On 3/21/20 7:32 PM, [email protected] wrote: > On the contrary I think it is arrogant to expect students especially to > be *required* to use proprietary software. > > As a teacher, it is really important that learning tools are > *accessible* and that means free and trustworthy.
Unfortunately, these ideas are directly related to our political beliefs, which are totally alien to the general population. > Similarly it is really important that we have an alternative to "Zoom" > or "Skype" that doesn't require students to sign up for something or > even necessarily download a software at all (Jitsi for example). Zoom > which my university is using right now limits video conferences of more > than 3 students to 40 minutes or less unless you pay them. My class had three teachers and eight students and lasted for three hours on Zoom. > I don't understand why people go to great lengths to respect moral > concerns about religion, eating meat, etc but concerns, moral or > otherwise, about software freedom are not taken seriously. It is our pet political issue, like being environmentally friendly. People shrug these things off. > Also no one is demanding anything necessarily. Nonetheless as a > professor or TA running workshops, yes, it makes a lot of sense for me > to demand that the whole group use one platform. I would not use the > word demand, but the whole group absolutely needs to be using the same > platform in order for us to meet online, obviously. In light of that we > should choose the most accessible option possible. "But you can install Zoom on Ubuntu," one might say. To outsiders, we are just weirdos with tinfoil hats. > Also what do you even mean by "the unity is never recovered"? Unity is > needed on a case by case basis. Whenever a group migrates to another medium, there are always people who stay behind. You can never get people to agree on anything. -- Caleb Herbert KE0VVT (816) 892-9669 https://bluehome.net/csh
