Im glad they're using Linux but I wish it didn't have to be because they were fucking broke...
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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Hehe if you're REALLY broke you get "benevolent" corporate grants for things like cheap Chromebooks, so Google can write off a huge donation while vendor-locking school infrastructure and student mindshare into their "cloud services."
That was only in the 90s. Now they have a vibrant ecosystem where they let students have full root access to there machines.
If things go wrong they just reimage.
Anyone else find themselves singing this headline to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun?
There once was a school that ran Linux
"Not so!" cried so many cynics
Robert Maynard put Linux in
it made the cynics heads spin
so fast they ended up at the clinics
If you actually look up the school it is really cool. They literally give students full root access to there local machines and encourage learning. That is a bright contrast to the world of locked down Chromebooks and high surveillance
This just reminded me of a thing from my high school (many years ago). They had windows machines that were somewhat locked down, but I discovered a trivial way to bypass the restrictions on changing the desktop wallpaper. So naturally I set the background image to a screenshot of the desktop, and then hid all the actual icons.
On another timeline, the staff would have approached this with "Huh that's clever. You fooled us and we thought the computer was broken. Please don't do that, but also let's channel your creativity somewhere useful."
Instead I got a monologue about breaking things and was banned from the computer lab for a week. Soured me on school and such for a while.
You just got to be a bit more stealthy. When I was in middle school I figured out that I could completely bypass group policy if I unplugged the network cable at the right time.
When one of the school IT person questioned me I just said, I do not know why it looks like that. I also never shared my secret
That's a nice find.
You just got to be a bit more stealthy.
Yep, but that's not the lesson the school should be teaching, at least for it's best interest. Fostering white hat attitudes would probably work out better. Instead I learned the authorities were idiots that can't be reasoned with.
That is a very important lesson to learn early, because the same applies when you're grown up.
"There's a school in Wisconsin that is so underfunded that they only have very old computers and the person running it barely knows hat's a computer and thus won't ever create a budget or approve new systems. Furthermore this school is so irrelevant they aren't even able to qualify for free software from Microsoft. A bored teacher saved the day and made the old computers somewhat useful by installing Linux on his spare time. Of course all of this doesn't come for free, the current generation of students never used a computer at home, just mobile devices, and are being robbed of learning a valuable and required skill for any future job - basic Windows and Office usage."
There, article fixed for you.
uninteresting disingenuous troll
Sure basic windows and office usage is sure a required skill.
You don't even use windows that much in any future job. You use the software solutions you are given as a wage slave. And most of them run in a browser.
Also cool that this school is unimportant for Microsoft. But for the students, teachers and parents its certainly ain't.
You don’t even use windows that much in any future job. You use the software solutions you are given as a wage slave
So you're assuming there aren't "wage slaves" doing data entry on MS Office and also that 0% of those students won't ever be managers or hold any other more high level job that does require those tools. So you must be against teaching financial literacy at school as well because "they won't ever invest anything". Great job, let's keep the peasants illiterate in everything they actually need to climb the ladder.
Because they can't learn to put words and numbers in excel. How skillful do you think they're gonna get from one semester in excel?
One semester in Excel you have time to learn how to use it for almost everything.
Good luck teaching middle schoolers how to use a pivot table when there's barely enough time to teach the basics of Excel's convoluted user interface.
Maybe they don’t give up that easily.
Wouldnt you keep them computer illiterate when you teach them exclusively how to use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office?
Also that's a big jump to assume that I would be against financial literacy.
Wouldnt you keep them computer illiterate when you teach them exclusively how to use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office?
As I said on another comment:
Students can and should learn Linux / LibreOffice and can most likely do almost everything they need with it, however once they get into a job and the company uses MS Office they won’t be be able to pick the work right away and be as productive as their peers will be. Imagine one of those students tried to apply for a backoffice job at a bank, they’ll most likely test the person’s Office skills and the student may not be able to compete the assessment and have an inferior grade to another one who always had MS Office at his school.
I’m all for FOSS but we must be very responsible when it comes to what we expose young people to and how that may impact their careers on the long run. They should have exposure to Linux, LibreOffice and have a basic understanding of them but they shouldn’t be robbed of valuable jobs skills that may make a difference just because.
If you can only use a word processor because it looks like the one you have been trained on then you are computer illiterate. That's not something a school should proliferate.
You aren’t wrong, but that’s besides the point. The point is that even if you’re decently computer savvy and you can switch around between programs you’ll always be better and faster at advanced features on the one you used more hours. If you say this never happens to you then you’ve never been exposed to a program for enough time to actually learn it from top to bottom.
Well that's undeniable. But, coming back to this school, do you think that they could afford licenses for the latest MS Office and or MS Windows? No they would teach with one or more generations ago where things are laid out and function totally different.
So you get the same issues you are complaining right now and nobody gained anything.
But, coming back to this school, do you think that they could afford licenses for the latest MS Office and or MS Windows?
Microsoft typically offers licenses to education... and when it comes to Windows it doesn't even matter as most retailers already sell machines with Windows licenses with very competitive prices. It's usual to see bigger retailers selling computers with a Windows license at the same price a smaller retailer would do without license just because they've the volume and get good deals from both Microsoft and hardware vendors.
I'm not complaining, just stating something that should be taken into consideration.
You can learn Windows pretty quickly. Also this is much better than giving students locked down Chromebooks
Also this is much better than giving students locked down Chromebooks
Oh yes, but still can pose a problem. Imagine one of those students tried to apply for a backoffice job at a bank, they’ll most likely test the person’s Office skills and the student may not be able to compete the assessment and have an inferior grade to another one who always had MS Office at his school.