Linux

Thanks! I will use it 😃

Thanks, I will save these as well!

Which given the budgets that most schools have for equipment, software and staff is currently entirely reasonable.

It's probably doable if a country pushed to create a defacto well documented distribution that's paired with a MDM and online office suite. Basically replicate a locked down Chromebook environment, a lot of edu resources are online these days so most activity is through the browser.

EU Office appears to be the start down that road.

This and banning Windows is silly... Ban the functions you don't want... That way other OSs are lumped in or the OS can be configured appropriately.

Chromebooks and iPads for kids here just made better (brain rot) consumers that know less about computers than their parents and even grandparents.

I'm all for pushing to Linux or de-shittified systems, but "banning Windows" doesn't suffice and the bigger alternatives have the same problems and/or worse.

I work in edtech, and the current landscape is something like 55% ChromeOS, 25% iPad, 15% Windows, 5% Mac. I might have the exact percentages wrong, but I'm pretty sure about the order. The old Mac advantage from the gifted computers is basically gone, and though a lot of primary schools do give students iPads, Windows isn't really gone gone; a lot of edtech apps are either web-based or built for Windows. You're right about Google undercutting the market with ChromeOS, though.

I'm not commenting to pick on you but because I think it's really important that people understand the details of laws so that they can make informed choices. People often think they have more rights or protections than they do, and they might not make the same choices if they knew otherwise.

If you are referring to FERPA, the decision about whether an email is an education record depends on the content and the context for which it is used. I don't think it would hold that all emails from an educational account are educational records. ( https://www.aalrr.com/EdLawConnectBlog/a-reminder-that-emails-may-be-education-records )

From the above and specific to whether an email itself can be a record (when there was a paper copy on file)

The court held the electronic messages themselves were not “education records” for purposes of FERPA because, while they related to the student, they were not “maintained” by the educational institution.

(Please note: "the decision was unpublished and therefore cannot be cited.")

Getting a little more specific: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-99/subpart-D/section-99.31

An educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the consent required by § 99.30 if the disclosure meets one or more of the following conditions:

B) A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided that the outside party—

(1) Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees;

(2) Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records; and

(3) Is subject to the requirements of § 99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records.

So having access to and using the information in the emails is not necessarily a violation so long as the personally identifiable information is not redisclosed.

Schools have a duty to ensure that the access is for "legitimate educational interests" which is subjective but I could see email tools or copilot being argued as meeting that.

I guess we won't know until someone challenges it 😉

I disagree. While it would be correct in some way, it would be a different political movement.

With "let's introduce Linux", it's easy to stop mid-way and too early. For example, at 1 hour per week for 1 semester once during the whole school.

With "ban Windows [from school computers and as mandatory software]", the political agenda is clear and the technical goal is clear. And the benefit is clear, too.

some people will use windows because it's cool and forbidden?

news flash: they're already using windows

They don't need to teach "windows" or "excel". Working with an "operating system" and a "spreadsheet" is the real value. One can quickly pick up any equivalent technogy as they need to. There's no good reason to stick to the company that happens to have a monopoly at the time. In fact, it's better for society that they don't.

As for photoshop or any media editing program, I've never learned that in school anyway. That was just not a thing in any school around where I grew up. Maybe I missed out, but I'd say that elementary and high school curriculums are already pretty busy to focus too much on that kind of work. IME teenagers usually get into that kind of software at their own time and interest. I was into video editing and 3d modeling, but that was never in the curriculum, nor would i advocate for it to be.

No idea where are you from but in Poland there is no way someone teaches these programs at schools. We teach gimp on windows so no problem here.

Companies use windows at work, because it was used in school. Rather than adapt employees to Linux, better pay for windows (many go for very old and dangerous versions to spare money, and that threaten economy, but it is cheaper).

If workers know Linux, companies would make them work on Linux, rather than pay windows and adapt workers to windows.

As long as Linux is more likely to prevent massive hacks of companies'datas, the gouvernment should push for Linux at school in order to push companies toward their own safety...

It's interesting to hear Photoshop and GIMP have diverged so much! I haven't used Photoshop in 20 years but when I initially made the switch it was pretty simple. I guess photo processing has changed a lot in that time, eh? 😅