Digital Sustainability in education - a bad example

General
1

Hi all,

sorry for this long rant - if your Sunday is packed full of activity,
you may skip this mail peacefully.

An acquaintance of mine asked me to recover an old Laptop that no OS on
it. I did using the latest ubuntu. I made her aware of all "caveats":
"this laptop won't run Windows programs". She was fine with it. The
laptop is for her child, which attends local German elementary school.

After a while she contacted me again, worried: her child needs
"Blitzrechnen" from the German publisher Klett, since at school they
would train mental arithmetic. I've been confronted with this when my
youngest was at elementary school, a similar Windows software I don't
recall, and was able to make it run using Wine. My acquaintance got a no
cost copied CD-R from school with the password written on it.

I wasn't able to get "Blitzrechnen" running - I tried several Wine
versions each 32 and 64 bit - the app is not complex, seems like a
series of flash animated pages where the user is asked to solve math
problems, nicely drawn with animals and stuff.
The publisher himself has updated his learning material: it is now
available via Android/iOS app - but I presume she has to pay for it.

This situation really makes me upset, since she is forced to make use of
a Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 (or macOS) to make it run *if exactly this
software is needed*. There should be no barriers to get children
equipped with learning material, and if it gets digital, those barriers
should be compliant to learning standards, *not to market ones*.

There is no orchestrated guideline in our local education it seems. Each
school proceeds by its own "ideas" and "means". Back in the days, in
Germay, I was aware of the "Kultusminister Konferenz" - one of its
mission is to set those standards, i.e. "to work towards securing
quality standards in schools, vocational training and higher education"
(https://www.kmk.org/kmk/aufgaben.html), whereas here, locally, there is
none such effort.

Digital Sustainability should be introduced when it comes to digital
learning material - at least it should elaborate principles, where
access to learning material has low hurdles (like, for e.g., available
both on and offline through a browser, from as many OSes as possible).
Those standards should then be respected by local schools and higher
education institutes.

And I am deliberately not touching on the subject of cost efficiency in
this matter: In a public administration context that does not take into
account final cost statements, it makes little sense.

And, yes, I will made her aware of free alternative math training apps,
but the child will not be able to use the same app. At the end, we're
talking about math here. Does learning math need one special software?
If yes, then we're doomed.

Cheers,
#pasquale

2

Hi!

It's Sunday and the *rant* was interesting.

I can only add two pieces of information.

In South Tyrol one Party is systematically pushing for the arguments
you indicate, another Party is somewhat less active, but still follows
these matters. Both these Parties are in the opposition. The most
important local Party (no names named) is absolutely against the
principles you mention. At least they are consequent, because they are
against free software both in words and in deeds. Let's recognize it -
no hypocrisy.

The second consideration is that on the Raspberry Pi operating system,
in the Russian Linux distribution "Astra" and, if I remember well, also
in the Chinese Ubuntu Kylin distribution some educational math packages
are part of the main installation. You don't even need to look for them
in the store, they are ready to be started from the main menu. One
click, and you go. It's an indirect message from the developer
(Raspberry Pi) and the Authorities (Russia and China). An important
one.

Raspberry Pi was initially developed for sale in 3rd world countries in
particular to support their educational efforts. Astra and Kylin shall
become normative in their respective countries, including in schools.
The problem you describe wouldn't arise there.

Gianguido

3

Hi Pasquale. I agree to your description, the political direction for, sead
to say, the German speacking schools in Southtirol is since many years
unacceptable, totally based on just one proprietary solution. Instead of
choose Ubuntu OS why not give a try to FUSS-10 in the last update (
https://www.fuss.bz.it/)? Based on Debian-10 + xfce, is packed with
educational software which was tested before adding to the distro.
Developed for/from the Italian speaking schools of Southtirol since 16
years, may have an alternative solution for Math. In the SchoolSwap project
we got positive experiences from German speacking schoolars who received a
FUSS10gbased PC from the project.
About Math in un elementary schools: in my knowledge the most German
speacking ones have formal contracts with https://anton.de, which is an
ensamble of nice web-applications covering Math also. The school involved
in the described story may not be happy with such solution?
As Gianguido wrote, we suffer under an unregulated "autonomia didattica",
which seems to run just for teachers. Nobody talk about "autonomia
didattica" looked from students and families point of view.
By, diego

Hi all,

And, yes, I will made her aware of free alternative math training
apps,
but the child will not be able to use the same app. At the end,
we're
talking about math here. Does learning math need one special
software?
If yes, then we're doomed.

Cheers,
#pasquale

Hi!

It's Sunday and the *rant* was interesting.

I can only add two pieces of information.

In South Tyrol one Party is systematically pushing for the arguments
you indicate, another Party is somewhat less active, but still follows
these matters. Both these Parties are in the opposition. The most
important local Party (no names named) is absolutely against the
principles you mention. At least they are consequent, because they are
against free software both in words and in deeds. Let's recognize it -
no hypocrisy.

