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Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromebooks (Video)
Phil Shapiro often loans his Chromebook to patrons of the public library where he works. He says people he loans it to are happily suprised at how fast it is. He wrote an article earlier this month titled Teachers unite to influence computer manufacturing that was a call to action; he says that if 20,000 teachers demand a simple, low-cost Chromebook appliance -- something like a Chrome-powered Mac mini with a small SSD instead of a hard drive, and of course without the high Mac mini price -- some computer manufacturer will bite on the idea. Monitors? There are plenty of used ones available. Ditto speakers and keyboards, not that they cost much new. The bottom line is that Phil believes Chromebooks, both in their current form factor and in a simpler one, could be "the" computer for schools and students. Maybe so, not that Android tablets are expensive or hard to use. And wait! Isn't there already a Chromebox? And even a Chromebase all-in-one Chrome-based desktop? In any case, Chrome-based computers look pretty good for schools and libraries, especially if and when prices for the simplest members of the family get down to where Phil thinks they should be. (Alternate video link)
I am not thrilled that this is considered a good idea. In principle I suppose you _can_ learn to program on a Chromebook, but only in a very limited way. If this is the wave of the future in education, some thought needs to go into how to design a programming curriculum that can work with these devices.
Chrometeachers need laptops, sure but it's not the essential tool of Chromeeducation.
For some Chromereason, I feel like TFA is taking benefits of ***USING ANY LAPTOP*** and recasting them as Chromebenefits of using one company's product
Thank you Dave Raggett
Chrome laptops are consumption devices. They are not creative devices.
Schools need computers that you can hook Arduinos up to or Raspberry Pis or install Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Ruby, Visual Studio Express, etc. on. Computers you can install Gimp or Photoshop on.
They do not need fancy TVs.
The iPad failed in LA, not because it was expensive, but because it was a very dumb idea.
We need to get people involved in schools that at least have some clue about technology and what would be most useful to kids.
And frankly, until we get that sorted out, you'd be better off buying the students $200-400 worth of notebook paper and pencils.
Work Safe Porn
How is this better than competing Linux alternatives? Besides being more tightly wedded to Google services and the cloud, I mean.
"Phil Shapiro says 20,000 Teachers Should Unite to Spread Chromosomes (Video)"
I was wondering whether the video showed the actual spreading of the chromosomes....
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Why do people think that relying on a corporation's cloud for all of their computer use is a good idea?
I'm fine with the idea of demanding low-cost computers, but why must it be Google's spyware'd up version of Linux? Why not some other solution?
Does the Chromebook use OpenSSL?
Might want to harden those things significantly.
But I think that schools should change the way they roll out computers -- have appropriately powered computers for creative work, and have a whack of these for consumptive work/staff tools/etc. Makes a lot more sense than a homogeneous network of anything.
> especially if and when prices for the simplest members of the family get down to where Phil thinks they should be.
Has anyone tried to get Chrome running on the Raspberry Pi?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I like it but it's not possible to get full functionality without signing your soul away to Google.
I'm sure it won't be long before they're require google plus to login either. You already need a gmail account.
You mean like the ASUS Chromebox?
http://promos.asus.com/us/chro...
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
How about you keep all your bloody electronic distractions out of my classroom, so I at least have a *faint* hope of competing for my students attention. Thanks.
there's no way they'll do this unless it pushes their anti-science agenda. Crappy out of date textbooks block learning so they're not going to replace them unless the replacement is even worse.
Last Christmas I picked up a dual atom powered Asus Netbook with 320GB hard drive,with 11 inch screen for $199.
Some times we try to fit problem to a particular device when there are viable and attractive standards already available.
This Chromebook only solution may have been interesting during the One Laptop Per Child was in its heyday , but not now.
I'm a tech for a library system in California that piloted a Chromebook rollout at several of our large branches. Staff was fed up with the things shortly after testing began. These things just aren't made to take the wear and tear the average library patron gives them. It got so bad we had over half of our initial 40 machines in for repair at once. When we got them back (from Samsung, in this case) and asked branches to take them back, they actively refused; it was more work than they wanted to put in.
And this was supervised with mostly adult users. I cannot imagine what kind of chaos would occur with students that are not supervised.
I was having this discussion about my boss's Chromebox. Which I was laughing at for being a thin client. "it'll revolutionize the world"" he said. "We've had citrix for years." I said. All this dies is give you a thin client where the server is any internet accessible site.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Here is a link to a html5 (flashless) version, using a demo from Ooyala.
