Hello FSB, I am a programmer working for NICTA at Spring Hill. I was directed to this mailing list by a friend who I meet at Brisbane Functional Programming Group (BFPG). I have been using functional programming in industry for about 13 years. I am a former lecturer at universities, however, I became somewhat disillusioned to the university agenda around 2007 (long rant omitted). I have been a relatively passive advocate for free software for approximately the same amount of time. I do not take a stance on the issue of free software as I see many others do. I have children, now aged 11 and 13 who are beginning their high school education. Both of my children have grown up using the linux operating system and related GNU software at home. Their school has proposed a "bring your own laptop for education" program. The proposal specifically mentions that Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX be used. I do not know if this proposal intends to insist on either of these, or if they are listed merely because parents may be wondering if perhaps their existing laptop meets the requirements. For example, the proposal may intend to be diverse, but inadvertently only lists Windows and Apple in an effort to convey that diversity. The proposal then goes on to talk about "meeting minimum requirements" and discusses anti-virus software and so on. Nevertheless, I have decided to take a stronger stance on this issue in that my children will not be using Microsoft nor Apple operating systems. I am looking for advice on how to approach this issue, because I have not taken a strong stance like this before. Whenever I worked in say, a corporate environment that "makes sure your windows updates are up to date" (for example), I have simply worked around whatever nonsense was put in front of me and with little protest. This is usually because I have some other orthogonal goal and so don't have the inclination to address the issue directly. In this case, I think the above proposal works directly against the goal (education) and so I am compelled to intervene. If anyone has tips on this matter or has addressed a similar issue before, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it. Thanks for listening.
Hello FSB,
Hi Tony My replies inline...
Their school has proposed a "bring your own laptop for education" program. The proposal specifically mentions that Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX be used. I do not know if this proposal intends to insist on either of these, or if they are listed merely because parents may be wondering if perhaps their existing laptop meets the requirements. For example, the proposal may intend to be diverse, but inadvertently only lists Windows and Apple in an effort to convey that diversity. The proposal then goes on to talk about "meeting minimum requirements" and discusses anti-virus software and so on.
That's a possibility, but there are others: Some educational institutions (e.g. QUT, where I am studying) only officially support Windows and Mac OSX connecting to their networks, so if you are using something else then you are "on your own". For me personally, this has never been an issue because I've never needed their tech support. :-) A related possibility is that the school prefers that students use a particular set of programs. Unfortunately this might include Microsoft Office, among others. On a side note, many schools, especially Catholic, have deals with Microsoft (such as the Live@edu offer) where they get Microsoft Office and email for little or no cost. The other possibility that I can think of, apologies if this is alarming, is that the school intends for your children to essentially install spyware on their computers. My former high school asked this of students who brought their own computers and had it pre-installed on all school computers and laptops. More worryingly, the spyware contained a keystroke logger which remained activated all of the time, even when not at school, and stored the keystrokes in a log that could be retrieved by a teacher the following day. Apparently the school didn't share my opinion that installed spyware is a terrible invasion of privacy, especially if it remains activated outside of school hours, whether the computer is school-owned or not. The excuse for mandating spyware was that children needed to be monitored/protected and that the measures would only be used sparingly.
Nevertheless, I have decided to take a stronger stance on this issue in that my children will not be using Microsoft nor Apple operating systems. I am looking for advice on how to approach this issue, because I have not taken a strong stance like this before.
Also interested in opinions on this. I think that a big step would be to encourage the school to use LibreOffice on all of their computers. Explaining freedom to teachers, or anyone non-technical can be difficult, but if you can do it then that's great. Otherwise, price and compatibility issues are compelling arguments for schools to switch to LibreOffice IMHO. Perhaps you could explain that your children and possibly other families don't have Microsoft software and that anyone can get LibreOffice for no cost and without restrictions. -- Andrew Roffey http://andrew.roffey.org [mailto|xmpp]:andrew@roffey.org see website for GPG/OTR pubkeys
On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 01:10:13PM +1000, Tony Morris wrote:
Hello FSB, I am a programmer working for NICTA at Spring Hill. I was directed to this mailing list by a friend who I meet at Brisbane Functional Programming Group (BFPG). I have been using functional programming in industry for about 13 years. I am a former lecturer at universities, however, I became somewhat disillusioned to the university agenda around 2007 (long rant omitted).
I have been a relatively passive advocate for free software for approximately the same amount of time. I do not take a stance on the issue of free software as I see many others do.
I have children, now aged 11 and 13 who are beginning their high school education. Both of my children have grown up using the linux operating system and related GNU software at home. Their school has proposed a "bring your own laptop for education" program. The proposal specifically mentions that Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX be used. I do not know if this proposal intends to insist on either of these, or if they are listed merely because parents may be wondering if perhaps their existing laptop meets the requirements. For example, the proposal may intend to be diverse, but inadvertently only lists Windows and Apple in an effort to convey that diversity. The proposal then goes on to talk about "meeting minimum requirements" and discusses anti-virus software and so on.
