Really?
They’re almost universally Chromebooks and the Google suite for schools these days…
Comment on ISO 26300
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Okay, I just want to say I blame schools for Microsoft’s monopoly on personal computing. School sysadmins are always dazzled by the shiny looking gifts that Microsoft gives them, ensuring the next generation of Microsoft useds is ready.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
lime@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
yeah but that’s fairly recent.
when i was in school in the late 90s it was all microsoft all the time. we had courses specifically on Microsoft^TM^ Word^TM^. that sort of indoctrination isn’t visible in the workplace until the people going through it are old enough to work.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I graduated in 2011, and same. My high school had a pretty janky mix of mostly Dell Inspiron towers, and mostly Windows XP but with a handful of Windows 2000 and ME machines that for some reason (prolly hardware too old) escaped their upgrades. We went through impressively comprehensive MS Office training and even Computer Tech classes (essentially an intro to an intro to computer science where we learned data concepts and built a PC).
A few years later, 90% of those machines had been scrapped, the mandatory courses were all gone and the kids all had cheap crappy Chromebooks. Now any courses are electives and the students are expected to just magically know how to use the software they’re required to use. Consequently, any class involving use of a computer, even if it’s just word processing for English essays and such has the teacher having to show the students how to use the stuff. Otherwise there are problems. It’s a sorry state of affairs and a lot more kids are getting left behind when it comes to tech.
lime@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
i was a ta in uni in 2011-2015 and while ipad babies weren’t a thing yet we did definitely have to explain to some people what files were. as far as i understand from my contacts at the university it it’s way worse now.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
To be fair, that’s about all there was… Corels (?) WordPerfect was ass, for sure. Office 97 was freaking amazing
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I used Applix on Unix / Linux and it was fine.
lime@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
sure, but computers are so much more than office suites.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
K-12 use Google, University use Microsoft
Legom7@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A couple years ago I interned for computer support at an elementary school in NYC. Most students had Chromebooks and Gsuite, K-2nd grade had iPads. Teachers had Lenovo laptops with Windows 10 and Office365.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
…and until very recently, the discount for m365 was pretty neat, I gather.
Huh, that’s interesting. I’m not aware of what my kids teachers have had to use for themselves (I think the highschool might be MS-based?), but the “client side” has always been in Gsuite for over a decade
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes I really liked the “microsoft excel and spreadsheets” class everyone had to take for 1-2 whole years. That one tool designed for you to learn basics within weeks.
I mean imagine how many negative side effects on education there would be if we just spent one or two weeks learning KStars or Geogebra or Kalzium.
Don’t worry tho cause with microsoft backing openai I am sure every student will be given a set of chatgpt premium accounts to “help” them in their learning.
You lose some you lose some.
eah@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Schools could have used that time they were “teaching” the Office suite to give an introduction to unix, programming, and the basics of how the internet functions. I had to read and analyze Beowulf, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Homer and memorize the names and formulas of 33 polyatomic ions. Computing education to the same depth should have been and should be required as it was required for the other subjects.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
Knowledge is power.
We understand a very small subset of what we use every day, and that can only be catastrophic.