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New Zealand Chooses Google Chromebooks Over Microsoft Windows 10 For Education (betanews.com)
Google announced this week that it has signed an agreement with New Zealand's Ministry of Education to provide all state and state integrated schools in the country with Chrome Education licenses. The three-year agreement goes into effect on November 1 next month. From a report: "Starting on November 1, as part of an agreement with Google and the New Zealand Ministry of Education, all state and state-integrated schools across New Zealand will be able to start claiming Ministry-funded Chrome Education licenses to manage new and existing unmanaged Chromebooks. The Chrome Education license was developed to make device management in schools a breeze, so that teachers and students can focus on what's most important -- teaching and learning. Equipped with the Chrome Education license, schools can utilize essential education features to better support the many ways Chromebooks are used in the classroom," says Suan Ye, Head of Google for Education, Australia and New Zealand.
I have to say, it's a perfect device for most people. It "just works", and they don't have to have a degree in comp-sci to manage the thing.
We all used to wonder what was going to bring down the Windows monopoly. It's Linux... in the form of Chromebooks.
Yeah yeah someone ALWAYS points out that they can't use one because of UberCadSuperSimulationPublisherLatheController 44.0, but those people are a minuscule minority. They'll keep using Windows for a while yet, but the average person will use a phone for mobile computing, and a Chromebook or work-alike for home use when they want a larger screen. Most people's needs are perfectly met by a device like these.
Chromebooks are what's starting to drive the "year of Linux on the desktop". Not Gnome, not Cinnamon, but ChromeOS. The market hasn't totally flipped yet. It will, and when it happens, Windows is going to fade. Already Chromebooks are approaching 70% of all school purchases in the USA (flew past 60% in early 2018), and people are turning to them for home use too. When that generation of kids gets to be adults, they'll keep using ChromeOS.
I did the training for CMC (Chrome Management Console) for a non school related project and I can see why schools are adopting it.
CMC is WAY easier for IT admins to use over active directory.
You can control exactly what version of chrome devices use, when they update, what wifi networks they can connect to, what apps are allowed, where devices are (on a map even!), high security built in and its cheap. Its as close to nirvana that overworked school IT pros can get.
AD will still win on corporate networks, but MS have lost the education space and the mobile/cell phone space. Unfortunately their office/Win10 grip will hold firm in the corporate space for the foreseeable future.
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What's really great is that Linux applications (apps one might normally run in xwindows) are gradually being enabled in Chromebooks. The ability to easily run a full Linux as a container/VM is also being enabled. It's a big step forward for Linux in general.
You sing praise of Chromebook as if Google is a saint. Just because something has a Linux kernel doesn't mean it deserves to be celebrated. What good is that kernel if it is hidden under layers of nonstandard UI, or tied to cloud services designed to spy on you and monetize your personal data? It's not like the end user of a Chromebook is any better off than on Windows, just more gimped, while giving more of their data to one company.
It's a good choice for all students. It might not be the best choice for a minority who want to do more with their devices, but I suspect those will find a way, like we did when I was in school and all the computers ran MS windows. My kids use a chromebook for school. Their learning materials are online.
I'm in NZ, although we homeschool so this isn't something that directly affects us at the moment. The previous government here changed from centralized IT purchasing for schools to shcools being able to negociate individually. Microsoft and others naturally took advantage of this and so education IT spending has been too high - hopefully this is a reversal.
Do the educational licenses ensure that Google does to do data analytics on the employees/students habits, typing speeds, etc, or is just one more brick in profiling everyone so accurately that no one can hide from the all seeing eyes?
I use a Chromebook as my primary laptop. I rarely run ChromeOS though. Mostly I boot a full Linux system off a SD card. With that said, ChromeOS is nice for running Android apps or when I just need a tablet (it's a 2-in-1 chromebook).
Microsoft has too much expertise in proprietary tools and user support to say they are going away merely over a single district's choice.
It's not a single district's choice. It's already MOST districts. As in well more than half.
The difference today is that Apples were expensive, and Chromebooks come in affordable ranges for the average working Joe. Also Chromebooks are way easier to manage than Macs, and waaaaaaaay easier than Windows. That's the nail in Microsoft's coffin. (Mac has not enough desktop market share to have a coffin to drive a nail into).
Hmmm... Chrome... shiney!
A good move, given that there are a lot of poor families in NZ (and our standard of living continues to fall) so chances are that a Chrome device will be cheaper than a Windows one, ensuring that everyone has access to the necessary resources.
Either way they are being screwed.
As the NZ school year finishes up in late November/early December, why not save 2+ months of licensing by waiting for the new school yea run February?
We seem to be in an endless cycle of dumbing down:
I considered becoming an IT teacher in the UK, which requires you to spend a few weeks before you can do the teacher training course. What I found was that every IT class revolved around drawing pretty pictures. They were designing vector logos, producing posters, making flash animations, creating a "website" in PowerPoint with lots of pretty animations, and so forth. What they weren't doing is being taught how to use a computer. The most basic computer skill is understanding the file system, which I feel is fundamental to computer literacy, and can be taught very easily since it's rather simple. Sadly, they're not being taught about computing at all.
