Maybe first Facebook and Google can convince AT&T to actually install the equipment needed for me to get DSL, or convince the cable company to run the 0.4 miles of line down into my subdivision so that I can get real high speed Internet at my house.

Why do they hate our freedom to build somewhere incredibly stupid and dangerous?

Wow. That's a lot of bullshit and ignorance for one post.

First, Google Docs does not crash a lot. I've been using Docs for over 6 years. I haven't lost one document. Not one. I've worked with Docs and students for about the same amount of time. They don't lose 30 minutes of typing because Docs saves every 2-3 seconds. It's more likely that they just named it "untitled document" and can't find it now because you didn't teach them how to search.

As for FOIA requests, I would argue that it's easier to access that with a Google Apps domain than the traditional way with Office and workstations. Can you access the stuff teachers create at home and store on flash drives? Can you easily access documents stored on teacher workstations? Probably not. In a Google Apps Domain you could, in an emergency, have your domain administrator lock out a user, change their password and then reset it and view or download all their documents.

I work in K12 education trying to help teachers integrate technology. The answer to your question is more complicated than you think. Google Apps make sense for us because we have a ton of users (students) who move between different devices throughout the course of a day. With Google Drive, Sites, calendar and mail, their stuff follows them around.

Best yet, it's free. And it's actually more free than LibreOffice. There's nothing to download and nearly nothing to maintain. We have to make sure our devices have Chrome installed and we have one guy who manages the domain and keeps the database of users and passwords working for 56 schools and associated administrators, teachers and employees. As long as our network stays up, we don't have a problem, and most school systems these days have a pretty robust network connection and infrastructure, so long as they are spending their federal e-rate money wisely.

On the privacy side, Google has language in their Apps domain contracts that protects student data. Is is perfect? Probably not, but it falls in the "good enough" category.

We are still transition to Google. There are lots of teachers and students who use MS Office more than Google, but it's a process. If I had my way, we would continue the transition and then ditch MS Office completely in a few years, replacing it with Libre as a backup for those times when you have to have a workstation-based office suite. This has the potential to save a massive amount of money and yet still be MORE effective than what we were doing.

Not so much anymore. I work in k-12 education IT. We get a slight discount, but not much of one. The days of Apple trying to insert themselves into the education space via discounting are done.

Is that common core, or you state or district's curriculum and pacing guide? There is a difference.

Then the problem is not common core, but a state-mandated scripted learning curriculum, which, I will readily agree, is full of shit. Keep in mind NY could have and probably would have done such a curriculum without common core.

You misunderstand. There is no "mandated text" in the common core. It basically lays out the standards. For example, students should be able to "Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)"

That's it. It doesn't tell you what book to read, it only lays out what they should be able to get out of that book.

Materials being online has little to do with the actual common core standards and more to do with the lack of money to buy textbooks. Here in the South, most states haven't bought new books since the economy crashed in 2008-09. Hence the reliance on online materials.

Oh please! You're talking about two idiot groups that make content aligned to Common Core as if CC was a plane and they provided the engines. All your examples show is that somebody looked at the standards and then wrote some political crap to try and sell. They were probably making the same crap aligned with individual state standards a few years ago. Do you think any school systems will actually buy it?

And further, the common core is a set of general standards, not an actual curriculum. Teachers are allowed to choose works, questions, problems, and other material to teach those standards. They can also supplement by teaching things not on the common core standards.

Where do you live?

You had me at "antimatter-beam."

This looks more like a way to actually monitor the real results. If the kids are fine it will go a long way towards dismissing that irrational fear. If they aren't then the fear wasn't that irrational.

Umm. I'm thinking that just MIGHT have some unintended consequences.