[joejerryronnie]

In many cases, the alternative is no tech at all (or very limited tech), especially for schools located in lower socio-economic areas. This notion of tech companies essentially giving away their products to schools in order to influence future adopters has been going on for 30 years or more. With that said, educators should be made aware of this reality and should be upfront with their students that tech alternatives exist.

[cat199]

how about subsidies and open development for these sorts of software?

seems to be doing ok in the raspberry pi arena, etc...

[joejerryronnie]

I think the challenge is that it’s hard to compete with the large vendors on a full stack, turn key solution. It’s one thing for a STEAM focused specialist to pull together a disparate set of open source apps into a workable model but your typical teacher doesn’t have the time to do that and still focus on their day job. Most teachers need technical solutions that are integrated, work 99% of the time, and have a very simple learning curve (not denigrating teachers’ technical abilities, this is more of a time thing - they need to be up and running quickly)

[jrowley]

I totally agree! My partner is a 7th grade science teacher. She is more competent from a technical perspective than most of the other teachers at her school and she utilizes Chromebooks, and Google Classroom to its fullest. She is really pleased with them as tools, because the alternatives are of such poor quality. Maybe I should go in and give a mini lesson on the privacy implications of using Google/monopolies in tech.

[joejerryronnie]

7th grade is completely reasonable to start opening their eyes to how the real world works - i.e. pretty much every person/company/entity you encounter is trying to manipulate you according to their own agenda. I wonder how we can balance the sense of wonder and optimism of youth with the hard lessons they need to know as they sally forth in the world.

[jrowley]

A very good point you make - it's hard to walk the line with regards to keeping it real but not crushing students. For example, teaching climate change can be challenging.