Part of the problem, and something that is covered on The Register a lot, is that they can't attract Computer Science graduates to teaching, so most IT teachers have no background or interest in computers. This is because nobody with an interest in computing would want to teach people how to draw pretty pictures all day. As a result, out of fourteen teachers I met, I'd only say one of them had any real computer skills, and most were greatly lacking in computer skills and knowledge. Since they're not interested in computers themselves, they're more than happy to teach students about drawing pretty pictures rather than teaching them computer skills.
A common them is that schools offer the BTEC IT rather than the A Level Computer Science (for people outside the UK, BTEC and A Level are done at age 16-18, and BTEC is supposed to be vocational, but it's basically just dumbed down). The A Level Computer Science is a great course that teaches actual computing principles, while the BTEC is just yet more drawing pictures, producing animations and designing logos. I asked the head of IT why the school opted for the BTEC over the A Level and he said, "Oh, the A Level is just so boring!" So we have an IT teacher who finds computers boring. With people like that teaching IT, it's little wonder Chromebooks are being adopted. Their idea of computing likely revolves around downloading some apps from the Google Play Store.
Needless to say, I decided not to become an IT teacher, so they no doubt employed somebody with a degree in English instead. Since they're employing people without computer skills, knowledge or enthusiasm, students are simply taught to be consumers rather than computer users. They're taught to buy Google Play apps, subscribe to Google services, hand their data over to Google. To consume and never question their corporate overloads! This is the path to enlightenment!
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce. ChromeOS may make a fine teaching tool, but it's not giving them any marketable skills, unless "I'm a wizard at using Google search and updating my Facebook page" is a job skill.
In fact it's not even certain that it's a good teaching tool, there have been plenty of studies showing that introducing laptops to the classroom has anything from little to no effect on performance, through to a net loss in the worst case (they're busy updating their Facebook pages, not learning). So perhaps the choice of Chromebooks is because if you want to follow a fad, you can at least take the cheaper option.
Sigh, it's the antimicrosoft bias in NZ schools.
They've all got free use of Microsoft software due to their license agreement - but do the schools use it?
No. They use Google stuff. Because that's all the teachers know. They think "microsoft bad", but coming from the actual enterprise I.T. space, I look at what teachers are doing and laugh. They do stuff they think it is impressive, and I look at it and think how much nicer it is in Office 365.
And they don't even have to pay for it.
What is this garbage?
Hell, even the Surface hardware feels uninspired these days
Why is some lame Microsoft-hating blog being linked to instead of the original source?
https://www.blog.google/outrea...
Nothing in the statement from Google says this is an exclusive switch to only Chromebooks. This is just the government saying that they'll pay for special education licenses to manage Chromebooks for schools that want it. Probably because schools have been buying Chromebooks because they're the cheapest option, and now the school systems are having issues managing them. Obviously the government wouldn't be blowing money on these management tools if they weren't having issues with the Chromebooks that needed to be addressed. What I want to know is if the schools already bought Chromebooks, and Google has tools the manage them en masse, why is Google *charging* schools to use this tool? Google already has made money off the Chromebooks - they've already been purchased. This expenditure doesn't directly help the students. It's not buying more hardware, or more educational software. It's just to try and keep the Chromebooks running right. You'd think Google, with their billions, would provide these tools for free to any educational organization that wants it.
But this has to be spun as an anti-Microsoft move by New Zealand.
Better known as 318230.
Yeah, I found it weird New Zealand would choose Google given their strong attachment to personal privacy.
As with any sale this size though, it's usually about the kickbacks.
As someone who works in NZ schools this is totally sensationalist. Windows 10 and intune management liscences have been paid for under the same kind of deal for years. It is good they are now doing the same thing for chrome os. There are a lot of chromebooks in use but there is also a lot of Windows and Mac too. The article and writeup are very bias as per usual.
Chrome is only starting to provide any real programming tools. So when teachers want to use tools, they will have to use whatever few are supported on Chrome, or use them in the cloud. If I want Java and Netbeans (or IntelliJ, or BlueJ, or...) good luck. Google created this sticky platform as the snare, and the formerly do-no-evil company is now a gigantic spider sucking the blood (and perhaps student brains) out of schools And of course, consider the Digital Gap, which as the New York Times says is note quite what was expected: Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected https://nyti.ms/2JkjOuf
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce.
No one gets fired for buying IBM., so maybe they should be teaching the kids OS/2.
Does Google have any servers in New Zealand? If not I'm surprised they find the latency acceptable.
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce.
Like my experience with TRS-80, Apple ][+ / 2e TI-99/4A, Apple 2gs, IBM PC (DOS), VMS, MacOS, Windows 3, SunOS, HP-UX, Linux, Windows 95 / 98, AIX, Windows XP / 7 , etc. ?
