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In Bavaria, Germany when the pandemic started all pupils could "voluntarily" sign up for MS Teams or just have no online classes at all. No alternatives offered

In Bavaria, Germany when the pandemic started all pupils could "voluntarily" sign up for MS Teams or just have no online classes at all. No alternatives offered.

ekianjo 3y ago
> Germany when the pandemic started all pupils could "voluntarily" sign up for MS Teams Of course they never considered any open platform like Jitsi that did not require an actual account
- mqus 3y ago
  I remember trying out jitsi in 2020 and calls with more than ~8 people were painfully laggy, others got logged out, etcpp. I don't imagine this working with classrooms of 20+ pupils. But there did exist alternatives like BBB which did mostly just work (or Zoom with similar issues like Teams)
- vel0city 3y ago
  Jitsi has nowhere near the featureset of Teams, they're not really comparable products. It's like arguing you can replace everything in your kitchen with a can opener. Video chat is just one part of a platform like Teams.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    It sounds like they were simply using Teams for remote video
veave 3y ago
That seems Bavaria's fault
mtts 3y ago
Education in the Netherlands uses Microsoft quite heavily as well and so when the pandemic started it was also either Teams or nothing at all. However, the reason for this wasn’t so much MS being evil as Google and others basically ignoring sensitivities about where user data is hosted. MS guarantees (well, sort of) user data is stored in the EU when customers set it up properly. No one else does (or did, maybe things have changed by then). So the monopoly MS has here is basically because they do what their customers want them to do.
nani8ot 3y ago
My computer science teacher (also the vice-headmaster) set up moodle for our school and a few others. I have no idea how other schools managed their online classes. Jitsi was hosted by a few teachers who voluntarily managed all this infrastructure for schools in my state (Germany, BW). They didn't have enough servers since there wasn't much demand until the pandemic. These scaling problems meant only teachers could use their cam (which most students were quite happy about).

In Bavaria, Germany when the pandemic started all pupils could "voluntarily" sign up for MS Teams or just have no online classes at all. No alternatives offered.

ekianjo 3y ago

> Germany when the pandemic started all pupils could "voluntarily" sign up for MS Teams Of course they never considered any open platform like Jitsi that did not require an actual account

mqus 3y ago
I remember trying out jitsi in 2020 and calls with more than ~8 people were painfully laggy, others got logged out, etcpp. I don't imagine this working with classrooms of 20+ pupils. But there did exist alternatives like BBB which did mostly just work (or Zoom with similar issues like Teams)
vel0city 3y ago
Jitsi has nowhere near the featureset of Teams, they're not really comparable products. It's like arguing you can replace everything in your kitchen with a can opener. Video chat is just one part of a platform like Teams.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  It sounds like they were simply using Teams for remote video

veave 3y ago

That seems Bavaria's fault

mtts 3y ago

Education in the Netherlands uses Microsoft quite heavily as well and so when the pandemic started it was also either Teams or nothing at all. However, the reason for this wasn’t so much MS being evil as Google and others basically ignoring sensitivities about where user data is hosted. MS guarantees (well, sort of) user data is stored in the EU when customers set it up properly. No one else does (or did, maybe things have changed by then). So the monopoly MS has here is basically because they do what their customers want them to do.

nani8ot 3y ago

My computer science teacher (also the vice-headmaster) set up moodle for our school and a few others. I have no idea how other schools managed their online classes. Jitsi was hosted by a few teachers who voluntarily managed all this infrastructure for schools in my state (Germany, BW). They didn't have enough servers since there wasn't much demand until the pandemic. These scaling problems meant only teachers could use their cam (which most students were quite happy about).