That's the crazy thing, it looks like Clever is a SSO solution that's making it take much longer to sign in.

The idea one needs to log in to anything is pretty absurd in this particular environment

Back in my day we double clicked a ppt on a flash drive, and we liked it!

Clever is the portal. It sits behind the Google SSO after you've authenticated. It holds classrooms and links to other things.

Glad I skipped out on this by being older. All the kids I know hate Clever and IXL. They are basically curse words to them.

Clever is garbage. They claim it's free for the school, but end up charging vendors for connecting. So vendors increase their prices, but Clever doesn't allow vendors to say that's why they increased their price or charged an extra fee.

The complaint is entirely about the school's software stack including "Clever" and Canvas:

> login to clever

> click google profile

> type in his long terrible email he is required to remember 32lastnamefirstinital at schoolname.k12.state.us

> type in his equally annoying password

> click canvas

> click log in via google again (because????)

> Click google profile that he already logged into

> click class name

> click modules

> scroll about 40 links until he spots the powerpoint in the sea of other links with similar names

> click download powerpoint

> click open external link to keynote (because the ipad can't run powerpoint)

> turn the ipad vertically to reveal the blue "open" button

> turn off screen lock

> Click open which was not previously visible on the horizontal ipad

> hit play button

> hit present on this device. Take notes.

Educational software is a dumpster fire. The people making the purchasing decisions never have to use the software. It's just sales people tracking down the person with purchasing authority and schmoozing them until the PO comes through.

There are some schools and districts where the IT people take their jobs seriously and actually care about making things work well. Administrators need to close the loop and hold IT accountable for bad experiences and purchase decisions, and they need to drop contracts with services that aren't performing.

This anecdote is what happens when IT doesn't care and administrators never hold anyone accountable.

Administrators are the ones making purchasing decisions. IT might make recommendations, but it's someone in administration (or multiple someones) who makes the final decision on what software the district buys for its many students.

Not bribed.

They are a school administrator whose job description, formal training, etc. os in education, not vendor selection and certainly not SSO.

Source: county PTA and working with the school board.

Since the issue is so obvious as not to require any competence in "vendor selection" to notice, you need a better explanation

No. I don't "need" anything. I am not feeding trolls, but simply offering the benefit of my experience. If you want a better explanation, you may ask nicely.

But there is no "benefit" when the resulting explanation doesn't explain anything, and since you don't need a better one it would be pointless to expect one, so why even ask?

Maybe what's needed - broadly - is some sort of "choosing good software vendors" education, for people in non-IT fields. Medical care would certainly benefit from similar education.

In the 90s my parents were briefly involved in designing that sort of curriculum in a for profit space (for kids) [1] and they encountered all sorts of problems in that 1) software vendor advice changed roughly every six months (often for no particular reason than a brand got bored and changed names/rearranged cheese or went out of business or got bought by some other conglomerate got worse and a new alternative needed, 2) nobody really wanted to pay for the education of which software to buy/use, and most crucially, 3) nobody thought they needed that education.

Parents assumed kids should naturally get it from the school systems. School systems don't have the resources to teach it in most places (and where they did it has always been underfunded/under-appreciated). Parents themselves assumed they were smart enough to figure the stuff out, when they had a chance to get around it it, probably.

It sort of feels like software education has been left in a permanent "Somebody Else's Problem" field. Both in learning it personally and in finding someone to teach it.

[1] It was a franchise called Futurekids.