It's *really* hard to predict the future, especially about computers, and 10+ years in the future when these children will enter the workforce.
google education licenses in schools, does not allow google to use any user personal information (or any information associated with a Google Account).
basically edu licenses for both Microsoft and Google are free its the hardware etc that costs, microsoft had pretty much lost this one and even DELL know it... I repeat DELL sell chromebooks thats how much chromebooks are working in edu.
personally the quicker we can kill Active Directory and have proper security the better
Ya gotta admit that Microsoft is really making an effort to catch up in the spying functionality.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
You sing praise of Chromebook as if Google is a saint.
Not the same. Microsoft was a monopoly, and their Windows is still a monoculture, with many applications that run on only that platform.
ChromeBooks are different. Almost everything is done in the browser, and can also be done on a Windows laptop or MacBook. There is no lock-in.
Give a kid a Windows PC and they learn how to use Windows.
Give a kid a ChromeBook and they learn how to use the Internet.
I'm surprised you didn't list OS/2.
Yeah, I found it weird New Zealand would choose Google given their strong attachment to personal privacy.
As a born and bred New Zealander, I have no idea where you get that idea from.
The average Kiwi knows absolutely nothing about computers, and the people who made this decision will be no different. They want it to "Just Work".
As with any sale this size though, it's usually about the kickbacks
There won't be any kickbacks. Check out the corruption perceptions index. We are either 1st or 2nd in the world for corruption.
This may be because of the many schools who demanded parents buy iPads. The pushback was pretty strong, and I know several people who told their kid's school to get stuffed when told they would have to buy one.
"I have to say, it's a perfect device for most people. It "just works", and they don't have to have a degree in comp-sci to manage the thing."
Yeah, just do all your computing, shopping, and interacting with the world using a device built by an advertising company that wants to monetize you. What could possibly be undesirable about that.
"Yeah yeah someone ALWAYS points out that they can't use one because of UberCadSuperSimulationPublisherLatheController 44.0, but those people are a minuscule minority"
No they aren't. They want to work on a powerpoint or spreadhsheet using exactly the same software they use at work. They run a small business and need some accounting software. They bought a logitech harmony universal remote and want to program it, they want to play some random steam game.
"When that generation of kids gets to be adults, they'll keep using ChromeOS."
For a while it was all ipads ipads ipads, every student gets an ipad, and schools couldn't buy enough ipads, and then the schools discovered they weren't really all that great for education after all. And now home users are finding between their smartphone and their laptop the tablet isn't that useful there either, and the next great thing is now becoming a niche -- still useful and definitely has a place but we didn't get rid of all our computers for them in the end.
Chromebooks are the new tablets which were the new netbooks... maybe they'll take hold... or maybe they'll be ultimately found to be too limiting too. The jury's still out. For me... as lousy as windows 10 is... chromeOs is not an improvement.
Not quite true.
A chromebook is a full computer. Just one that has 15 years behind the times performance, at a fantastically low price point, in a very portable package.
Nearly every variety of chromebook in the wild is capable of having its firmware extended to support booting true linux. Many are capable of booting windows after the extension as well. (It does not need to wholly replace the chromebook's proprietary firmware. The firmware has a region that is reserved for legacy booting, which is frequently unpopulated. The extension just puts the missing functionality in where it was designed to go.)
I am posting this from a liberated chromebook at this very moment in fact. Other than the weak CPU and GPU, the often crippled RAM compliment, and the notoriously small internal storage, it is perfectly functional for general purpose computing. The shitty internal storage can be supplemented with a spacious SD card that has been properly formatted, and careful use of zram and tmpfs in heavily written to areas.
Liberated chromebooks neatly occupy the niche that netbooks did a decade ago.
Visual Studio is attaching to gdb and xdb command line debuggers in Linux from Windows in Visual Studio 2017. I would not be surprised if Windows become the preferred development platform for Linux clients also. Given Active Directory has managed to get a strangle hold on authentication servers it is making serious efforts to displace many unix tool vendors.
If Visual Studio painlessly steps through code running in a linux machine with the GUI running on a windows box it will get lots of sales there.
MS might lose the numbers game, but in some sense it already has. iPad and phones have become the most common computers, lap top sales are dwindling, desktops too. So in some sense latops and desktops are losing to phones and pads.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A browser is as standard as it gets.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Many chromebooks are getting "Native linux app support" very soon. Theoretically, that could be extended to support WINE.
In any case, projects like MrChromebox blow the lid off of chromebooks, and turn them back into the inexpensive netbooks they really are.
Outdated notions about what you can do with a chromebook need to go in the dustbin.
But it is not necessarily locked away...
https://www.xda-developers.com...
Even then, what's stopping a school from buying a shitload of chromebooks, and then ripping Google's OS out of them and going with whatever the fuck they want, using something like MrChromebox?
https://mrchromebox.tech/#devi...
(Notice, just about all of them support *FULL* UEFI bios replacement!!)
Not the same. Microsoft was a monopoly, and their Windows is still a monoculture, with many applications that run on only that platform.
