6 ms·
If I was a teacher, there's no way I would use this... privacy concerns aside, there's nothing to suggest that Google won't suddenly shut it down in two or thre
by zyxley 12y ago
If I was a teacher, there's no way I would use this... privacy concerns aside, there's nothing to suggest that Google won't suddenly shut it down in two or three years when whoever is maintaining it gets bored of it, like Google has with so many other projects.
- ChicagoBoy11 12y agoThis concern would not make a whole lot of sense for teachers. The matter of fact is that the stability and longevity of this service is far more certain than the typical length of LMS contracts in school districts or the length of time that certain online educational platforms manage to stay relevant with current technologies.
- wsxcde 12y agoWhy would a teacher worry about something that might happen 3 years down the line? You only need this to work for a particular term or semester.
- sosuke 12y agoBecause learning new products each semester or term is a PITA? Just imagine how long books last in a curriculum, there is nothing that iterates quickly in education. A question though is do all teachers use the same software in a school or is it all ad-hoc?
- wsxcde 12y agoIt's not really new products very semester, is it? We're talking about an unlikely event that might happen sometime in future after a few years. A lot of professors have adopted Piazza is a relatively short time because it offers real benefits. And you could make the exact same argument about the longevity of Piazza. I think we ought to applaud anything that makes life easier for educators because the reality is that most academic software, or at least blackboard which seems to terribly popular and is what I've used extensively, is a terrible mess. I'm not dismissing the concerns about privacy and longevity but they seem to putting potential future problems ahead of real present benefits.