“We” aren’t. Google made durable Chromebooks available to schools super cheap, and schools (being famously underfunded) bought them. This is happening the way Google wants it to.
How exactly would RasPis work for kids in schools, though? It’s hard enough to make sure kids have their chargers, let alone needing to pack a monitor and keyboard.
I mentioned Raspberry Pi because they’re the best we’ve got in terms of being education-focused, but don’t get hung up on form-factor. The point is that schools should be using real Free Software, not proprietary corporate shit.
IDGAF if it’s a laptop like a Pinebook or old OLPC, or if they resort to putting Raspberry Pis in a computer lab and not taking them home. Any of those are infinitely preferable to fucking kids up with locked-down corpo propaganda devices.
The idea that public schools (i.e. the government) are essentially forcing kids to enter into contractual agreements with Google, conditioning them that that sort of thing is okay before they’re even old enough to understand what it means, is fundamentally wrong and unacceptable. And that’s on top of how the locked-down software stifles actual understanding of computers.
Yep, totally agree. But anything that isn’t subsidized by the company making it will be way too expensive for schools to buy in large enough numbers for their student body, so until someone is willing to foot the bill for the $220 Pinebooks over the $99 Chromebooks, I think we’re kind of stuck.
“We” aren’t. Google made durable Chromebooks available to schools super cheap, and schools (being famously underfunded) bought them. This is happening the way Google wants it to.
How exactly would RasPis work for kids in schools, though? It’s hard enough to make sure kids have their chargers, let alone needing to pack a monitor and keyboard.
I mentioned Raspberry Pi because they’re the best we’ve got in terms of being education-focused, but don’t get hung up on form-factor. The point is that schools should be using real Free Software, not proprietary corporate shit.
IDGAF if it’s a laptop like a Pinebook or old OLPC, or if they resort to putting Raspberry Pis in a computer lab and not taking them home. Any of those are infinitely preferable to fucking kids up with locked-down corpo propaganda devices.
The idea that public schools (i.e. the government) are essentially forcing kids to enter into contractual agreements with Google, conditioning them that that sort of thing is okay before they’re even old enough to understand what it means, is fundamentally wrong and unacceptable. And that’s on top of how the locked-down software stifles actual understanding of computers.
Yep, totally agree. But anything that isn’t subsidized by the company making it will be way too expensive for schools to buy in large enough numbers for their student body, so until someone is willing to foot the bill for the $220 Pinebooks over the $99 Chromebooks, I think we’re kind of stuck.
Make the monitor a part of the desk, have the kid bring a RaspPi with a keyboard+trackpad combo.
Done.