
How Silicon Valley Plans to Conquer the Classroom - denzil_correa
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/technology/silicon-valley-baltimore-schools.html
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TheAsprngHacker
I'm very, very concerned about the ethics of the use of technology products in
schools. My school seems to be increasingly using Google to fulfill its needs
and I feel very disturbed. My district assigned everyone Gmail accounts, but I
don't remember ever consenting and I do not use Gmail for privacy reasons. (In
the school's defense, at the time the accounts were created I did not have
such concerns, and I did own a personal Gmail account at one point before I
switched to Protonmail.) At one point I considered asking my school to switch
to libre software to alleviate transparency concerns, but I realized that to
do so might constitute promoting an ideology, which could be as equally
unethical as fostering a dependency on companies.

What do you all think that the most ethical solution is? Schools _do_ have
technology requirements, and they _will_ have to choose an organization to
received products and services from. Products and services are often most
integrated with others from the same company, so would an organization be
promoted no matter what choice is taken? Perhaps using free software would
still be the most ethical choice, because even though an ideology is being
promoted, the libre nature prevents vendor lock-ins and allows easy
compatibility so that students aren't drawn to a particular organization.

These articles are somewhat related:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-
educati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-
chromebooks-schools.html)

[https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-
tracks...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-
students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade) (In an interview
with the districts' Director of Technology about switching to libre software,
he told me that the district has discussions with Google employees and were
told that tracking does not occur, so these revelations are a huge slap-in-
the-face.)

(I apologize if linking to other articles is considered spam; if they are a
problem, let me know and I will remove them.)

