Hi,
I will be writing petition to my government (Poland) to try to get them to ban Windows at schools. I believe it should be illegal to force children to use systems that are paid and use children’s data for AI and advertising.
Maybe you will do it as well? Let’s end this insane practice.
I got out of it about three years ago. I’m pretty proud of what I got done but I cannot say I miss it.
Kids of a certain age would often be issued a device for their exclusive use - that’s not all that uncommon - but requiring them to lug it home is a bit much, especially if they have a useful computer at home already.
I also hate Chromebooks. I’m not against the idea of a super simple boot-to-browser type device per se, but the artificially limited lifespan of the devices is ridiculous and ChromeOS is a pain in the ass to manage compared to other OSs. In the end, we actually found we were better off running Windows or MacOS and applying policies that limited use to a very specific set of applications. Also, we found that running Windows with only Credge available was usually snappier; you know ChromeOS is utter dogshit when it get outperformed by Windows+Edge on the same hardware, and it comes with the added benefit of being able to lift the policy at a moment’s notice, returning the device to a full OS.
With regards to the VPN and filtering thing, it sounds like they’ve done half a job. Depending on when you are, the school is likely ultimately responsible for what happens on a school-issued device, and that usually does mean having an always-on VPN that routes all traffic via the school’s web filtering/logging appliance of choice. I used Headscale for our VPN and had a couple of VPSs running FortiOS for that purpose. I get that you want to apply your own filtering, but the school probably just doesn’t have the time or staff to deal with supporting complicated home networks. That said, is absolutely sounds like they’re failing in their duty of care if they’re allowing unrestricted all-hours access: the default policy I set was a very restricted set of teacher-picked sites when they were out of school unless the parent/guardian specifically signed a waiver saying they’d take responsibility: even then, we still had to apply some filtering and logging and we offered to limit the number of hours per day.
Don’t get me started on those fucking apps.