Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 2

Unbeknownst to anyone with decision-making power in the MinOfEd, with a bit of leadership & vision, we could create a vastly better edtech landscape for Aotearoa *in* Aotearoa, without any dependence on foreign tech corporations whatsoever. But, yeah, the 'leadership & vision' part is missing entirely. Seems to me, we need a mandate for the MinOfEd to realise that putting all our eggs in those two very precarious MS & GOOG baskets is/was a mistake & they need to invest in a '#ThirdWay'.

3/n

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to start explaining what I think that #ThirdWay should look like, because I don't think we can afford, as a nation, to continue with the duopoly to which the MinOfEd has shackled us.

For the curious, here's a starting point: https://davelane.nz/openschools - in addition to an explainer video, there's an entire book (available for download as a PDF) on there, which explains that better way.

4/n

The #edtech status quo in Aotearoa has huge inertia & plenty of tech support staff who mostly have very narrow expertise, limited to those two US corporate monocultures and a smattering of other things around the edges. So whatever transition is proposed needs to be gradual & carefully-managed. Ultimately, a transition to a #ThirdWay will be mostly political & there'll be a stiff opposition to it from the many vested interests involved. We need to agree the status quo is not acceptable.

5/n

I think we'd all benefit in many ways from an edtech #ThirdWay that is fully run by NZ businesses competing to offer services with a common set of open (#libre) platforms that give us, as a country, the ability to set our pedagogical & practical tech direction. If you want to create tech-savvy kiwi kids, the best way is to give them real experience with open tech, without glass ceilings or steel floors.

I'm certain it would, post transition, cost us all less & offer us far more.

6/n

At the very least, a #ThirdWay would give us a fighting chance of arresting the onslaught of generative LLMs into every aspect of our digital existences. That's in direct opposition to, say, Microsoft, who've been working with the MinOfEd for years for ways to shoehorn 'AI' into every aspect of the curriculum: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/492898/documents-expose-microsoft-s-relationship-with-nz-education-and-hopes-for-ai-in-schools

7/n

Folks in NZ are starting to realise the implications of the impending EOL of Microsoft Windows 10 for our education system. In its finite wisdom, our MinOfEd has effectively locked all schools into either the use of MS Windows or Google ChromeOS. Both have fundamental issues like endless license hassles, EOLing OSs, ending support for Window or ChromeOS on specific computer models, etc. And that doesn't even start to talk about digital colonisation & sovereignty (see https://davelane.nz/explainer-digitech-risks-school-boards) 1/n

Nice to see these (thanks for the tip @thelinuxEXP!) - https://unite.un.org/news/osi-first-endorse-united-nations-open-source-principles and https://news.itsfoss.com/un-ditches-google-form/

@lxo ooo, nice quote - yes, I remember seeing Allison talking about this stuff around that time - he's the real deal.

Huh - what do you know? https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ - turns out that when a software category is dominated by a #libre option (e.g. mobile operating systems, database & blog engines, and now value stores/caching systems), nothing proprietary can compete. And the rest of the world benefits from it. Imagine that.

@lucasmz yes - that's true - they're some proprietary binary blobs for drivers (like GSM and a few other specialised things, like VoWifi)... so there's no time for complacency. We need to keep up the pressure.

Whelp, the water's pretty high out there. We're on the way towards having a rather large lake across the road.

This is what home be like (after wild weather walkies)...

Australians, please review! https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zXHq04W0kBs or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXHq04W0kBs

So, this is kinda huge: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pVI_smLgTY0 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVI_smLgTY0 This is (last I checked) the guy with 100 million YouTube subscribers... switching to Linux (Mint) with a lot of useful commentary and some choice words for Microsoft and Windows. This could be a bit of a big deal.

@craftygardennz one of the most worthy targets is surely our use of (total dependence on) US-owned IT services and systems... and reversing the historical shunning of domestic alternatives.

@apropos @Suiseiseki seems to me that either could be forked pretty trivially if the US was being boycotted. Sure, the original devs wouldn't be as likely working on it, but let's not forget that Torvalds is Finnish even if he's been in the US for many years.

It'll be funny if, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Microsoft's founding (not something to celebrate in my opinion, of course), Trump's tariffs could cause people to choose non-US-owned technologies, i.e. Linux. I'd be ok with that.

@stephenharlow we used to use that in my company - my colleague @lightshow was a dab hand with it - it's a seriously powerful publishing tool... let us know how you (and your student) go with it!

@stephenharlow @lightshow yes, I've had words with my boy's vice principal who sent an email to all students' parents encouraging them to use the 'student discount' to buy copies of Adobe products. I (delicately) likened it to being a dope dealer on behalf of Adobe - first hit's free(ish). But she was unimpressed. She, too, made the 'industry standard' excuse, but it's a totally depraved practice.

Here in NZ, we've recently been told that the Alpine Fault which runs down the spine of the country & through our capital, Wellington, has 75% chance of rupturing (with a 8-9 magnitude quake) in the next 50 years. (see https://af8.org.nz). I think we're blindly waiting for a similarly devastating 'quake' in the mainstream digital platform landscape. Don't know what it'll look like, or who'll be affected, but it'll be bad. We have way too many eggs in too few badly incentivised baskets...