My kids schools are 100% Chromebooks. This has been great for scheduling extracurricular activities and making their backpacks lighter. It really hasn't improved their ability to learn mathematics or English.
Lightening backpack load and improved scheduling are pretty good outcomes, as long as learning hasn't gotten worse. Why would learning ability (for basics like the 3Rs) be significantly improved using tech? The students are still the same after all.
I think you are correct that the concepts these students are learning probably aren't improved too much by technology, but there are tons of ways in which students can learn and collaborate in real time which wouldn't be possible without devices like chromebooks.
(Also, if you're clever, you can do things like finding a web-app that lets you use them as a substitute for those vote-clickers that some university lecturers use to gauge pre-lesson knowledgeability.)
Unfortunately a lot of parents won't care, and the school system won't give them a choice either. However, it leads to shit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...
The ideal is BYOD. If all you really need is a web browser, then let parents and kids decide what to use together.
If you really give a shit about cheating use analog quizzes/tests. It's not perfect, but the old ways are easier to police.
These aren't the student's devices; they're enterprise-MDM workstations that the kids happen to carry around. Think of them as a computer lab that the kids don't have to go to; not as Personal Computers per se. They're probably logged into them with a school-issued GSuite email rather than their personal Google Account, too, and told to not use these computers for non-school activity. (I'm not intimately familiar with the Chromebook education initiative, but if it's anything like Apple's initiative with iPads, then that's how it's set up.)
And no, the school wouldn't ever be okay with not using Mobile Device Management; MDM is how they ensure that a classroom full of laptops all on a LAN together aren't spreading malware like the digital equivalent of a kindergarten in flu season; and how they ensure the devices don't get spyware installed onto them by someone else (some stranger; or someone's parents!) to steal kids' contact info and location details with the goal of kidnapping or worse.
I'd actually think that BYOD would be worse in such a case, as you'd have to contaminate your personal device with an enterprise MDM profile in order to get it on the network.
Better to just tell the kid that they can have a personal device, but they also have to have this school-managed device, and that they should think of them as separate things and not use one for the activities better suited to the other. (This also neatly solves the "school spy-ware" worry as well, because if the students are only doing school-work on their laptop and are just using their phones+ISP data plans to text/email/etc., then the school sees none of that.)
I was one of the kids who was a little disappointed when the first MacOS came out. Where was the command line? Where did I wrote code? The commodore64 did a lot more for kids who wanted to learn about computers, an affordable and highly hackable and programmable computer. I felt like the first Mac was a big step forward in terms of ease of use for the general consumer, but a step back from the AppleII in getting in there and really enjoying computing.
Chromebooks put more, not less distance, between a kid and what I consider to be the interesting things about a computer.
Think of it this way - google talks a lot about a critical skills shortage. Ok, so, would a kid who grows up using a Chromebook be more likely to develop these skills than a kid who uses a linux system, or Mac OS X? Or hell, even a windows system, at least it's relatively easy to get a bash shell working there.
Nah, let's face it, the future of google's workforce is not going to be found among the the kids using google's educational products. Bet you google execs and high up engineers most definitely have their kids learning on something else, and they probably avoid too much exposure to any kind of electronics for a longer period of childhood than google pushes out there in the classroom.
I, personally, see the value in those skills, but for students who are not interested in it, it is just an unnecessary hassle and a source of frustration. It's like saying that having an easily repairable, but not that reliable or user-friendly, car is a good opportunity to learn problem-solving and basic vehicle maintenance skills. As someone not interested in that, I just want a reliable device that will drive me in comfort and convenience from point A to point B without making me worry about having to fix anything.
Personally, I worry about having to fix something when I'm incapable of fixing it. That's why it stresses me out when my car or washing machine breaks. But true, that breaks all the time just because I can fix it with a trip to the hardware store.
The thing is... well, sure, easily repairable but not reliable isn't necessarily a trade off that needs to happen.
Google could have done what apple did with OsX, but at a realistic price point. An easy to use, affordable and reliable UI with astonishing power right beneath the surface, all based on Unix, in the hands of millions of school aged kids. This could have been the Commodore 64 or apple II times a thousand.
Instead, we have the Chromebook.
Note I deleted the last line which on reflection was excessive and not useful to the discussion.
I agree with you on the rest, however. I, personally, enjoy learning about computing by fixing stuff, hacking, etc. However, this won't hold true for everyone, and they shouldn't be subjected to this weird form of hazing with "we got through it, you gotta do it too, otherwise you won't learn all those computer skills (that you don't care about at all)!"
