<story><title>Monopoly Technology Platforms Are Colonizing Education</title><url>https://instituteforpubliceducation.org/monopoly-technology-platforms-are-colonizing-education/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hombre_fatal</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m so tired of articles like this that never enumerate solutions. &lt;i&gt;Anyone&lt;/i&gt; can enumerate the bad things about something. You don&amp;#x27;t need to know anything about the situation to do that, so why leave the analysis at the minimally-developed step?&lt;p&gt;Analyzing the situation before schools ever used cloud platforms and why these platforms are alluring to begin with should be a big part of this discussion, because you must understand how you got here to ever understand where to go.&lt;p&gt;For example, when I was high school in the early 2000s, the most advanced setup my high school had was for students to use USB sticks or email the teachers assignments, and it sucked for everyone. The teachers each came up with their own effort to track files. And there was a lot of work for teachers, e.g. students forgetting to attach the file. Or, a clever hackerman such as myself, deleting a couple bytes in the file before attaching it to buy myself an extra day.&lt;p&gt;In university, the school used Blackboard which is apparently very expensive and definitely very underwhelming.&lt;p&gt;After those two experiences, I&amp;#x27;m not surprised that Google suite is a true breath of fresh air for schools and students alike. I know nothing about the education system beyond this post, so I would love to hear something more informative about the situation than &amp;quot;capitalism bad&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grogenaut</author><text>I just accidentally got a hackerman like you expelled from my daughter&amp;#x27;s uni. They sent a peer review for a doc but sent it 3 minutes before deadline and was corrupt. Being helpful programmer and teaching daughter I opened it with a hex editor. Top of file referenced &amp;#x2F;var&amp;#x2F;www&amp;#x2F;corruptmyfilecom. Which seems suspicious. It&amp;#x27;s a also a website for exactly what you suspect. This was for 5% of grade on assignment and meant to boost your grade by rewarding engagement and peer review.&lt;p&gt;Daughter dug further and found the doc text (so proud) and it was a outline with loren ipsum in it. Dated 3 minutes before the corruption.&lt;p&gt;This started the chain of events where one student was no longer in class, teacher was flabbergasted at stupidity for zero gain, and then kid not being in school anymore (I guess was not first issue). Uni it department also checked and verified and added to autoscans in monopoly software. Daughter got full credit for assignment since she had noting to peer review.&lt;p&gt;I should of been suspicious, I haven&amp;#x27;t seen a corrupted small file in years.&lt;p&gt;Hackerman is there but so is overly qualified accidental white hat</text></comment>
<story><title>Monopoly Technology Platforms Are Colonizing Education</title><url>https://instituteforpubliceducation.org/monopoly-technology-platforms-are-colonizing-education/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hombre_fatal</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m so tired of articles like this that never enumerate solutions. &lt;i&gt;Anyone&lt;/i&gt; can enumerate the bad things about something. You don&amp;#x27;t need to know anything about the situation to do that, so why leave the analysis at the minimally-developed step?&lt;p&gt;Analyzing the situation before schools ever used cloud platforms and why these platforms are alluring to begin with should be a big part of this discussion, because you must understand how you got here to ever understand where to go.&lt;p&gt;For example, when I was high school in the early 2000s, the most advanced setup my high school had was for students to use USB sticks or email the teachers assignments, and it sucked for everyone. The teachers each came up with their own effort to track files. And there was a lot of work for teachers, e.g. students forgetting to attach the file. Or, a clever hackerman such as myself, deleting a couple bytes in the file before attaching it to buy myself an extra day.&lt;p&gt;In university, the school used Blackboard which is apparently very expensive and definitely very underwhelming.&lt;p&gt;After those two experiences, I&amp;#x27;m not surprised that Google suite is a true breath of fresh air for schools and students alike. I know nothing about the education system beyond this post, so I would love to hear something more informative about the situation than &amp;quot;capitalism bad&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dreen</author><text>Blackboard is terrible software. I have a feeling it&amp;#x27;s the most classic example of &amp;quot;design by committee&amp;quot; where all decisions lie with admin staff who never ever have to use the software. They just approve whatever has the biggest list of features. They earn so much money from tuition fees and care so little for usability of basic tools its astounding.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not in education software myself but it seems to me a solution of sorts would be to push for standardization:&lt;p&gt;- open data exchange formats&lt;p&gt;- open communication protocols&lt;p&gt;- open social identity platforms&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t fix the problem but at least it gives power to the people to do so. However, it won&amp;#x27;t happen on its own because it&amp;#x27;s not in the best interest of anyone currently in position to do anything about it.</text></comment>