
Amazon, Microsoft join Italy’s initiative to offer free Wi-Fi, eBooks - Lagogarda
http://alugy.com/europe/amazon-microsoft-joins-italys-initiative-to-offer-free-wi-fi-ebooks-unlimited-mobile-data/
======
Kipters
As far as I can see, Teams is going to gain A TON of users in the coming
weeks, most universities and schools are starting to use it to provide online
lessons to their students, far more than Meet

~~~
bitlash
As a student in one of the main universities in northern Italy, I can tell you
the lessons are provided through the open source platform BigBlueButton.
Student/teacher personal sessions although seem to rely primarily on skype.

~~~
lloydatkinson
Strange, a BBC news clip I saw the other day had an italian professor saying
they are all using webex.

I can't imagine how frustrating using that for lessons (so multiple connected
parties) would be - it's hard enough to make it work with just two parties.
Either the video works and no sound, or sound works but no video. Or just
doesn't even connect.

Very unreliable from what I've seen.

~~~
lowercased
did they show webex? or might it have been a 'kleenex' brand name issue? any
video-conferencing is 'webex' to a lot of folks.

------
OJFord
I'm fairly concerned about SARS-CoV-2, and think it's going to be absolutely
awful - but although it's already terrible in Italy I don't think it's yet
terrible enough that I believe this is a genuine outpouring of moral
solidarity. Maybe that doesn't matter, but my gut reaction is pretty far from
'oh that's jolly good of them'.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
I got an email from Meraki today capitalizing on the virus, encouraging me to
run a few demos of the teleworker units. The whole thing was about saving my
employees from exposure.

It's absolutely gross.

~~~
mjburgess
I don't quite get why it's gross.

Presumably you'd want to find wfm/etc. solutions ?

~~~
enumjorge
If the company came across as trying to cash in on an international crisis, I
can see why that would be off putting.

------
solstice
I hope that this Corona virus epidemic is going to be the thing that finally
pushes broadband expansion to the countryside in Germany...

~~~
chefkoch
As this is nothing you can change by pushing a button in your billing system i
wouldn't hold my breath. But how much bandwith does in really need for remote
work as a office worker? RDP should work ok over anything better than dial up.

~~~
solstice
I was thinking more about schools switching over to remote education like they
currently do in China. I guess that this sort of app and video conferencing
system is currently infeasible in the more rural parts of Germany due to lack
of bandwidth.

~~~
moooo99
Its not only the lack of good infrastructure. The schools don't have the
necessary skills to maintain these kind of systems and often don't have enough
money to outsource

~~~
ryanmercer
It'll likely never happen in the United States because of what you mention and
the fact that NSLP (National School Lunch Program) and the SFSP (Summer Food
Service Program) feed a LOT of children.

My fiance is a high school teacher and they began preparing online lessons
yesterday in the event they need to shut down for 2 weeks but they're also
scrambling to figure out how to feed the kids the 2 meals a day a lot of them
get _and_ how some of the students are going to do their laundry. A good
portion of the students do their laundry at school in coin-operated washers
and dryers in the home economics room.

In her first class of 30 something students, all but 2 or 3 get fed 2 meals a
day by the school via NSLP. Yesterday she was also telling me the school nurse
is concerned as many of the students come to her for basic over the counter
medicines and feminine products. She's also a track coach and it was cool and
wet yesterday, most of the students shwoed up without the provided
hoodie/pants and said they didn't want to get them sweaty because then they
couldn't wear them to school (implying they had no means to launder them
except for at school) so her and the other coaches rounded up all of the stuff
that had been left by previous years and she took it all home to wash and mend
ripped pockets to bring back for those students.

When kids are depending on the school for their meals and basic
medical/hygiene needs... I can't see online classes becoming a thing for many
of the schools in the country.

~~~
ryanmercer
You know, after this comment has percolated in my mind a bit it suddenly hit
me that 'the stacks' in Ready Player One are much closer to reality than I'd
ever expected.

Honestly I had no idea this was the situation in high schools until we started
dating. I would have been class of 2003 and sure we had some 'poor' students
but we only had a handful of immigrant/refugee kids that you'd see getting the
free food (we typed our code into a keypad that carried a balance or paid
cash, you could always tell who was on a free lunch though because you were
restricted to what you could take and everything was a la carte).

Her current school also has some serious drug issues which was quite
surprising to me. They had to expel some kids for vaping something other than
nicotine in the past 2 months, turns out they were vaping something that
contained _fentanyl_ (how they got caught, they kept falling asleep in class
and were hard to wake), they regularly have bring in drug dogs for both
marijuana plant matter and thc vape cartridges, they recently had to remove
two students for having sex on grounds and had to turn them over to the police
because the male student was filming it with his phone and they were both
underage, etc.

It would be amazing if we could just let kids attend from home when sick,
during adverse weather, during outbreaks (lice, COVID-19, chicken pox) but the
stuff she keeps telling me...

A school here has at least 2 students confirmed with COVID-19 (Avon, Indiana
schools) that decided to close all of the schools this week and it's almost
entirely a solid middle class school and even they've had trouble just this
school year with some instances of drugs and a senior committed suicide around
the holidays which sent a bunch of kids spiraling.

I obviously don't know how things are in Europe but I think schools are
between a rock and a hard place here in the United States. In many cases
teachers may be the only positive attention kids get in person, and the only
one that will notice when something is wrong (at her current school and her
previous school cutting has been a very big issue).

I'm rambling but the state of schools right now deeply concern me. This up and
coming generation seems to have far more problems than mine did.

~~~
applecrazy
Holy crap.

This made me recognize my privilege and the _massive_ gap in facilities
between schools. I never thought it was that bad in some American high
schools. I went to a pretty high-performing school where the biggest problems
were anxiety and depression, not (this still shocks me) _actual hard drugs_.

Thank you for sharing your SO's experience. It's eye-opening to say the least.

~~~
ryanmercer
Yeah it's been very eye-opening to me too. Prior to this school she was
teaching on a Navajo reservation near the Idaho/Utah border. I didn't realize
just how bad reservations are. There she said she had students that often only
had 1 or 2 outfits and would wear the same clothes to school every day, so
she'd find reasons to 'reward' clothing and she'd go to thrift stores and buy
a bunch of t-shirts/jackets/hoodies. She also had a lot of students who's
parent(s) were in jail/prison and were living with relatives, students that
had been sexually assaulted by relatives, students that absolutely did not
want to be there but came anyway for the meals.

It just blows my mind that even here in the United States you can have kids
graduating high school with 2-year Associates degrees as well that have access
to 'robotics labs' and the like while you have kids, sometimes in the same
city, that have to do laundry at school.

If you start massaging reddit and various teacher's forums, you can see this
over and over though in apparently every state in the United States. Schools
with all the fancy stuff and schools that are basically places for kids to
come to eat 2 meals and try and stay out of trouble for a third of the day.

What gets me also is the sort of things students write on their papers/tests.
She'll show them to me as she grades them and you'll have very nihlistic
catoons drawn out as maths answers or "I'm stupid fail me" "I don't get this
fail me" type phrases or just complete nonsense written. She showed me one
recently where the student had to have spent the entire test writing and
stylizing her name in some elaborate work while not answering a single
question.

I definitely have a _lot_ more respect for teachers now than I did prior to
meeting her.

------
chenlianmt
This is awesome for students from poorer districts who have no access to the
internet when COVID-19 keeps them from school. A fairly good move for
education equality. Besides, it would be better if free (cheap) tablets are
also offered.