Nevertheless, I have decided to take a stronger stance on this issue in that my children will not be using Microsoft nor Apple operating systems. I am looking for advice on how to approach this issue, because I have not taken a strong stance like this before. Whenever I worked in say, a corporate environment that "makes sure your windows updates are up to date" (for example), I have simply worked around whatever nonsense was put in front of me and with little protest. This is usually because I have some other orthogonal goal and so don't have the inclination to address the issue directly. In this case, I think the above proposal works directly against the goal (education) and so I am compelled to intervene.
My suggestion is to first simply raise the point that your child does not use Windows or OS X, and request that the policy be amended to be inclusive of other operating systems. I agree with your suggestion that the wording of the policy may simply be an artifact of a lack of awareness of other OSes. An alternative option is to just... fly under the radar, so to speak. Perhaps it is unlikely that students will be needing to use software that only runs on Windows or OS X, for which there is not a compatible free alternative that runs on GNU+Linux. If so, your child could try "going with the flow" - it may do little more than raise eyebrows. If, on the other hand, the suggestion of using, or the actual use of verboten OSen instead raises ire or suspicion, the objections will need to be tactfully discredited (easily done for "security reasons" and "tech support" - the only well-meaning objections I can think of). Additionally, strong arguments in favour of free software in the classroom can be made: the ability to learn how a system works, to customise a tool to be more effective, and to help a peer through sharing of knowledge, skills, and software. Points about vendor lock-in or the price of software are relevant and (hopefully) salient, but in my opinion secondary.
If anyone has tips on this matter or has addressed a similar issue before, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it. Thanks for listening.
I have not dealt with this issue before, but I'm sure we here will all appreciate hearing about how you go. Cheers, Fraser
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Hi Tony (hope you are well by the way - long time no see) It's a tricky one and I can only relay my own experiences. My son and daugher are 9 and 6 respectively and have grown up only knowing Gnu/Linux at home. They use windows occasionally at school but mostly just as a web-browser for flash. My son gets a laptop next year as he moves into year 4. It is a school laptop - there is no option to BYO and it runs only windows 8. I've spoken to other older kids at his school and they all seem to hate them - not just crap software but the hardware seems pretty flakey too. A few parents that come to techspace have talked about forming a group to lobby the school about their poor choices - it's a private school that is not cheap so understandably they are annoyed. My own kids comment to me that the computers at school crash a lot and I have been able to explain this to my 9 year old son why this is and the differences between operating systems. The best I have been able to do so far is to just educate them - my son has told a few of his friends at school about Linux and hopefully his advocacy will continue. We run a minecraft club on Saturdays at Techspace which my son is also involved with - all our machines run GNU/Linux at the techspace and quite a few kids have now dual boot installed it for better stability on their own machines. We do talk a little about software freedom, but so far it's been mainly stability that sells it. I hope to gradually introduce this to the kids, parents and teachers whenever I can. I'm finding the sales job on this stuff no longer a stuggle - we've had quite a few tech-savvy teachers come to us who are pretty good on Linux (quite a few drawn in by python & raspberry pi) Steve ps. yes - and I have heard that MS will most likely be buying Mojang/Minecraft.... poo!!! On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 1:10 PM, Tony Morris <tonymorris@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello FSB, I am a programmer working for NICTA at Spring Hill. I was directed to this mailing list by a friend who I meet at Brisbane Functional Programming Group (BFPG). I have been using functional programming in industry for about 13 years. I am a former lecturer at universities, however, I became somewhat disillusioned to the university agenda around 2007 (long rant omitted).
I have been a relatively passive advocate for free software for approximately the same amount of time. I do not take a stance on the issue of free software as I see many others do.
I have children, now aged 11 and 13 who are beginning their high school education. Both of my children have grown up using the linux operating system and related GNU software at home. Their school has proposed a "bring your own laptop for education" program. The proposal specifically mentions that Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX be used. I do not know if this proposal intends to insist on either of these, or if they are listed merely because parents may be wondering if perhaps their existing laptop meets the requirements. For example, the proposal may intend to be diverse, but inadvertently only lists Windows and Apple in an effort to convey that diversity. The proposal then goes on to talk about "meeting minimum requirements" and discusses anti-virus software and so on.
Nevertheless, I have decided to take a stronger stance on this issue in that my children will not be using Microsoft nor Apple operating systems. I am looking for advice on how to approach this issue, because I have not taken a strong stance like this before. Whenever I worked in say, a corporate environment that "makes sure your windows updates are up to date" (for example), I have simply worked around whatever nonsense was put in front of me and with little protest. This is usually because I have some other orthogonal goal and so don't have the inclination to address the issue directly. In this case, I think the above proposal works directly against the goal (education) and so I am compelled to intervene.
If anyone has tips on this matter or has addressed a similar issue before, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it. Thanks for listening.
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Steve Dalton wrote:
ps. yes - and I have heard that MS will most likely be buying Mojang/Minecraft.... poo!!!
There is Minetest, which is similar to Minecraft except it is free software. The great thing about that is that you don't have to worry about who "owns" the software, unlike Minecraft. http://minetest.net/ I don't play it very often at all but I have tried it out and it is very good (I also used to be addicted to Minecraft years back). -- Andrew Roffey http://andrew.roffey.org [mailto|xmpp]:andrew@roffey.org see website for GPG/OTR pubkeys
participants (4)
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Andrew Roffey -
Fraser Tweedale -
Steve Dalton -
Tony Morris