to something else, due to the cost of retraining to more conventional standards.
    - partiallypro 4y ago
      You can believe whatever you want and come up with every excuse to support your world view but putting "proficient in LibreOffice" on your resume is not going to help you get a job or help the company. "Proficient in Excel" will. The UI of Excel isn't overly important, formulation is and as I said it's cheaper to pay the O365 fee than to pay individual licensing fees, so throwing out random product names that aren't widely used isn't helping your case. Germany has struggled with digitization, sometimes it feels like you're walking back into the 70s when you're dealing with it. That is in part because of their traditional views (which can be good and bad) which aren't always in tune with how the rest of the global economy has already played out. I feel like every year I read about some Germany state or city upending their previous system to go to Open Source, then 2-3 years later see it walked back.
constantcrying 4y ago
Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. And even more important than learning this or that office package are fundamental skills about knowing the basics of what a computer is, how it works and what software is and what it can do. What german schools need is technically competent people who are able to teach their students actually relevant information. The problem is that it is quite hard to find people who are technically competent and able/willing to teach. (This is somewhat of a structural problem, due to how the teaching profession is set up.) The best part of my IT school education (in Germany) was when my school hired a professional software developer who taught programming for a semester. The worst part about it was that half the class clearly didn't care.
- II2II 4y ago
  > Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. I had the benefit of being taught how to use spreadsheets. Not Excel. Not even 1-2-3. I also had the benefit of being taught how to use word processors. Not Word. Not even WordPerfect. The teacher understood that transferable skills had to be taught since they knew the product we were learning with would never be used in the workplace. My mother was taking similar courses around the same time, only they were geared towards the workplace. She was provided with three books over an inch thick that walked the students through a particular product. One set of books for Word, then another set of books for WordPerfect. These courses didn't treat skills as transferable, and I'm sure a lot of students suffered because of that approach since I have seen many people freeze up or complain when presented with a product they weren't taught.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  > Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. And even more important than learning this or that office package are fundamental skills about knowing the basics of what a computer is, how it works and what software is and what it can do. Exactly. The big problem with the current status quo is that kids are being taught that SaaS is how everything should work. You log in to your apps, save your data in “the cloud”, and pay forever. By the time they finish school many don’t even know how to use a local file system.
ls15 4y ago
The opposite is the case. Commercial software has a higher risk of becoming unavailable, because of missing licenses, acquisitions, insolvencies and other things that simply do not affect FOSS. I have been using Audacity, Gimp, OpenOffice / LibreOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox for many years now and I don't see them disappearing anytime soon. > I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back. The reasons are not FOSS or privacy, but underinvestment and incompetence.

dijit 4y ago

> The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. That's a really bad argument when history shows the inverse. Name a FOSS program that no longer exists and I will give you 5 proprietary programs that suffered the same. Even in the same lineage as Teams there is: Communicator, Lync and Skype for Business. Now, they simply do not exist. However I can still run `vim` from the 80s and OpenOffice from the mid-00's without issue, even if there is limited support: it still works.

partiallypro 4y ago
We're talking about O365 as a whole, not just Teams. Chat in general is a bad example, because it's a product far more in flux and pretty easily replicated/replaced. Show me how not learning Excel is beneficial. Excel is one of the most important programs on Earth, and students should suffer by not learning it...and instead learn LibreOffice? Then they go to their jobs as adults and don't know how to use what most every other company on the planet uses? When we discuss education, we must also look at what the world does, not just what we -wish- it did. It's cheaper for the schools to have O365 licenses than singular program license for various products that helps to power the global economy. Just like you wouldn't teach a kid command line on some new experimental OS, you'd teach them on UNIX or Windows, same thing. The whole point of schooling is to build real world skills. Much of the O365 suite is used widely, so are some GSuite products. It's just the reality, like it or not.
- dijit 4y ago
  Even within the very well-worn "core" products of the MS office ecosystem: huge UI design changes de-skill millions of workers. they're not optional. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-2007s-ribbon/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/find-commands-easily-in-word-20... I can easily imagine a world where other office apps are shutdown, you have the golden children like Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint. Which change UI and design language or change features over the years. Then there's things like Office Whiteboard, VIVA, Bookings, Lists, Planner, Power Automate, Yammer, Sway. Who knows how long they'll last?- even mainstays such as Microsoft Access have been deprecated, and I bet you didn't know that you had half of those tools. I mean, I learned graphics design on Macromedia Fireworks. Can I use that now? no. It was the industry standard for raster graphics that were not digital photos- but it's dead now. Even staying with Excel: Excel on Windows and Excel on MacOS are similar, but not the same. Many features available on the Windows version are simply unavailable on MacOS. Where-as something like Libreoffice Calc works consistently across platforms. So, yeah, learning Excel only means that you're Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office for your entire professional career. Which is great for microsoft, because you will always take the pain of learning whatever they do over migrating to something else, due to the cost of retraining to more conventional standards.
  - partiallypro 4y ago
    You can believe whatever you want and come up with every excuse to support your world view but putting "proficient in LibreOffice" on your resume is not going to help you get a job or help the company. "Proficient in Excel" will. The UI of Excel isn't overly important, formulation is and as I said it's cheaper to pay the O365 fee than to pay individual licensing fees, so throwing out random product names that aren't widely used isn't helping your case. Germany has struggled with digitization, sometimes it feels like you're walking back into the 70s when you're dealing with it. That is in part because of their traditional views (which can be good and bad) which aren't always in tune with how the rest of the global economy has already played out. I feel like every year I read about some Germany state or city upending their previous system to go to Open Source, then 2-3 years later see it walked back.

constantcrying 4y ago

Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. And even more important than learning this or that office package are fundamental skills about knowing the basics of what a computer is, how it works and what software is and what it can do. What german schools need is technically competent people who are able to teach their students actually relevant information. The problem is that it is quite hard to find people who are technically competent and able/willing to teach. (This is somewhat of a structural problem, due to how the teaching profession is set up.) The best part of my IT school education (in Germany) was when my school hired a professional software developer who taught programming for a semester. The worst part about it was that half the class clearly didn't care.

II2II 4y ago
> Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. I had the benefit of being taught how to use spreadsheets. Not Excel. Not even 1-2-3. I also had the benefit of being taught how to use word processors. Not Word. Not even WordPerfect. The teacher understood that transferable skills had to be taught since they knew the product we were learning with would never be used in the workplace. My mother was taking similar courses around the same time, only they were geared towards the workplace. She was provided with three books over an inch thick that walked the students through a particular product. One set of books for Word, then another set of books for WordPerfect. These courses didn't treat skills as transferable, and I'm sure a lot of students suffered because of that approach since I have seen many people freeze up or complain when presented with a product they weren't taught.
donmcronald 4y ago
> Basic technology skills easily transfer. All office software is similar, it does not matter what you learn. And even more important than learning this or that office package are fundamental skills about knowing the basics of what a computer is, how it works and what software is and what it can do. Exactly. The big problem with the current status quo is that kids are being taught that SaaS is how everything should work. You log in to your apps, save your data in “the cloud”, and pay forever. By the time they finish school many don’t even know how to use a local file system.

ls15 4y ago

The opposite is the case. Commercial software has a higher risk of becoming unavailable, because of missing licenses, acquisitions, insolvencies and other things that simply do not affect FOSS. I have been using Audacity, Gimp, OpenOffice / LibreOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox for many years now and I don't see them disappearing anytime soon. > I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back. The reasons are not FOSS or privacy, but underinvestment and incompetence.