Reminds me a bit of some people in the US being almost religious about driving a car with a manual transmission. I get it, it is fun sometimes, and a pretty cool skill to have, but I am glad that most people in the US don't have to deal with that unless they want to. I had to learn it (because 99% of motorcycles still come in manual transmission only), but I do not think that manual is some life changing skill that needs to be learned by everyone. Those who need it will learn, those who don't will not, and it is a good thing we have this option. No need to force this on everyone.
That being said, no, I don't think we should give kids a terminal window and tell them to figure it out from there, but we should definitely be giving them computers that give them the opportunity to peel back the layers, and then we should encourage them to do so.
I agree with you on this one, but with one important caveat: it shouldn't be their primary driver/school work machine, it should be something provided by parents. I am all about letting kids figure stuff out and play around with the OS, but doing that on the machine that you use to submit homework, do your class scheduling, gradebook management, etc. is a recipe for disaster. Have you ever had cases where your machine became useless until you fixed it, because of some non-trivial symlinking or config screw up? Now imagine being a middle schooler who is already overstressed due to all the homework and other school stuff, but without enough technical and coping skills to deal with it.
In a similar vein, if I had a kid, and they were interested in learning things about cars, I would be absolutely glad to get them a shitty old beater car, appropriate tools, and look into working on that car with them. However, for their daily driver, I would heavily insist on getting them a less than 10 years old japanese economy car they can use on the daily basis or in case where something on their "learning car mechanics" beater went wrong. You make mistakes when you learn, and I wouldn't want their daily life to be handicapped due to making a mistake or two.
I.e., it isn't a programming-friendly OS vs. chromebooks, it is heavy backpacks filled with textbooks and notebooks vs. chromebooks. Don't mistake chromebooks for a computing tool, it is an everyday student things kind of tool that just happens to be served by a computing device.
As far as I am aware, chromebooks in education are provided by school districts, families aren't paying for it directly. You can always resort to "they are paying for it with taxes", but that would be the same for any non-chromebooks as well, except it would end up being more expensive (they won't be sold at as high of a loss as google can afford with chromebooks; count all that extra IT administration needed for non-chromebooks, adding a lot of costs as well).
>Was it really beyond google's capabilities to make this a more open, perhaps linux based environment?
It wasn't beyond their capabilities, it just wasn't a good idea for the purposes chromebooks were supposed to serve.
I installed GalliumOS, and I love it. It is a complete Linux environment (Ubuntu), and it easily meets my needs even if Firefox sometimes slows down a bit with Javascript-heavy web apps (I haven't installed Chrome.) My only complaint is the limited storage space.
Google may not ship Chromebooks with a customizable OS, but they and the OEMs don't interfere with end users' ability to install one (yet), and I really appreciate that the education market has created so much demand for machines with this sort of form factor.
Sandboxing this stuff away is in general a good idea for protecting "normal" users. People often want to install pirated games or whatever and that's abused as a vector to get malware onto those devices.
If that's not enough you can install entirely different operating systems and even bootloaders (if you want to).
Now for families that are voluntarily buying chromebooks for personal use, I don’t see them getting any value out of programmability regardless.
Or are you one of those people who think everyone should be forced to learn coding?
Perhaps beyond their better judgment. More open implies more ways to break.
I haven’t looked into it yet but it appears that my criticisms no longer apply to the current product. In blunter words, I had it wrong about chromebooks in 2019. It sounds like many of the tools I care about are still a little clunky, but now a possibility, and will likely get better over time.
https://alex.miller.im/posts/data-science-chromebook-pixelbo...
It was a definite plus. Kids could hop onto any machine that had a browser (even the older Win7 PCs) and continue to work. Does iOS even allow multiple logins or was that whole educational push a few years ago just FUD against Google? Doesn't matter, everyone has moved on anyway.
The whole "OMG Chromebooks!" cry was drowned out when the cost savings was figured out, because the alternatives are $500 keyboardless iPads that can't be shared and monitorless $500 Dell PCs that can't be transported.
The kids are now in secondary ed and use Docs/Slides/Classroom for their classwork. Remote collaboration is dead simple (again, more iCloud FUD from Apple), and nobody EVER forgets their classwork at school since it's always a login away.
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-bags-are-wrecking-...