Every general purpose operating system provides a native ABI unique to that operating system generally not compatible with other operating systems.
What you are saying is no different from asserting iptables won't run on Windows so Linux is a monoculture.
ChromeBooks are different.
Almost everything is done in the browser, and can also be done on a Windows laptop or MacBook. There is no lock-in.
Using a dumb terminal does nothing to prevent lock-in it simply punts the issue.
Give a kid a Windows PC and they learn how to use Windows.
Give a kid a ChromeBook and they learn how to use the Internet.
At least the Windows kid will have learned something they can use later in life.
Nobody looking to be hired for any job writes "I can use the Internet!!" on their resume.
"The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce."
That works both ways. A big reason why companies use msoffice is because potential work candidates already have msoffice listed on their resume as a skill meaning tha the company doesnt have to train them up as much on how to use that piece of software. If more people listed libreoffice etc more companys would be using that software especially when libreoffice has pretty good compatibility with reading msoffice formats except when microsoft is intentionally being a fuckhead and breaks their own standard.
Appreciate the education on lack of corruption in NZ, I was not aware.
That said, your remark seems to echo the NZ got the wool pulled over their eyes sentiment. What will happen once with greater enablement in their children, the people realize the privacy implications of their decision?
I have contracted for a lot of schools and the price is extremely attractive, but the maintenance and instability and how it does not work with 50% of the applications out there is the killer. One school deployed 10000 Chrome-books and the IT department work load went up 297%. There was no way to keep up with all the problems. The Chrome-books would have to be re-loaded over and over and over to fix issues. Google tried to help but they were faced with the same issues. These are great if you do nothing but browse the web. They are not designed for business or any real work. The school finally had to dumb the Chrome-books and go back to Windows based tablets. The cost to buy them is high but they work very well for extend periods of time, work will all the applications and don't have to be re-loaded. When the schools CFO did the numbers the Windows Tablets cost the school 147% less over all. Less in time to manage, less problems, and a lot less unhappy school staff and students.
Yeah they call it a bribe. All the major corporations have shit bucket tons of money in off shore tax havens and they pay bribes in the form of luxury over seas holidays ie the only corrupt government approved way of getting and spending bribes, that and of course campaign contributions. Not only are the selling the privacy of New Zealand children but addicting them to the privacy invasiveness of Google and selling out the psychological control of the minors to Google before they even become adults, data to manipulate the minds of New Zealand's future, a island of Google worshippers and then they will wonder why.
The flip side, the New Zealand government and Education Department publicly admitting they are not technologically inept to manage computer system and must pass it off to a US corporation, New Zealand tech companies must be spewing. At least they told to IMF to fuck off when American corporations wanted to buy up all New Zealand homes and make them all pay rent to America.
This is probably the backdoor takeover, once those students have been trained and manipulated on Google they will be begging American corporations to take over.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
My media server is a chromebox that's running ubuntu. Same idea. Wireless keyboard and mouse, hdmi out, and it's a 4x4x1.5 inch box that does everything I need to display any website or any media on my home network on the big screen.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
its cheap
Yeah. You're paying for it by giving Google all of your data. Nothing's free.
I don't respond to AC's.
"The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce."
The rapid adoption of iOS, Android and even Chromebooks has already debunked that myth. People are much more adaptable than those entrenched in the word of MS like to believe.
What Windows skills would even be worked on? Students are using web-browsers for everything. They aren't learning OS-related skills, even if they're taking Computer Science courses. And this is a good thing - why would schools teach that, unless it's some kind of trade school?
I am an ex-programmer teaching High School students because I'm rich and fuck working as a programmer past the age of 32. My former school ran Chromebooks, my current school runs Windows. It's all $250 laptops. Functionally the OSes are the same, only Windows has constant weird errors with the Wifi not working, and has shit where students have an assignment to do and then 1-3 of them (out of a class of ~30) have Windows wanting to upgrade the OS and taking 30 minutes to do it.
It's such a problem that I actually keep a few old computers running Linux in the corner of my classroom. Students may not even know what Linux is after using it several times, because for the large majority of end users you just click on a web browser and away you go.
I've also seen a few people saying school should be all pen and paper. These people are morons.
What will happen once with greater enablement in their children, the people realize the privacy implications of their decision?
