Post AlFdPShOITsMNkEo0e by selea@social.linux.pizza
(DIR) More posts by selea@social.linux.pizza
(DIR) Post #AigC8GAvY7Jg8P9j4C by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T02:16:46Z
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A month or so ago I ranted against corporate Edu apps as bait. Now Microsoft which devoured the amazing Flipgrid app to try and build a social media network for onboarding young users has abandoned the project and is shutting down the app in just 1 month. Pure enshitification. We need FOSS edu tools. #edtech #education
(DIR) Post #AigC8H5IAYP2xDWjvE by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T02:22:11Z
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Flipgrid came out with the iPad2. It was amazing for very young learning to share their stories with each other via video recordings. Elementary students could show their world and ideas, and their classmates could respond with video feedback, amazing! The interface was clean and simple. You could add photos and stickers and move or remove them while recording so no green screen needed! And all this on ipad so 6 year olds could work independently.
(DIR) Post #AigC8Htd9OfXTL4wNs by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T02:27:23Z
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Then Microsoft bought it, and focused on smartphone UI which is vertical with more powerful processes. The iPad interface suffered, the UI became buggy. New features only worded on newer devices frustrating young learners. The old QR login was pushed aside for user accounts. Pushing to login with Google or Microsoft. #edtech #enshitification
(DIR) Post #AigC8IkRz0v679n7iK by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T02:33:45Z
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Now the app is being pulled. They want elementary students to use Microsoft teams 🤦🏽♂️. And I am assuming that the login with Google or other emails is gone. I am sure if a subscription is not enforced now it will be soon. So everyone is screwed. Flipgrid dominated. It extended and now Microsoft is extinguishing everything outside of their Teams app. Educators are tired of jumping to new tools, learning them, implementing them, only to have big corporate tech buy and shutdown to absorb new users/future subscribers. #edtech #enshitification #education
(DIR) Post #AigC8JIpvAQRpnsaJM by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T02:36:55Z
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So I guess the lesson is: When Big Tech buys your favorite app it is already dead and now only temporarily bait until they pull it. We really desperately need FOSS tools in #edtech to avoid #enshitification burnout by educators.
(DIR) Post #AigC8JqrsdeDXLnlM8 by selea@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T09:08:58Z
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@bigTanuki Hey!Just a heads-up - there is now a 2048 post limit on this instance.But your client does not pick that up?
(DIR) Post #AigCFCyPqsOwEPcJu4 by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T09:10:16Z
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@selea Using ice cubes. Will check it out.
(DIR) Post #AigVCrMn73rTljc0Z6 by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T12:42:44Z
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@selea Quick question: Did you ask about the character limit because I posted a long thread rant? Or did my posts not display properly. Full disclosure, I am not one for long posts and hardly every have enough to say to merit a thread but the depreciation of yet another wonderful education tool by big tech just really cooked me inside.
(DIR) Post #AigbofpL43gai0NZZo by selea@social.linux.pizza
2024-06-07T13:56:47Z
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@bigTanuki No worries, you can post as you like.The reason I wrote it, because you wrote several posts instead of a long one. Many people prefer to write a single long post instead of several ones.You do as you like ofcourse :)
(DIR) Post #AlFcEQr4iDADWXwbSa by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-08-23T07:00:32Z
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@selea Hi Jonathan. As you know I am on Linux.pizza. I am a lecturer at a Matsumoto University in Nagano prefecture Japan. As you might remember from this thread, Microsoft burnt me for the last time with their colonization of Education Technology. I am currently writing a grant with another colleague at my college to test setting up, implementing, and using open source software for college classroom tools. One of the tools we want to use is a Mastodon server for collaboration project between students in Japan and the USA. In a previous grant I was listed as the official platform manager but that was using off-the-shelf corporate productivity and social media tool. Obviously I am not a system administrator or any kind of IT guru, I am a college English and Political Science teacher, but I have basic experience with BASH, VIM, Python, Flask, SwiftUI and other basic tools related to building Education tools. More importantly I am not afraid to look up how to get things done online nor am I intimidated by stack exchange. Still, since we are intentionally planning to NOT use corporate solutions (which is literally the goal of the research project) the grant committee is going to have questions about our expertise to set up and run a mastodon server. This is where I would like to ask if you would like to participate as an expert consultant in running servers with experience specifically with Mastodon. Please understand that you would not be expected to actually use your time to setup or run anything, and I would only bother you when I am unable to troubleshoot a problem myself (after plenty of online queries and debugging efforts). But being able to have an officially experienced person listed as supporting expert would alleviate any questions about having the necessary know-how to set up the tools.We have no intention of runner a server at home. Instead we plan to use a cloud server, such as Mythic Beasts specifically with server hosted on a raspberryPi. This would also work well for us to also set up NextCloud.
