The middle schooler had been begging to opt out, citing headaches from the Chromebook screen and a dislike of the AI chatbot recently integrated into it.
Parents across the country are taking steps to stop their children from using school-issued Chromebooks and iPads, citing concerns about distractions and access to inappropriate content that they fear hampers their kids’ education.
I’ve opted out of the school Chromebooks for my kids because they have computers running real GNU at home. We should all be outraged that schools are pushing a locked-down surveillance/content consumption-only platform, as opposed to something like a Raspberry Pi that actually empowers kids to have real computer literacy.
I’m curious to know if anyone here has ever approached the school IT department to ask what steps they take to mitigate or eliminate surveillance and tracking in these devices. I know it’s inherent in Google products to begin with, but do they even try? Or pretend to try? Or admit they don’t care?
The IT Department knows about all the problems it’s the administration that does not care and won’t let the IT people do anything. Also, you don’t want to know how bad the procurement process is with most school systems.
Good point. I’ve never worked in education. I neglected the fact that they’re just fulfilling orders. I believe you it’s probably a shitshow with privacy and preemptive security procedures almost non-existent.
This - like most problems we’ve created in the US - comes down to money. Google will often donate/grant Chromebooks to schools in order to create future
addictscustomers. It would cost schools a lot more to do what’s right (or at least better) for their students, so they don’t do that thing.yup, it’s the same playbook Apple had in the 80’s and 90’s. Get them into schools and get everyone used to their ecosystem so they would buy their products after graduating. Bill Gates did the same thing in the 90’s to outfit computer labs in schools with a bunch of Dell computers.