Are you unaware that the latest Windows is also a privacy shit show? I'm sure even an Apple device is reporting *something* back to Cupertino. The only option to not be spied on these days is to install GNU/Linux or similar. That said, having privacy from some megacorp isn't a primary or even secondary need for "education devices"
The requirements are probably more like:
Cheap so it doesn't really matter if a kid fucks it up. Some idiot in this thread listed "cheap" as a drawback, yet it's a primary need for these devices. Cheap also leads to weaker hardware; guess which OS will suffer the most on weak hardware (Clue: it's not one of the *nix derivatives)
Needs to be locked down so a kid won't fuck the OS up and require IT support (even locking down the OS requires IT support if you're on Windows)
Automagically uploading to a server so a virus can't eat the homework, while still allowing offline work that will automagically upload later on when it has a network connection
Collaborative work: Google docs has been collaborative for years, so no mailing around different versions of a doc. The group just edits the doc locally and sees everyone else's update in real time. I'm sure MS Office would have copied this feature by now but honestly who gives a fuck about the product that did it second
And to the people claiming that these kids will be disadvantaged when they join the work force, you've got it backwards. The megacorps try and get people to use their products as kids so that they turn into adults who expect/use the same products in their work place. For example, the university I attended had free licenses of Office, Visual Studio Pro, Visio etc provided by MS to the IT students, as a means of locking us into their way of doing things (If you've already got Visual Studio then you're at least going to try writing your code in C# and your teachers know that they can expect you to produce and submit your work using the provided tools
Even then, what's stopping a school from buying a shitload of chromebooks, and then ripping Google's OS out of them and going with whatever the fuck they want, using something like MrChromebox?
Answer: the fact that noone in a school has the slightest clue about how to manage technology, hardware or basically even the photocopier.
My kid is at a NZ intermediate (middle) school where the 'ICT' guru is just a male teacher who seems to have just impressed everyone else by writing some wickid formula's in excel or something
School's have no capability or even desire to install custom OSs. In fact - many of them use third party surveillance (sorry I mean 'safety') tools and require you to sign all kinds of forms saying you agree to this otherwise your kid can just go and sit in the corner and fold napkins or something
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Depends on what they're taught. Since we're talking New Zealand here, where a nationwide computer retailer sells Windows laptops at lower prices than Chromebooks (as you point out, the belief that Chromebooks are cheaper only holds if you compare them to business-grade laptops and fancy ultrabooks, you can mass-produce cheap shit Windows laptops for less than cheap shit Chromebooks), and where kids are taught Excel, Word, and others (and later on things like programming in Python, the obligatory HTML and CSS, etc) because that's what they'll need to know to get a job.
I'm not sure this is a good choice. Yeah, sure, Chromebooks, Linux, stick it to the man, etc, but teaching them how to create animations on a Chromebook isn't going to help them use Excel in an accounting job.
I don't have a horse in this race either way, but if it was my kids I'd be giving them a Windows laptop, despite the near-infinite suckage of Windows, because my concern is their employment prospects, not making a political statement. The prime thing though would be finding a good school. A so-so school will mess things up with any and all of Chromebooks, Windows, or OS X, but a good school will teach marketable skills, and for that Windows is your best option. Next time you go to some random generic business, lean over the counter/desk/whatever and look what OS the employees are using. Chances are it'll be Windows. Which really sucks, when your upgrade path is the abomination that is 10.
A lot of office suite skills are transferable, and I would bet good money that someone who trained on Google Sheets and Google Docs can be re-trained on Office 365 suite pretty quickly—much more quickly than someone who literally only did what you said (using Google search and social media).
What good is that kernel if it is hidden under layers of nonstandard UI
Some would say "ideal". If you at any point need to see or interact with your kernel in any way or even get within reach of some of its layers of abstraction then you have really fouled up the entire OS design.
Also what is non-standard about Chromebook's UI? They seem quite consistent across devices to me.
As with any sale this size though, it's usually about the kickbacks.
Or more accurately, it's about cost benefit combined with the fact that Google has a very large education ecosystem. My wife works at an Apple school. Macbooks and iPads all round... All powered by Google's Classroom set of educational suites.
If they went to tender right now Chromebooks would almost certainly win.
Privacy implications compared to what?
Cloud is the only practical option, as the funding isn't there for anything else, and they are all as bad as each other. That cancels out in the comparison.
Maintenance wise Chromebooks win hands down. Logically it is the only choice they could make.
The kids who are capable will have another computer anyway.
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce.
The 1990's called and wants its spreadsheet monkey back. Sorry, but Word and Excel is not what business people do these days, now it is networking with Slack and online Collab, 99% browser stuff. Been sleeping for a long time?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
New Zealanders in general have absolutely no idea about technological privacy. Occasionally people get asked to shut down drones where I live but the dangers of surveillance or encryption don't seem to shine this far down. Our police and government use private investigators to sidestep the law (Thompson and Clarke is one) and where they get caught sidestepping it they change it since obviously the law was out of date. As an example of how blind we are our Womans Refugee website has 23 trackers attached to it and our governments email servers aren't encrypted. Sometimes I think our government security services are a bunch of very well paid idiots trying to figure out what GiCiSiBa means......well, that was my rant.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
If you want to get ahead in business these days you learn data science, nobody cares if you know Excel or not. You get the same cred for knowing any spreadsheet, Google sheets, Libreoffice Calc or whatever. Learn Word if you want to get a job as a secretary, otherwise any modern document editor gives you equivalent cred. Knowing Google docs would be a whole lot more important for your kids employment prospects than Word.