Beta could support html5 video, but it does not. Why?
For what they seem to be talking about, even discarded hardware running some discontinued version of Windows would be a better idea than a locked down web terminal.
This sounds like some completely clueless idiot latching onto the latest fad or something he heard about in the news.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Only be handed out to girls.
Given the fact money is unevenly distrubuted through the school systems, thanks to local property taxes, some teachers must buy basic supplies for their own students. Laptops will not fix the funding problems. We need a more stable source of revenue than local bond and property taxes. Once these schools get something more akin to a real amount of money to spend on educating their charges can we then even contemplate giving them laptops or chromebooks or whatever. Let's deal with the underlying problems first rather than throwing solution du jour at them.
I work in a K-12 school setting. And let me be up front about it...Google is Evil Empire 2.0. I'm not a fan of signing over 1,000 students to Google so that they can harvest personal data and target ad services to them.
But nobody, absolutely nobody does a better job at KISS than Google. With Google Apps, school districts can now setup dumb-terminal-2.0s (i.e. Chromebooks) at $250 a pop, teach almost anybody how to administer the @school.k12.xx.us user domain, and no longer depend on specialized staff for server administration. Kids have access to their files at home, at school, on vacation, on their Chromebook, on their school computer, on their iPhone... nothing else comes even close to this level of simplicity and usability. And while Google Apps doesn't cut it for power users, it does exactly what it needs to do for the average student and teacher. And schools are signing up in droves.
You're smoking the FOSS pipe thinking that schools can and will be willing to pay for techs who know how to work with Apache, MySQL, et al. And the iPads haven't failed in LA. There's been a setback, but they're still being deployed. (Though I'm sure not a fan of Apple by any means, either. Root canals are more pleasant than administering iPads.)
And as far as getting people in schools who have a clue about technology, stop your ranting and talk to your local school board member. They represent public interests in your neighborhood school. And besides, in my community, our board members are expecting me to add more tablet technology into our K-12 schools. Why? Because they're convinced that's how kids learn these days. The only way they'll see otherwise is if they get educated by people such as yourselves.
"Google for your 'one ring'! Get your 'one ring' here at Google!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Schools need computers that you can hook Arduinos up to or Raspberry Pis or install Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Ruby, Visual Studio Express, etc. on. Computers you can install Gimp or Photoshop on.
Schools need to get their act together to properly teach reading, writing, math and science. Unfortunately, our populace is so scientifically illiterate that folks are attacking Cosmos because it doesn't show "their side" - superstitious beliefs based on Iron Age Jewish Myth.
The skills that were mentioned by the parent are not appropriate for K-12 students and will distract from subjects that are being short changed now - let alone if programming and Arduinos.
How can students get any value out of learning the programming and Arduino if they can't understand basic math and science?
I'm waiting to Google to come out with something I can shove up my ass to look for polyps while enjoying targeted advertizing.
It's better because a student will spend 12 years interacting with a device run by an ad company, bent on extracting every piece of information they can from individuals.
Then, when said student one day becomes a politically active 30 year old, a replica of their mind is just one subpoena away from Google HQ.
Giving previously discarded windows machines to students? There's no way a school's sysadmin would be able to support anything that's not homogeneous.
These things are a good option because the hardware is decent and dirt cheap. The school district can also install any OS they want to on them, not just ChromeOS. If you can find where to get an x86 processor (that's Haswell no-less), 2GB ram, and 32GB SSD on a laptop for cheaper than $200, I would agree with you. I haven't been able to find anything that beats the Acer C720 at its price point.
Cheap, throw away hardware is a BAD thing for the economy. 1. Where does it go when you throw it away? 2. What will IT people do for a living if everyone bought a new $150 shitbox instead of fixing it?
They both are just two sides of the same coin. They both are evil
Real solutions are available at reasonable prices.
I thought I turned off ads? These product evangelists annoy me.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Not as long as Google remains a member of ALEC
Phil is possibly a moron on top of it.
A chromebook is just a computer, and not really any cheaper than an equivalent Windows machine (slightly, but not much).
A decent chrome book that 'isn't slow' will costs you $250 AT LEAST ... and right next to it on the shelf is the Windows $250 laptop that ... works exactly the same if you run everything in a browser like Chrome.
Oh, and the windows machine doesn't start off with you giving everything you have to Google.
Again I state, Phil has no idea what he's talking about.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
For what they seem to be talking about, even discarded hardware running some discontinued version of Windows would be a better idea than a locked down web terminal
You must have a newsletter - you know so much about chrome books..
