Here in Europe - and I think it’s no different in the rest of the world - a lot of schools require their pupils to have a computer running Windows and to have an account at MS or Google so they can work with Office 365 or Google Docs.
Is everyone okay with this? If you were (or are currently) in that situation, how did you (or do you plan to) react? Did you reach out to the school? Did you just let it happen for the least fuss? Are you actually happy with this decision?
Curious to hear your opinions.
One a sidenote… I was happy to see that in the music academy they are actually using MuseScore and when my daughter stepped in with her Linux machine… the teacher applauded it.
When it comes to scientific publications, there are journals that will only accept Word documents, and others that will accept Latex documents.
In this case the solution is easy… choose the enlightened Latex journals.
The situation is crazy , because most printing is done with Tex anyway, yet some journals insist authors submit Word manuscripts, which they then convert for printing. I think it has to do with how they handle reviewing of manuscripts.
The school sitation is more difficult… there are no Linux alternative schools, and who would shift school over an issue like that anyway?
We are required to have any e-mail address in order to communicate, have logins to some school related services. That applies to parents as well, as they need to get notifications about the children.
It’s not required to be from Google or MS.
Where the school uses MS Teams for online whatever, that’s a different story.
Teams needs an MS account, so the school requiring an MS account is a scondary requirement…
We are in that situation, so 2 of my 3 kids have an MS account, used exclusively for MS Teams.
Of course we’d be happy just have the schools running their own self hosted Jitsi
But that’s just a dream, sysadmins in schools on average are just too lazy to do things like this.
Documents are required to be in .docx/.xlsx/ etc… but Libreoffice is mostly well capable of producing them, as well as Freeoffice.
We even have a kind-of-official ( ) distro
It’s a mainly a clumsy fork of Linux Mint, I don’t know anyone really using it.
I just bookmarked this something long ago, as it can be a very good argument if a dispute with a school or with an office or authority would get to a point, why we don’t have a Windows based whatever to fulfil their requirements… I’d just quickly refer to that DJSZA - and since it’s just a Linux, whatever it can do, can be done in Debian too )
Did not happen such a dispute so far, but I’m ready for it
My son rode herd on the district’s switchover from Apple to Chromebook. Each kid has a Google account and a chromebook. Google Docs are used. Teachers can choose a computer, as long as it can handle the Google world.
I think handling Google is a reasonable requirement. It is a part of our world students will have to learn to live with. Esoteric ways of avoiding google do not belong in schools.
This is what our school district went to also.
The student’s google account is through the school district’s account. (School provides the chromebook)
The teachers can monitor and control the student’s chromebooks and etc… When the student graduates, the school deactivates it from the school account and gives it to the graduated student for personal use.
I’m not a big fan of google, but I will admit it works really well in this situation.
I dont have kids so no knowledge on who is forced to use what.
But yes think all school kids should have access to email, a computer and a text production software tool. Sadly Microsoft is the default standard and even doing things in libre office which has the option to save in word format is not quite the same, so many teachers would down mark as the formatting is slightly different.
The idea of giving every kid a chromebook appeals to me, but who pays for tbe internet connection at home ?
Think its important to have a basic understanding of text processing and would agree google docs, sheets etc is good enough fkr most students to get a understanding.
But with artificial intelligence now hope there is a way of stopping copy past for the answers to homework
My wife is an English/Research teacher. With the chromebook setup she can see the student type in real time. -even days later when she opens their file, she can go back and still watch it as it was being produced (like a movie file). If she thinks someone is cheating she can go back and watch it and definitely see when someone pastes.
The teachers can also lock the browser (or lock it to one form/doc-like a worksheet or test) & they have records (history) of all the websites the student went to & etc…
It’s amazing the tools my wife has to catch students cheating. However, if the student is clever enough, there is always going to be a way to cheat.
Things have come on rapidly and i am pleased to here checks are in place to stop this happening.
But with most class sizes at 30 ?
And most teachers seeing several different classes and levels during a week, it must be really adding to teacher work load.
Glad i dropped out of education when i did, both my wife and i were teachers for a long time and it was a struggle at times to stay in front with all the demands of the educational system
Students dont seem to be taught to quote external material properly. It was all about composition in my school English classes… there was no concept of referring to the work of others. I never encountered that until at University.
One can plagiarise (never sure how to spell that ) without google.
I tried typing it wrong in this reply. A wiggly red underline appeared! And a right click offered the correction!
I’m using LMDE, so maybe the spelling corrector is distro-dependent. It also marked LMDE as misspelled, and offered me a chance to add it to the dictionary, which I did.
I think students have to be taught to plagiarize. Cheating is usually a learned behavior, like bigotry and racial inequality.
You mean taught to quote other works properly?
Problem is they were not taught that in my day. Has it changed?
My impression of English teachers is that they are stuck in a very old set of methods…there is no reason why a composition should be totally original, it never is in real life, it refers to things. It is like they are trying to teach creativity to the exclusion of everything else.
I think I remember you saying you were an English teacher? Dont take it personally, tell us what the real situation is.
I imagine its a pupils dream no teachers
Made me think of pink Floyd another brick in the wall.
I love red and blue underlined for spelling and grammar but some times i am sure i am more right than them (grammar intentional) only difficulty is my email program does not have either, but my word processor does and allows me to flick between french and english.
But i write a message in french and my wife says NON ! So rewrites it and uses more words than i do …
That’s it. Plagiarism is the use of another’s work without proper credit. That’s what needs to be taught. Stealing isn’t creative, Neville, but plagiarism might be. Proper acknowledgement is necessary. Currently, the Trump campaign is in hot water for freely using proprietary music without permission. The Harris campaign has been granted permission by the artists.
Exactly. I think we were taught that at school. What they missed drilling us on was how to give proper credit and how to use references or quotes well.
It is ok to say , “that is wrong”, but it needs to be backed up with " this is how to do it properly"
I will probably be in trouble with the Teachers Union after this.
There are, unfortunately , some linux and foss websites that plagiarise content. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the original.
I am with you on that.
There is a bond between students and teachers. Good teachers bond well and influence kids in lots of things other than straight learning.
We can all remember that one special teacher whose influence is still there today.
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