Sounds like you're still stuck in the 90's. Don't believe me? Search for Excel on dice.com. Then search for Python, or any number of other skills that are actually in demand.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Liberated chromebooks neatly occupy the niche that netbooks did a decade ago.
Chromebook keyboards and screens are way better than netbooks of yore. BTW, you didn't mention battery life.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
First, it's a school laptop so the expectation of privacy is probably minimal to start with.
Secondly, Google doesn't monteize personal data without permission (e.g. asking to use your photos on Google maps, opt-in on personalized advertising), and has special educational accounts for children that are even more restricted. Remember that you normally can't even get a Google account to use a Chromebook unless you are of legal age to agree to it in your jurisdiction.
By the way, if you have evidence that Google is using personal data it does not have explicit opt-in permission to use then I'd love to see it. I will file the GDPR complaint personally, all you need to do is show me the proof I need.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Who's to say what these kids will be using when they enter the workplace? Even if windows is still around, the version in use by then will be significantly different from what they're using today.
Schools should teach general concepts that can be applied to any system, or there is a high chance that whatever they teach will be obsolete once the kids reach the workplace. We were taught wordperfect for dos at school, for instance.
And yes i agree that introducing computers randomly serves no benefit, their use needs to be carefully considered in the context of what you're trying to teach.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Even microsoft can see the writing on the wall, and are moving their emphasis towards cloud because that's the only way they can remain relevant. No reason you can't use the microsoft cloud services from a chromebook.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The reason why you'd want to go with Windows is that that's probably what most of them will need to use when they enter the workforce.
Nonsense. The only reason companies stick with Windows is because the IT department are afraid of anything else. non-IT people are just fine at moving to something better - see how they moved en masse to Android/iOS.
Anytime you want to introduce a non-Windows solution you have to justify it to the IT department, whereas anytime a Windows solution is introduced no justification is made.
When people choose the best tool for the job, they don't choose Windows. When IT departments choose what people will use, those people get Windows.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Because it's open source, and there's no reason a third party couldn't provide a version of chromeos configured to use their services instead of google's.
Fundamentally, general purpose computers are designed for geeks, they require knowledge to operate and maintain which most people neither have nor want, and if you allow people without the requisite skills to operate complex machines then disaster usually occurs (malware epidemics being a good example).
So what's best for users is locked down devices managed by someone else, and chrome/android can provide this. Android has already been forked by third parties providing their own systems (amazon etc) and i'd expect chromeos to follow the same way. The vast majority of users are simply better off with a limited device managed by someone else.
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Check out the corruption perceptions index
The key is in the name, it's all about perception... All countries are corrupt, some are just better at hiding it than others.
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he flip side, the New Zealand government and Education Department publicly admitting they are not technologically inept to manage computer system and must pass it off to a US corporation,
If they didn't hand the schoolkids over to the american corporation google, they would hand them over to the american corporations apple or microsoft... There aren't really any other alternatives.
And it's highly unlikely that an education department would have the skills (or budget to hire such skilled people) to manage computer systems properly.
Those new zealand tech companies are probably all just resellers for one of the above american corporations anyway, perhaps providing some limited local first-line support.
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"They run a small business and need some accounting software. They bought a logitech harmony universal remote and want to program it, they want to play some random steam game."
There are plenty of options for small businesses to use web based accounting software that operates in the cloud. In fact these are quite attractive to a small business due to things like having your accountant/book keeper and yourself being able to see the same set of up to date accounts. Your point was?
Your assumption that "Windows will be used in the workforce" 15 years from now is at best laughable.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You posted as AC and the other person used an actual account. Whom to believe? It is so hard to decide!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
IPtables isn't a user application. You are either too stupid to figure that out or being intentionally ingenuous.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If you think Visual studio will ever be the preferred development environment for Linux you should seek psychiatric help.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I spend about 3 years programming for it. Learned a lot, not much use now.
Agreed, but a chrome book could be enough computer to teach Google Sheets and whatnot, and potentially visit a VM (which the remote IT guy blows away every night and replaces with a fresh one). Kids in a class could even time-slice a smaller number of windows VMs than there are students. They get to learn a bit of Windows, and 'the cloud' ;-)
FWIW, I'd agree most jobs still use windows. A good number of tech jobs at least seem to be moving to Macs. There's a really small number of chrome books around, something like the way it was for macs in the '90s.
Outdated notions about what you can do with a chromebook need to go in the dustbin.
Right, the great thing about chromebooks is that you can run Linux, Windows applications on them?
Ken
This agreement isn't about buying more chromebooks or shedding current windows/Mac computers, it's about a license to allow schools to better manage their chromebooks.
Windows users get the tools to do this for free with their windows desktop and server licenses (Active Directory/Group Policy), the Australian govt is simply buying a tool to provide a somewhat similar suite of tools for their chromebooks.
Ken
Are the different operating systems or office applications so different that you couldn't pick up the other having learned one first? Programmers are expected to learn and use new languages all the time. They're often similar enough where this isn't a problem and for some that are similar enough you can almost be productive right away.
