<p>What have your experiences with Blackboard been? How does the Google Apps for Education line compare? Unlike numerous other tries to displace the dominant Blackboard, will this one succeed? Will the tipping factor be pure quality, or Google’s backing for reliable support?</p>
<p>I think it could be interesting, but not as good as some other software out there such as Haiku, Netclassroom, etc. If google goes in that direction, we could be looking at something good here. We will have to see the full software to see exactly which direction they went in development. I think quality will trump support. Many other classroom softwares already integrate google education tools as is from my experience.</p>
<p>@PengsPhils Hmm… your post prompted me to actually try demos of them, and Moodle and Haiku were quite nice (I especially liked the fact that the former was FOSS); but even then, I can more easily imagine teachers switching to Google’s relatively simpler and more stream-lined product than the more complicated set-up of the others (even if they are significantly more flexible).</p>
<p>The comparison that springs to mind is Firefox and Chrome; now I’ve always loved Firefox’s customizability and not always agreed with Chrome’s evil practices, but I ended up going with the latter (although the recent update to Firefox’s desktop UI, mobile functionality and simpler sync have made me seriously reconsider).</p>
<p>To be honest, once everybody gets computers, all they will be doing is playing online games. Rarely do people work and the teachers don’t have the time to supervise all of them.</p>
<p>I don’t see the problem…wouldn’t it be self-regulatory–the kids who use their time to play online games get lower grades and the kids who spend their time doing work get the higher grades?</p>
<p>@Apollo11 They give them away? Where do you go to? And which platform do they use?</p>
<p>@Vctory What does ‘tcr’ mean? Even Urban Dictionary and those acronym-listers didn’t work.</p>
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The same argument could be used for proving that cigarette/alcohol/whatever regulation is unnecessary as people would notice their worse decisions, lower productivity and damaged health and stop… except it doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>As far as tech in the classroom goes, our school actually introduced iPads this/last year. I can tell you that if it was not my senior year, my grades would have dropped for sure. Everyone was always keeping up to date with the newest gaming apps and everyone knew who was the best at each game. People played about 80% of study halls and depending on the class, you could see as much as a third of the class playing in a lecture type classroom setting. I don’t have any official stats and it didn’t affect seniors much, but I know that the juniors especially took a hit. </p>
<p>As people enter as freshman and develop good habits, I would expect the gaming to decrease. I think it is less about self-selection and more about teaching the students good habits early.</p>
<p>While the iPads were a flop overall, we introduced Haiku with it and it was a major success. After a full year of use, I can say that nothing comes close. It has a great organization, a calendar I wouldn’t use but is always useful for reminders on what’s due for the next few days on the homepage. It also provides easy access to grades as well as grouping by class with grades and content in the same section per class.</p>
<p>The assignment turn-in was used only for certain classes but was fully integrated with google.</p>
<p>It also supports club and activity pages. Another cool thing was the way teachers can post an announcement and it would pop up at you the next time you logged into haiku so you couldn’t miss it. This was usually used for changes to assignments or class time/locations. Emails are also supported with Haiku as a middle man that formats them nicely into HTML.</p>
<p>Honestly, I am going to miss it in college. If google can go in that direction, I think I would switch (if I was a school admin using haiku) with the tiebreaker being google support and integration.</p>
<p>@PengsPhils Since you seem to be familiar with and in love with Haiku’s advanced controls, I find it surprising that you’d switch to Google’s (currently, and probably in the future too) woefully featureless interface.</p>
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<p>Well, whatever I think of Blackboard; it definitely is a BIG improvement over not having any sort of standard system at all (my old school had a Yahoo! Group and that’s it :/).</p>
<p>@themorningsky TCR = The credited/correct response</p>
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<p>Again, I don’t see the problem–why don’t the teachers let the kids fail? They need the lesson while they’re young. Wrt cigarette and alcohol regulations–those are in place as smoking/drinking may lead to death (cancer/DD). So long as the teachers told the kids that what they were doing will result in failure, then there is absolutely no problem. </p>
<p>Regarding the slave to dopamine argument–this is exactly why the kids need to fail now as opposed to spending tuition money to play games in college and drop out there. Once again, you educate the kids that what they’re doing will have negative consequences, and then you let them deal with the consequences (failure) when they arise. It prevents them from making the same mistakes in the future. </p>