No discarded Windows machines aren't nearly better.
Options: ChrUbuntu. I'm running it this very moment on my cheap Chromebook
Option 2: programs written specifically for ChromeOs
Unless you have some technical reason that I don't know about that precludes any kind of programming app to be written for a Chromebook, And if you do, I challenge you to educate us, it can be done.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is far better to get a laptop with local software and storage. Laptops are mobile devices. If you are mobile, you may not always have a net connection. Therefore local program/storage is far more productive then some cloud crap. Why not a nice netbook with a light GNU/Linux flavor like Puppy? Heck, even Slackware can run on modest environs. Go L/K/Ubuntu if you have to. You will have a far more useful device with a lot more tools at your disposal. Rasberry Pi can run GNU/Linux, and it is wayyyy cheaper. Depends on what you want the kids to do, but more tools and functionality is better than something tethered not only to the cloud, but one specific company. Heck, even when I search on the 'net, I use other search engines like Wolfram Alpha, Blekko, Duckduckgo and on besides the big turd.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
"something like a Chrome-powered Mac mini with a small SSD instead of a hard drive, and of course without the high Mac mini price"
So basically nothing like a Mac mini...
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Why in the flying fuck would you want to give people useless items like a chromebook? That's just like purposefully spreadingSTDs.
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
I just wrote a completely open ended HTML5/CSS/JavaScript app on my Samsung $250 Chromebook using the regular user mode and "Caret". I saved versions of the files on the Chromebook and ran them locally from Chrome. The app I wrote uses IndexedDB for local storage of snippets of HTML (which can include JavaScript). The app is intended to support boostrapping a better app by supporting experiments with HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. You can edit text and have it included as a section of HTML on the page. From start to finish (well, it's not really "done") I wrote it on the Chromebook.
I just put the code up on GitHub as an example for you (again using only the Chromebook) :
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
You can try a demo version here which will store data in your browser: http://rawgithub.com/pdfernhou...
Here is a direct link to the bootstrap.json content to paste in as a start: https://raw.githubusercontent....
See the GitHub repo for basic instructions on how to use it.
Granted, to do C compiling I'd need some tool that converted C to JavaScript in a special way, but more and more such tools exists.
https://github.com/kripken/ems...
http://www.infoq.com/research/...
So, more and more things are possible with Chromebooks or similar devices.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
We already load up teachers with tech they have no idea how to use.
Teachers are not engineers or programmers.
Look, the landscape of teaching is shifting enough already. We're seriously going to drive these folks crazy if we continue to change major parts of their job on a yearly basis. The least we could do is give them a little time to catch up with the regulatory changes in teaching before starting on another technology refresh.
fine.
I used Python Editor V3 http://editor.codnex.net/pythonv3/index.php to play with Python.
There are plenty Javascript editors, with WebGL it can be fun.
And if C/C++ is your favourite, there are probably online compilers for emscripten or asm.js and whatnot.
"After a year of planning, Penn Manor High School has officially launched a 1:1 computing program. Laptops are in the hands of approximately 1700 students! Here are a few fast facts and notes about the unique program ..
The laptops are running Linux, specifically Ubuntu 13.10, along with several dozen free and open source programs. Our program is believed to be the largest open source 1:1 implementation in Pennsylvania. By using open source software exclusively, we estimate an initial cost savings of at least $360,000 on licensing fees."
Low cost... Mac mini with a small SSD.
That's like selling out low cost vehicles made by Ferrari.
Sorry to say, from the slurring of the interviewer in the video, which suggested clogged arteries throughout your body. Check out health ideas here for unclogging them through nutritional changes:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for 32.3% of deaths in the United States in 2010, but you can protect yourself. A significant number of research studies have documented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and reversible) through a diet rich in plant produce and lower in processed foods and animal products."
More in general:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://www.changemakers.com/di...
https://www.newschallenge.org/...
Good luck Rob, I think we may have we met once briefly around 1999 at an Open Source conference in NYC (one where Ralph Nader spoke), and thanks for all the stories.
And the shift does not have to be that unpleasant as your tastes will adapt after six weeks:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap--as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation--and more self-discipline--than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation - and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."
Another good health resource if you are willing to take one week to do a medically supervised water-only fast in Santa Rosa, CA for a quick reboot of your taste buds. Compared to a heart bypass operation or years of physical therapy for a stroke, you won't even have to stop posting to Slashdot the whole time during a fast. Posting would help keep you busy and distracted as your body re-calibrates itself and goes into "garbage collection" mode and shifts to new biological pathways during the fast. See:
http://www.healthpromoting.com...