The second consideration is that on the Raspberry Pi operating system,
in the Russian Linux distribution "Astra" and, if I remember well, also
in the Chinese Ubuntu Kylin distribution some educational math packages
are part of the main installation. You don't even need to look for them
in the store, they are ready to be started from the main menu. One
click, and you go. It's an indirect message from the developer
(Raspberry Pi) and the Authorities (Russia and China). An important
one.

Raspberry Pi was initially developed for sale in 3rd world countries in
particular to support their educational efforts. Astra and Kylin shall
become normative in their respective countries, including in schools.
The problem you describe wouldn't arise there.

Gianguido

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4

Diego,
German schools use Windows10 and in some school districts ChromeOs. Perhaps
there is some interest in LibreOffice and Ubuntu. Mainly because both are
well known :

Take a look at our 300+ Fuss10 installations done in AdaLab, Ecolnet,
FranzLab: how many German school students or German native speaking
students are currently using Fuss10 and are happy with it?
On the other hand, several million use Ubuntu worldwide:

How many have heard of Fuss10? We have to face that reality and act
accordingly:

We certainly can continue with only Fuss10 in school-swap, but the vast
majority of our target recipients will continue to be Immigrants and
residents going to Italian schools, already familiar with Fuss10.

That’s also fine with me, after all you, Diego, are doing the biggest job
in preparing the hardware!

Take care
Hugo

attachment.html (7.59 KB)

5

21 novembre 2021 21:49, "Hugo Leiter" <hugoleiter(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Diego,

German schools use Windows10 and in some school districts ChromeOs. Perhaps there is some interest
in LibreOffice and Ubuntu. Mainly because both are well known
[...]

Hi Hugo, hi everybody.

The topic opened by Pasquale is quite important and it is not which GNU/Linux distribution is better suited for schools in German language in South Tyrol. The point is that there are still applications bought several years ago and used in schools (as e.g. Blitzrechnen - https://www.mathe2000.de/cd-rom-blitzrechnen-0) which cannot be used at home by every student (digital divide) in particular by those students who have a GNU/Linux PC.

The need to use "Blitzrechnen CD-Roms" was one of the reasons why in the Elementary school "Alexander Langer" in Bozen (having both German and Italian classes) the shared IT-lab was migrated from GNU/Linux to Windows 10 with the configuration (not needed) of an additional Windows-based school server.

Paolo.

6

Thanks Paolo, and Gianguido as well.
The "Alexander Langer" (!) choice baffles me: both in action and for the
name they carry.

This make me (free) think:
- I suggest there should be a SaaS solution[1], an educational platform,
open to all schools, pupils and teachers - made in SouthTyrol, where
education by digital means is offered with low to no barriers (the user
needs a device with popular Hardware features and OSes - not *a specific
one* (user freedom);
- this SaaS educational solution is GDPR compliant, and -specific-
governs the principles "least privilege" and "need to know" for all data
and operations that it contains;
- the public local government pays for the SaaS solution and offers
economic contribution to low incomes for purchasing Hardware and access
to broadband;
- ...

[1] Education in a browser sort of.

Cheers
#pasquale

7

This make me (free) think:
- I suggest there should be a SaaS solution[1], an educational platform, open to all schools, pupils and teachers - made in SouthTyrol, where education by digital means is offered with low to no barriers (the user needs a device with popular Hardware features and OSes - not *a specific one* (user freedom);
- this SaaS educational solution is GDPR compliant, and -specific- governs the principles "least privilege" and "need to know" for all data and operations that it contains;
- the public local government pays for the SaaS solution and offers economic contribution to low incomes for purchasing Hardware and access to broadband;
- ...

[1] Education in a browser sort of.

Good idea Pasquale.
On the other side I ask myself why Anton.app, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund isn't available as Free Software.
Let's take a look at https://anton.app/ (Legal Notice) if we can do something maybe with a little help from the FSFE.

Best,
Paolo.

8

About Anton.de : I got in touch with them, asking if they where planing to
translate the app in Italian (part of it is availabe in Spanish) and/or
they may accept an "open" collaboration, depite from technical
difficulties. The answer was quite short: no plan for such activity in the
short/medium time.

*Da: *Pasqualino Imbemba
*A: *lugbz-list(a)lists.lugbz.org
*Data: *22 nov 2021 07:58:41
*Oggetto: *[Lugbz-list] Re: Digital Sustainability in education - a bad

example

This make me (free) think:
- I suggest there should be a SaaS solution[1], an educational platform,

open to all schools, pupils and teachers - made in SouthTyrol, where
education by digital means is offered with low to no barriers (the user
needs a device with popular Hardware features and OSes - not *a specific
one* (user freedom);

- this SaaS educational solution is GDPR compliant, and -specific-

governs the principles "least privilege" and "need to know" for all data
and operations that it contains;

- the public local government pays for the SaaS solution and offers

economic contribution to low incomes for purchasing Hardware and access to
broadband;

- ...

[1] Education in a browser sort of.

Good idea Pasquale.
On the other side I ask myself why Anton.app, co-financed by the European

Regional Development Fund isn't available as Free Software.

Let's take a look at https://anton.app/ (Legal Notice) if we can do

something maybe with a little help from the FSFE.

Best,
Paolo.

===============================================

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