@melodymeows we've come all the way around on "computers are something that require elevated knowledge about to be able to use" and it's severely stupid

@melodymeows Ugh, this resonates and it doesn't feel good. Most of my tech support for the parents these days is just picking through this kind of bullshit and reassuring them that nothing terrible is happening. Trying to teach kids in that kind of environment sounds horrible :(

@melodymeows That was my experience working with elementary school students using Chromebooks — almost everything is a distraction

The required Google services bundling — mail, workspace, classroom — is the shit frosting on top

Aside from the kids who need tech for accessibility reasons, they’re better off with pencil and paper for most everything

@melodymeows When I helped teach LOGO programming to kids of that age, in the early '80s, here's what happened. We brought LOGO floppy disks to the Apple II computers, put them in, and turned the computers on.

Then the kids wrote programs to make the little turtles draw pictures.

@melodymeows as someone who spent like 8 years teaching middle school kids tech and programming I felt every word deep in my soul

@melodymeows Schools need proper IT technicians. Maybe that feels like a waste, but nothing like as wasteful as the half-baked experience your kids had in that lesson.

@melodymeows this is so sad. it's so unnecessary. it should be so avoidable

@melodymeows@queer.party this is what happens when the setup is done by someone who knows how to set up this shit, but actually does not give Two Shits

@melodymeows As with most other things. 90% is trash, next time you can get a nice VM with a premade Linux distro to get up and running in less time.

@melodymeows

your passion for tech was grown in a different time, I think, is part of the issue.

You've got a passion for what was, and what could be again.

But what currently _is_, is an obnoxious hellpit fraught with safety issues of a social, dative, and technical sort that nobody with access to the purse strings wants to actually fix.

Janky piece of crap hardware like those "smartboards", and a lack of personnel/time to kidproof stuff.

@melodymeows There's nothing wrong with the tech. All the issues you had have to do with greed and capitalism.

This is what makes HDMI not work properly because of patent licenses your drivers developers won't (can't) pay for. This is what allows predatory companies to sell outdated products to schools for a lot of money. This is what drives the myriad popups asking for money or attention everywhere you look and this is what incentivises advertisers to use borderline NSFW/shocking images to attract attention.

@melodymeows transmit your hatred for the status quo. Kids must learn to despise big tech and their ad shitshow

@melodymeows Ugh I feel this one. There's so many layers and they're all infected with rampant disaster capitalism.
One of my first things in a corporate environment if I don't have local admin to install apps like a decent browser, but I do have rights to install browser extensions, is the Edge browser "empty new tab page" extension.

@melodymeows with schools it's particularily grim, imo, becuase they keep being pressured to stay up to date without any of the budgets.

@melodymeows
I'm a teacher, and just for your future reference, even with tech issues aside, that was too ambitious for 1 lesson. You can only show kids that age 1 thing/lesson, or in the case of Scratch 2 lessons - it'll take most of 1 lesson just to get them all registered. Even senior students you have to show them each step. I told a computing club to install Visual Studio for next meeting - one of them installed Blend for Visual Studio

cc @claudiom
Holy cow!

@melodymeows

@melodymeows No possibility to boot on Linux via USB sticks? 😇

@melodymeows@queer.party the net needs to be fractured. a "CorporateNet" which is the internet we have, ads and all; and a "LocalNet" which is a network of locally maintained websites and services kinda like Web 1.0 or Ma and Pa shops in a small town.

People need to know they can have their own personal website using that 7 year old laptop that's in storage collecting dust.

@melodymeows@queer.party
your issue isnt tech, its capitalism.
tech designed for profit and not for humans

tech is in a bad state when its dominated by uncaring corporations but thats honestly not the tech i want to be excited about

@melodymeows The more I do tech, the more I hate it.

There's limitless things we can do with it, but the corporations picked only the worst ones and everything is now a horrible experience.

@melodymeows stop loving tech, don’t hate it either, just dissociate from it and leave it far behind, soon you’ll forget most of it and life will be more relaxing and make more sense (while other people still ‘in’ tech will increasingly make less sense)

@melodymeows Exactly why I no longer define myself as a tech enthusiast, works less, and code on 70's game consoles and cheap microcontrollers for fun late at night...

@melodymeows

It's almost like they need a "Windows Kids edition" that would STILL be rife with garbage.

Also the monitor thing was probably some HDCP (High Definition Copy Protection) garbage.

Tech isn't safe for kids, and not safe for laypeople that don't know about adblockers and uninstalling bloatware. :<