Ask HN: Technology Teacher Needs Validation from Smarter People

3 points by hnpolicestate 251 days ago | 10 comments

Long story short. I teach K-8 technology. Middle school students figured out how to send memes and communicate with each other via Google slides and docs. The school thinks this is terrible and I must immediately reprimand them for it.

The problem. I am actually impressed that my students found a way to communicate with one another digitally within the police state environment that is managed Google Chromebooks and GoGuardian. Yes, if any of the memes were inappropriate I get that, it's bad. But I mean the technical solution to communicating with one another uses tools outside the box (definitely at their age) from within an authoritarian local system.

What should I do? I feel like telling them that their initial inclinations are valid because information wants to be free. Whether that be digitally, printing press, gossip etc.

Long story short again, I think what they figured out is a good thing. It means they are thinking criticality about how to solve technical conditions which they consider problems. Thoughts? Any brilliant, wealthy people want to vouch for my perspective?

westurner 251 days ago |

Why does the school need to disincentivize them working together?

Could there be a team project where they must use the groupware suite to solve for learning objectives?

In HS, we had a "students in small groups take a few weeks to prepare a lesson plan and teach one another" (with the instructor to fill in as necessary) that brought understanding.

In MS, there was a shared drive folder called "Ralph Nader _files/" - that looked like the report on politics and Save as HTML report - was full of ROMs and emulators until.

But that was 8th grade. ("Eighth Grade", "Good Boys")

It sounds like you're "good cop, bad coppin'" them. Good, good.

Perhaps there's a way to use social instincts and technology for learning objectives.

hnpolicestate 251 days ago | |

"Why does the school need to disincentivize them working together?" The school doesn't want them using this tool to send messages to one another during class or send inappropriate memes using it.

So instead of asking them not to make inappropriate memes (don't think you could honestly convince students not to chat with one another digitally during class, if option exists) they want to nuke the entire tool.

This school reprimanded me for not using go guardian to remotely monitor what websites they were trying to visit. I told my students it's a gross invasion of privacy for anyone but your parents.

Lots of problems here. They are also TERRIFIED of lawsuits. I couldn't get them to unblock neil.fun because IT convinced the principal their are links to porn sites from Neil.fun

I showed otherwise but they refused to believe their own eyes. Every year it seems I have to sell more of my soul to digital fascism to keep my job.

westurner 251 days ago | | |

IDK, "fine, due to no gapps sharing due to certain issues, then everyone must write a professional ScholarlyArticle manuscript with two columns, a title, authors, and abstract at the top" (with e.g. Notepad, LyX, Overleaf, CoCalc's time slider, LaTeX in $ \text{Jupyter notebooks} $ , $$ as /sigma \textit{Markdown} $$, and code with test coverage and docs)

:Article, : ScholarlyArticle, :Thesis, "Dissertation" (for a doctoral degree)

Philosoraptor: Do people get fired for messing around on Slack and not paying attention in meetings or for underperforming?

Socially awkward penguin: Is team coordination over chat one of your strengths?

Learn to code and manage projects resources that work on school Chromebooks: Hour of Code, Hour of AI (2025), JupyterLite, jupyterlite-xeus with (PyData,) packages from emscripten-forge, Google Colab, Replit, JS Fiddle, container2wasm, vscode.dev, Dockerfile + devcontainers/devcontainers.json

These days it's pretty simple to generate a meme generator tool; but still the cost of moderation (is part of the Accounting Equation for a team/org/business with limited funding amd operating costs and margin).

Why wouldn't you want to host a service for pick a type (an rdfs:Class) of schema.org/CreativeWork?

How can employers minimize waste and maximize utility of tools for collaboration and also networking?

billy99k 251 days ago |

What's odd about this entire conversation is that many of the same people posting here:

-Wanted sites like Parler and other social media sites completely censored -Want people fired at work for sharing inappropriate memes/content (you can see examples of this over the years with leaks and other news stories about big tech, which is where a large portion of the people reading and commenting on HN work).

"authoritarian local system."

HN and the tech community in a nut shell.

PaulHoule 251 days ago |

It's a toughie.

I think the Chromebook culture is a form of kneecapping that is harmful in its own way.

On the other hand we are seeing that the "open internet" is also harmful to children in terms of cyberbullying, pornography, etc.

My wife and I had a disagreement about letting my son (now 23) have my old desktop replacement laptop. As a child of the 1980s I saw the personal computer as a tool of liberation and something that taught me about math, science and technology at a personal level. In the 2010 my son found some dark corners of the internet that did him harm and I can say I know more than one of his cohort who had the same experience.

---

I think of the bodies of thought from the 20th century that most needs to be revisited is the literature of "Total Institutions" including Goffman, Foucault, "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest", etc.

The widespread distrust of authority is one factor that drove Donald Trump to power and leads to authoritarianism. If you think you are working for a dangerously authoritarian organization you should consider (i) disabusing yourself of that belief (e.g. you organization wields authority for a positive purpose) or (ii) getting another job.

hnpolicestate 251 days ago | |

"My wife and I had a disagreement about letting my son (now 23) have my old desktop replacement laptop."

But at least that's your son. We shouldn't outsource these difficult decisions to strangers, school, municipal, federal systems etc.

I wouldn't consider my organization dangerously authoritarian. But definitely authoritarian. I doubt any preferable locations exist in education. They all support this digital authoritarianism. Lastly, I don't have the economic means to just quit.

I can vent on HN though lol.

PaulHoule 251 days ago | | |

Well I graduated from elementary school the same way Ender Wiggin did so I tend to think that elementary school students are like the kids in Lord of the Flies and could use some authority.

If the people who have authority aren't willing to use it they will create people who 15-65 years later will be craving for authority because they won't have internalized it. (e.g. that lack of internalization is infectious but can have different consequences) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie.

But seriously, your pension is a trap. If stress in your job raises your blood pressure enough you won't live to collect it. It's not just a matter of what your pocketbook can afford but what your body can afford.

tolerance 251 days ago |

Like another commenter suggested, find somewhere else to work.

Your role requires you to be a willful agent in an institution that society (parents) decidedly outsources their responsibilities (education and moral upbringing) to.

If you aren’t seeing eye-to-eye with the institution, then leave. Please.

hnpolicestate 251 days ago | |

There has to be a private school somewhere in the United States that is opposed to this model. It's a shame if they do exist, they don't advertise themselves as such.

I want to teach technology to young people through a lens of anti-survelliance, anti-ads, anti-censorship etc

tolerance 251 days ago | | |

I empathize with your discontent and invite you to join the caravan of vagrant educators mediating across the post-digital frontier. “link in bio”.