For me and my students -- we always use a google login. With 35 students all using 4 or 5 online services each with a login....

There is no way we can keep control of all those separate login details. There needs to be a central control over login.

Sure, login details are pretty old skool bonkers.

I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion, but in the real world where I have to hand a class of 35 students over to another teacher and they need to have confidence that all 35 can log in and complete the lesson.

Repeat this across all classes and all years. That's a lot of users.

Why not use another single sign on service? Why do you have to use Google? Google is the largest advertiser in the world, and is more and more encroaching on the free and open web.

> Why not use another single sign on service?

Look. I'm not an idiot. I write open source. I love free and open web.

Google login works. We use use Gmail - it works. We use google classroom - it just works. Most websites offer Google Login - it just works.

When you have 30 students and you waste 2 minutes logging into a website -- that is 2 x 30 == 60 minutes of student learning lost. Little things like that add up.

It's not 60 minutes of learning, it's 2 minutes of learning. 2 minutes went by. You're not running a factory so you don't need to use factory-style productivity metrics. Anyway what's the hurry? What could be so crucial that not a minute can be spared? Maybe this is why school is uninspiring? The feeling of being on a breakneck treadmill, never having time for anything? Education shouldn't be about quantity, it's about quality. But I know what you're up against.

Come now. On one hand, tech ensures that things get faster, and we ask why a second could be important?

In yesteryears, no one could compute the things our phones do today in seconds.

But the demand for time has gone up, not down. Now idle time is a target to "get stuff done".

Even on HN, people have complained about how being idle during idle moments is a luxury, since everyone is on a treadmill to see how hard they can perform even in leisure.

The point being that when things just work, other long term issues being invisible, people will go for the cheaper option.

The same way people have burnt fossil fuels because the costs are sent off to the future, they will choose convenience over security.

Having worked IT at a college, I can tell you that it's very important to get every minute out of your class. When your class is only 60 minutes, and you spend the first 2-10 minutes getting logged in every single time, that's a huge chunk of wasted time. People are paying one way or another to be there, sitting there staring at a spinning cursor doesn't make anybody happy.

School is a funny old place. I'm struggling to be honest because I'm a hacker at heart and think like you.

But being observed by senior management, they would see students not learning. You could expect extremely close scrutiny for the next few lessons. To be put on special measures. Not quite a sack-able offence, but ....

Perhaps you should consider being less defensive. I believe (could be wrong) OP asked a genuine question and was interested to hear a response. S/he didn't call you an idiot or question your love for the free web.

I think your last paragraph would be sufficient to explain your reasons along with a single, "it just works."

Their response was perfectly reasonable and interesting.

Either everyone is crazy or I am -- does a site that's used by less than 100 users really need to outsource their auth?

If you're part of a school don't you have student accounts in some central place like LDAP/AD/IdM?

Well, for one, they're much better at it than most of us. For two, on mobile, people hate typing in logins. So at least offering an integrated one can provide a huge uptick in usability.

Yes, because outsourcing auth is less about scale and more about security and convenience.

LDAP/AD/IdM doesn't necessarily work with third party services.

Google login is great. The problem is just when a site only provides a Google login or Facebook login, and not a site-specific login.

Which does seem to be a passing fad. "Log in with your Facebook account or go away" was a thing a couple years ago, but now most sites do offer an independent login method.