"TrueNorth Health Center was founded in 1984 by Drs. Alan Goldhamer and Jennifer Marano. The integrative medicine approach they established offers participants the opportunity to obtain evaluation and treatment for a wide variety of problems. The staff at TrueNorth Health Center includes medical doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, psychologists, research scientists, and other health professionals. The Center is now the largest facility in the world that specialize
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Sick of MS overpriced bloated hard drive thrashing products. Try installing exchange 2013 on server 2008 easier on server 2012( but still require other software installs), it's a long install and server restarting process. These fucking idiots could not include all the packages that is needed to install exchange 2013 they make you go web surfing downloading the individual software including hot fixes yourself and I thought linux was bad with dependencies. This is what you pay $$$ for.
Windows 7/8/8.1 all are slow at downloading updates and then take forever installing them. Sudo apt-get dist-upgrade is fucking faster then the windows regular updates on a fios connection. Companies like adobe and autodesk really need to start targeting linux for development and stop with the overpriced MS products, sick of it.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/...
It turns out they are not that much cheaper though, so I don't really see the value proposition in practice implied by Phil Shapiro since they are not yet $100 and screens still cost money:
"Review: Asus crafts a tiny $179 Chromebox out of cheap, low-power parts"
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...
I'm surprised Roblimo could miss pointing the Chromebox out, just mentioning the Raspberry Pi. Although he was right to point out the SSD speedup is significant for any small computer.
Another big miss is that for US$50 you can buy an Android Smartphone and use it only with Wi-Fi. Example of what we paid $50 for a few months ago, but now is $31?
http://www.amazon.com/Kyocera-...
"The Kyocera Hydro is sophistication and style in a mainstream Android smartphone that can work for everyone. Plus it offers water-resistance, giving consumers the âoeno-fearâ durability and security they demand. With a 3.5 inch HVGA touchscreen, 3.2 MP camera and video, and Android 4.0, you get the best of all worlds."
Although I would much rather use the Chromebook with a keyboard for making content than trying to use an Android phone. But $30 to be connected with the global internet? That is an amazing realization of many educational technologist's dreams (e.g. Alan Kay Dynabook or OLPC XO-1). And perhaps also some nightmares... See also the 1950s short story by Theodore Sturgeon called "The Skills of Xanadu" on where that all could lead.
My own hopes and predictions from 2000 based in part on seeing the "Cybiko":
"[unrev-II] The DKR hardware I'd like to make..."
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Also, I don't see why a teacher or librarian is so keen to limit people's mobility (although it doesn't surprise me, going with the "school is prison" meme).
A big value to my $250 Samsung Chromebook is how light and portable it is. I still use my Quad Core Mac Pro Desktop with three big screens for work and running VirtualBox VMs (and the Chromebook could not replace that, especially the screens) -- used to run Debian for about five years until we (my wife especially) got tired of all the random breakage with every "apt-get dist-upgrade" around 2008 (probably much better now). But I use my Chromebook (with Linux under the covers) for just noodling around or surfing the web and posting on Slashdot sitting in our living room, or doing some light for-fun development work. As I said in another post, I wrote this JavaScript-based information manager tool bootstrapping system entirely on the Chromebook:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
Why do I use the Chromebook instead of my desktop (treadmill workstation actually) Mac Pro? Psychological and social, mostly. I gain some distance from my daily paying work by using a different computer in a different place. I also have done it partially as an experiment in learning about the next generation of computing. It's true that our two-year old Macbook Pro is still a much better computer as far as keyboard and screen and CPU and what it can do -- but it is often otherwise in use these days. My wife would always complain about me leaving a lot of tabs open in Firefox. And so on. The Chromebook is more a personal computer just for me. And it was cheap enough that I could justify it as an experiment compared to another $1000-$2500 Macbook.
We did however buy a $1000 Win 8 ASUS laptop a few months ago anyway. What a disappointment as a laptop. Even with a bigger screen and much faster pr
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
As TFA suggests a ChromeBook without a keyboard or monitor, something like a mac mini, I suggest a Raspberry Pi. You could get a trivial case and the power supply and still be in for under $50. Give each kid their own SD card paritioned into an unmodifiable boot partition, a modifiable 'system' parition for software, and a section for their work, and have all the benefits he's talking about, but even better. The kid plugs in their own SD card and gets to work. Could still back up to cloud, forgoing their own partition on the SD card entirely.