> a common argument that schools should focus on pragmatism and working with what they have - the age-old argument that free software still is not accessible or easy to use

Ah yes, the "people use calculators in the real world so long division is a waste of time" argument

Just to note, that University and the reality from the schools today under COVID-19, where teachers have to come-up with a solution fast are totally different. I see Countries adapting Google Classroom suite with much more success than the State trying to come up with their own custom and limited solution. My Wife is elementary teacher in Germany and we compared the tool that we have here, with Google Classroom and it's just embarrassing how they are using our taxpayer money in name of a privacy issue that really doesn't exist.

Where I live in the US I certainly see teachers using cobbled-together limited proprietary solutions were there is simple superior Free software . Eg. pasting their Zoom links at the top of the Google Classroom stream every day or letting them be buried down below pages of assignments (it seems that Classroom allows only Google Meet links to be included in the header), when leading Free LMSs like Canvas ship with native BigBlueButton integrations. And then using separate services like Nearpod to add interactivity to their Zooms, forcing constant context switching between the two tabs (dozens or even hundreds of times in a single class), when BigBlueButton would allow them to directly upload their slides and automatically detect multiple choice questions for instant integrated polls, and allow students to draw and type directly onto a whiteboard layer over the slides in real time.

The reality is that there is no better solution. You can find alternative for this or that component, but you have to deploy yourself, monitor, scale.. Teachers/Schools are on the front, without any support. From the solution point of view, Google Class is the only one that a School can manage, with a small budget, low technical knowledge and no time. Ask for money from task payers, to develop, integrate open source, maintain and deploy it, IMO, has almost no ROI or it's a 10 years plan, we need it now.

> you have to deploy yourself, monitor, scale

That’s flatly false.

Please don’t spread FUD. Your ignorance of better solutions is not proof they don’t exist.

You can go to https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/gl/signup, click “Sign up with Google” (or Twitter, or Microsoft 365, or create a BigBlueButton account), possibly click your Google Account profile picture/username, and done. You now have infinite BigBlueButton rooms. You can go to https://www.instructure.com/canvas/try-canvas#free-account and create a free account or “Request a demo of the full Canvas platform, and we’ll schedule an expert to walk you through the software.”

I'm not sure if you are trolling or you never used the Google classroom suite? For sure I know bigbluebutton, but it's not better than Google Classroom (we tried both) but if you don't want to deploy it yourself, the service offered online (which you linked here BTW) is much more expensive than Google classroom and offer much less disk space (which based on our research, was mandatory for the teachers, mainly because they wanted to scan their already existent homework and share it with the kids) . Check https://www.softwareadvice.com/lms/bigbluebutton-profile/vs/... and https://www.capterra.co.uk/compare/162664/186631/bigbluebutt... (I'm not associated with both websites BTW)

Those are weird (presumably auto-generated) apples to oranges comparison. BigBlueButton is just a powerful education-focused web-conferencing system that Learning Management Sytems like Canvas offer native integration with. It’s just like Google Meet with many more education features (uploading slides for interactive whiteboards, etc.) Canvas, Moodle, or something are the things you can compare to Classroom. BigBlueButton is not a LMS and Classrom is not a web conferencing system.

> with Google Classroom and it's just embarrassing how they are using our taxpayer money in name of a privacy issue that really doesn't exist.

You're saying Google doesn't have privacy issues?

Google has privacy issues? yes, definitely. But everything depends how do you use the tool right? In the scenario that we were designing, the parent creates an email for the kid, teacher has a paper list composed of name and email-from-parent. Teacher submits a homework which are normally an extension of the regular homework: Some math exercises, some videos to watch/kahnacademy (integration was smooth) some multiple choices exercises, or even just share with kids some exercises, that the kid can download, print, solve and send back to the school.. beside that the kids/parents have a channel to talk with the Teacher while they are all under partial lock-down, which without happens via mobile telephone (whatsapp, late in the night)

What would be the threat model here? Google would crawl the templates of the exercises and use it to fine tune their ads to the parents related with that content? NSA would know that Michael doesn't know that 4+4=8? Thinking about risk analysis, would you take this risk instead of invest taxpayer money? In my case in Germany, each State is coming up with their own solution, developing something which doesn't attend the minimum requirements (feature wise, privacy wise, supported platforms) and etc. For example one issue that we found in the last months: A lot of refugee kids have just a mobile telephone, but some solutions don't support it well. What do you think about usability? Totally wrong, Language Support? Just German (Yes many kids came to Germany and their parents don't speak German, how can they help their kids with something that they don't understand?), I could write hours about how wrong all evaluated solutions are.. And for sure their are not opening their source code, so how is it better?

Regarding Privacy, do you trust your data to your country more than you trust to Google? Maybe you do, but that's definitely not true for everyone or every country.

P.S: Look that my first statement and whole argumentation is based on the COVID-19 scenario and the issue that I'm raising is if any Country or State should be building their own similar solution with taxpayer money in a short amount of time.

Yeah, wish more educators had this point of view

Then they sit down at their first job and have to use Maya because it’s the standard and are behind. Or worse, can’t get a job because they’ve never used it.

You always have to wheigh things against each other. The people I am teaching study arts. They don't study to work in a studio, but to work on their own. Blender is a better fit for that than Maya here. If one of those students is really commuted to get a studio job learning Maya will be the smallest issue.

I earned my living with Blender as a VFX Freelancer (in Europe), so saying Maya is a must here is a bit outdated IMO.