I think it's better to find people who can generalize their experience with one tool to another. If you have someone who can only do things in one particular way or with one particular tool, you're just limiting what you can do as a business because of an inflexible workforce.
Or RedHat :)
Depends on what they're taught. Since we're talking New Zealand here, where a nationwide computer retailer sells Windows laptops [pbtech.co.nz] at lower prices than Chromebooks [pbtech.co.nz] (as you point out, the belief that Chromebooks are cheaper only holds if you compare them to business-grade laptops and fancy ultrabooks, you can mass-produce cheap shit Windows laptops for less than cheap shit Chromebooks),
Errr, you are missing the point. The problem is NOT the hardware (as you mentioned about "laptop") but it is rather the software. Even though Windows OS comes with its hardware for "somewhat" free, the one which comes with Chromebooks is free (at least for now, and expecting to be for long). It doesn't matter if MS can come out with cheaper laptop, most software of MS (especially office software) are NOT free. Have you ever learned when MS "force" update/upgrade? That is a huge inconvenience.
and where kids are taught Excel, Word, and others (and later on things like programming in Python, the obligatory HTML and CSS, etc [school.nz]) because that's what they'll need to know to get a job.
From what you said, It is obvious that you know nothing about programming. If you know, then you wouldn't say things like this because all of what you are talking about can be done in ANY OS. They are not OS specific (except when MS intends to break the standard, then you need to learn the "work around").
I'm not sure this is a good choice. Yeah, sure, Chromebooks, Linux, stick it to the man, etc, but teaching them how to create animations on a Chromebook isn't going to help them use Excel in an accounting job.
The animation should be taught in trade schools. Also, it shows that you have no knowledge of other open source office software out there. Besides, you also don't even know how office software users are doing. There are at least a few popular office software that can be run on both Linux and Windows. Libreoffice is one of them. The interface of it is similar (both spreadsheet, words, and presentation). Most users just learn how to create tables and deal with some formulas in spreadsheet where you do your "accounting" stuff. You can balance the sheet (table), do some statistics, graphing, etc. with Libreoffice. It is similar to Excel. It just doesn't have all extra features that most people don't need for their work. Or is that what you want, to have extra stuff that you never use but just to have them?
I can work with any kind of office software even though I have never used it before. I started working with Lotus123 before Excel came out. Then I switch to Excel and had no problem adapting to it. Then I had to work with Linux, so I used OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. They all are very similar from interface to functionalities. I believe that anyone who need to work with office software should be able to adapt to any office software regardless the OS. If they can't, they are technology illiterate and may need to work with pen and paper instead.
A so-so school will mess things up with any and all of Chromebooks, Windows, or OS X, but a good school will teach marketable skills, and for that Windows is your best option.
Yes, marketable skills should be taught in school, but they should not be OS. Computer users nowadays do NOT NEED to know what OS is because they are NOT going to configure their computer at work. If they are going to be in IT field, then they should learn ALL OSs, not just Windows.
OS is not the problem if you or your kids are not a sysadmin. But again, if you and/or your kids are going to be a competent sysadmin, then you and/or your kids should have capability to learn any systems without a problem. Thus, there shouldn't be a preference in what OS is.
Not necessarily, web is OS agnostic, and all indicates that this is where the jobs will be. Already JAVA and JAVA related development in many cases surpasses other technologies (https://www.statista.com/statistics/495026/programming-language-breakdown-by-industry/).
My experience taught me that schools should focus on universal concepts - which are long lasting instead of specific tools details - which change constantly, especially lower level schools (even word processing concepts are universal and knowledge about them will let one use any editor, getting proficient with just a good manual).
Most of the school use of computers is via web based teaching services (math, reading, etc.), an inexpensive, reliable and low maintenance system suits this purpose well.
Or they install Debian on it, like I did. I bought a Xhromebook because of the price and I have a maxhine at home.
No need to buy the latest and fastest.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You're both wrong. Give a kid a Windows PC and they learn how to use Windows to launch an application, and use that application.
Give a kid a Chromebook and they learn how to use ChromeOS to launch an application, and use that application.
Give a kid an iPad and they learn how to use iOS to launch an application, and use that application.
Either way the OS is such a minimal part of the lesson, it's the application itself that provides the meaningful skill. It makes very little difference to the learning whether that application is written in VB.Net and presented directly from the OS, or written in JavaScript and presented through a web browser.
See: Microsoft Word vs Word Online, Photoshop vs Pixlr, etc. Sure in some cases native applications are more powerful, but like it was mentioned above, the overwhelming majority (especially at lower grades) don't need that kind of power.
Also, regardless of the device, that "they learn how to use the internet" is one of the absolute most important things they do. Sure it might not go on a resume, but being able to find and verify information on the internet is one of the most important life skills out there.
Computers are great for what they are great at... not so great for note taking/giving/assignments for kids.
As a computer geek, I am shocked at all the computer pushing done in school. I mean... my kid wastes so much time trying to find assignments on their all over the place web interface/site, and then doing homework in google docs is so frustrating with all the random delays (is this normal for google docs or is it some crap-end free school servers they are giving them?)... I just about want to shoot myself when I am helping him.