(DIR) Post #AlFdPRonZSCteQhCuu by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-08-23T07:05:56Z
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@selea So just to sum it up:A) We are preparing a grant to test open source software in a college setting in Japan.B) We would like to know if you would like to participate as an expert consultant for running Mastodon servers but only as a last resource (of course we would really appreciate pointers and guidance if you have any wisdom you wish to share).C) This is for an education research project motivated by the fact that we are tired of being burned by big tech that buys out great digital tools and then destroys or shuts them down when they are not profitable.Let me know what you think and if you would like to help out.BestJustin
(DIR) Post #AlFdPShOITsMNkEo0e by selea@social.linux.pizza
2024-08-23T07:13:38Z
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@bigTanuki Hi!Thanks for reaching out!The project sounds really exiting! FYI - I maintained this instance by myself up until 2023, and then moved the instance to a managed hosting service (toot.io).The reason is that I did not really have the time anymore to maintain all the different components due to family, work and other time-consuming things that has started to occupy my time more and more.But I can say, that the far easiest way to get started is to run the dockerized-version of mastodon, then you dont need to worry about libs being the wrong version, ruby and all that crap. There is an image ready for the Raspberry Pi aswell.WIth that said, I can't guarantee that I can answer every question that you might have, but I do know the basic about how many of the components works, and how you protect your domain.MythicBeast does offer managed mastodon-hosting too, so you can let them take care of everything for you.Hopefully my reply is not too confusing :)
(DIR) Post #AlW7SFJacWzOtZhvNI by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-08-31T06:05:43Z
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@selea Hi. I just want to check in to confirm that you are still willing to offer guidance on running a Mastodon server. As I mentioned in the DMs, we are not looking for someone to actually run servers but to provide pointers when we hit a wall and cannot move forward.The research project is specifically about logging the problems we have and choices we need to make while setting it up and running during a 1 year period. But again, we would only need to bother you if we literally cannot figure it out ourselves and then we just need pointers towards where we can find the solutions.We are going to submit the Grant application package to the Japanese Ministery of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) this coming Wednesday so I just wanted to confirm your willingness to offer your technical support.I also need to confirm how you will be listed in the Grant paperwork.1. We would list you as “Linux System Expert and Mastodon Server Administrator.” Please let me know if you are comfortable with us using that title.2. Under occupation we will list you as Administrator for the social.linux.pizza mastodon server. If you have a different occupation you prefer we list we can do that instead.3. We will list your name is Jonathan Selea. Please know that this will be small grant so any funds the Japanese government decides to cover will be mostly costs for equipment and services. That said, if the grant is approved we should receive funding for running at least to mastodon servers. We are already planing to use toot.io following your advice, probably at the community level. One server would be for the students to engage on. Another server would be for testing and learning. So it is possible that we could provide you with the funding for a community level sever for 1 year as part of your contribution to helping make the project to succeed. This again depends on the grant being approved.Again thank you for offering to help, and please know that this will help students discover FOSS tools.
(DIR) Post #AlfHEpBZCnWy3Xpi9A by selea@social.linux.pizza
2024-09-04T16:07:47Z
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@bigTanuki HiI am sorry for not responding earlier!This looks good to me!
(DIR) Post #AlfLbzewpUQf18sZ28 by bigTanuki@social.linux.pizza
2024-09-04T16:56:47Z
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@selea Thank you so much for offering support in guiding us. It will take a few months to hear back from the grant processing committee, and there is the chance that they will tell us Japan is not interested in exploring OSS in classrooms right now, but I will hope for the best.Thanks again 🙇🏽♂️