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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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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.
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.
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?
What good is an ad blocker when your child is tied to their ecosystem? They are logged in using a Google account at all time, send and receive emails at Gmail, read and save documents on Google docs, and browse the web using chrome. Google will have a pretty detailed profile on your child, including academic records.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well quite a lot if you assume that the point of collecting the data is to sell us stuff via ads.
Now you say including academic records. That would indicate you believe Chrome is scraping the content of the pages visited and sending that to google. That seems unlikely... I'm sure its something they'd like to do, but it would at least get reported. A more likely route for that information would be the education provider selling that data, and then it doesn't matter which OS you're using.
(the academic data doesn't get sent to their gmail accounts, or to anywhere via email. The only thing they've used email for so far is emailing family about wanted birthday presents - useful for advertising data I'm sure)
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
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.
Most people are on Fiber (to the home) in NZ these days (or can get it). Certainly most schools are on fiber.
If I ping my east coast US office over VPN from NZ I get just under 200ms response, so not too bad.
Remote desktop is certainly fluid enough to be completely usable.
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.
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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)
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