In his English language class, everything is hand written. Guess what is easier, faster, and more to the point? Yeah, writing stuff down with a pencil and looking it up in your assignment notebook. I guess one thing that is better on the computer are lastyear's reading assignments... no low quality B&W printout to deal with. Then again, you can't take notes on the computer screen on a Chromebook the way their class is set up.
For a while it was all ipads ipads ipads, every student gets an ipad, and schools couldn't buy enough ipads, and then the schools discovered they weren't really all that great for education after all. And now home users are finding between their smartphone and their laptop the tablet isn't that useful there either, and the next great thing is now becoming a niche -- still useful and definitely has a place but we didn't get rid of all our computers for them in the end.
Chromebooks are the new tablets which were the new netbooks... maybe they'll take hold... or maybe they'll be ultimately found to be too limiting too. The jury's still out.
The iPad craze was simply Apple's tremendously capable marketing machine in action. Once people got them in their hands they discovered they were useless.
There is one very big difference between iPads and Chromebooks: Chromebooks have physical keyboards. Tablets are passive consumption devices. They have no other purpose. Even tablet games are practically passive experiences because there's neither the screen real estate nor the input devices available to manage a complex UI. Not even Apple's marketing could paper over the reality that tablet-based educational software is little more than a glorified PowerPoint, no matter how glitzy it can be made to look.
Chromebooks have keyboards. And despite all the nonsense coming out of bad educational studies, the one thing that has survived is the truth that children learn by interacting with words. And that distinction is important. Just tapping the screen to Go Next is a useless interaction. What's required is composing their own words. In traditional classrooms, that meant verbally. In Chromebook classrooms, that means written. And for that, you need a physical keyboard.
Sure a Chromebook isn't a "real" computer. Or is it... Did you know you can program an Arduino from a Chromebook? You can. You can also edit images, audio, and video...and run any Linux application.
The jury is still out indeed, but Chromebooks really do have the manageability needed while still presenting the one required tool to enable composition, which is all-important. This doesn't smell like overhyped marketing to me. This smells like a need fulfilled, with hints of actual classroom success.
"In fact these are quite attractive to a small business due to things like having your accountant/book keeper "
Meh, most accountants and bookkeepers I've met advise against using cloud products; most of them are either more expensive or more limited or both. Not to mention being tied to your internet availability, and there service availability, and being subjected to random user interface changes and feature breakages... yeah its the holy grail of what people want for bookkeeping.
"due to things like having your accountant/book keeper and yourself being able to see the same set of up to date accounts."
Because there wasn't a pile of simple ways of dealing with that before? From teamviewer to remote desktop to dropbox; accountants have been solving that problem for a couple decades now.
"Your point was?"
The real question is: "What was yours?"
Ok. You aren't wrong.
"Sure a Chromebook isn't a "real" computer. Or is it... Did you know you can program an Arduino from a Chromebook? You can. You can also edit images, audio, and video...and run any Linux application."
Or for exactly the same price I get an actual laptop that does *all* of that and runs any windows program too. To me that's the problem chromebooks have; the budget stuff at the low end is garbage ... screen too small, keyboard cramped, low quality, fragile.
Now you can go upmarket from the bottom, and chromebooks offer that... but at pricepoint that no longer has any advantage over PCs. Sure a $1200 pixel book is a nice enough device... but for $1200 i'll get a dell or a microsoft surfacebook or maybe a mac... and I'd argue that's a much better value.
For comparison, after a lot of research, I bought my kids education series dell latitudes... they were reasonable, decent spec'd (ram + cpu + ssd), rugged little laptops. The screens aren't great. They're fine, but the viewing angles are restricted, and that's the only real compromise in the device. But I think it's a better value, and better constructed device that can survive a lot more abuse and do lot more than a chromebook at the same price point.
Meanwhile schools are loading up on the budget devices; which may ultimately just be too limited. And if they are forced to move up-market for a truly productive device, the case for a chromebook over another laptop is a lot weaker. I also haven't been impressed by chromebooks ruggedness - the e-series latitudes i mentioned aren't indestructible but i'm not living in fear as they go back and forth to school in the kids book bags and tossed around. I wouldn't knock one off the table on purpose... but i'd give it far better odds of surviving the landing.
Microsoft is fighting back with its best product. VisualStudio.
Yay, but 99% of students won't be programmers, so why would they care about (the apparently amazing, wonderful, life-altering, floor-cleaning, and world-peace-bringing) VisualStudio?
Already Microsoft is supporting ssh daemon and incoming ssh connections,
Seems like the first thing I would disable on student devices, but maybe you envision a school full of perfectly-behaved programmers?
Also notice the UI difference between modern Widows 10 and Office 365 now, and back when the current users where school children.
Even if by some chance Microsoft and Office are still relevant in the business world when these Australian kids grow up, it would almost definitely not look like anything now.
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