www/server/staging teachers-help-your-students-...

[Dora Scilipoti]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Dora Scilipoti <dora>   20/11/03 07:17:54

Added files:
        server/staging : teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html 

Log message:
        Edu article draft.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/server/staging/teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1

Patches:
Index: teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html
===================================================================
RCS file: teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html
diff -N teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ teachers-help-your-students-resist-zoom.html        3 Nov 2020 12:17:53 
-0000       1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,228 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.94 -->
+<!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html -->
+<!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" -->
+<!--#set var="TAGS" value="resist" --> 
+<title>Teachers: Help Your Students Resist Zoom
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/side-menu.css" media="screen" />
+<!--#include virtual="/server/gnun/initial-translations-list.html" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+
+<div class="nav">
+<a id="side-menu-button" class="switch" href="#navlinks">
+ <img id="side-menu-icon" height="32"
+      src="/graphics/icons/side-menu.png"
+      title="Education Contents"
+      alt="&nbsp;[Education Contents]&nbsp;" />
+</a>
+
+<p class="breadcrumb">
+ <a href="/"><img src="/graphics/icons/home.png" height="24"
+    alt="GNU Home" title="GNU Home" /></a>&nbsp;/
+ <a href="/education/education.html">Education</a>&nbsp;/
+ <a href="/education/resisting-proprietary-software.html">Resistance</a>&nbsp;/
+ <a href="/education/whats-wrong-with-online-teaching.html">Online 
teaching</a>&nbsp;/</p>
+</div>
+
+<!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE-->
+<!--#if expr="$OUTDATED_SINCE" --><!--#else -->
+<!--#if expr="$LANGUAGE_SUFFIX" -->
+<!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="no" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" -->
+<!--#endif -->
+<!--#endif -->
+
+<div style="clear: both"></div>
+<div id="last-div" class="reduced-width">
+
+<h2>Teachers: Help Your Students Resist Zoom</h2>
+
+<div class="article">
+
+<p>Today more than ever, technology has become an instrument of
+surveillance and oppression that can only be fought back
+by empowering citizens with the ability to inspect and control the
+software they use. It is the responsibility of all educational
+institutions to provide the means to that end by teaching and
+installing only <a
+href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">free/libre software</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Zoom [link], a proprietary web conferencing program that is 
+becoming more and more dangerously popular, is an example of such 
+harmful technology. No educational institution should ever use it.</p>
+
+<p>Please don't force students to install Zoom on their computers,
+including its web version.</p>
+
+<h3 id="to-all-teachers">To all those teaching remote classes with
+Zoom:</h3>
+
+<p>It is unfortunate that you are using Zoom, a nonfree program that
+spies on users and takes away your students' computer freedom, along
+with your own. By using Zoom, students are dependent on a software
+they cannot inspect, study or change, and their freedom to learn about
+technology and how it works is destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, by enforcing such dependency your school will be
+locked-in to a service it cannot control, possibly managed by a
+company outside of the legislation of your country.</p>
+
+<p>Some students might decide to continue using Zoom beyond your
+classes, effectively surrendering their privacy over communication,
+and would hence miss on the opportunity to learn how to keep control
+over their data and computing.</p>
+
+<p>There are better programs you can use for teaching remote classes,
+free/libre programs like Jitsi and BigBlueButton. By choosing these 
+programs you are enabling motivated students to learn about the 
+software they use everyday, and some of them one day will be able to 
+adapt it to their needs, serving a larger community. Those who will 
+not pursue such curiosity, will still benefit from using a software 
+that respects their freedoms and doesn't spy on them.</p>
+
+<p>Choosing free software for your classes will positively impact
+life-long learning, a crucial skill for any student. In fact, students
+will learn that it is in their power to run, study, modify and share
+any free software they wish, according to their own curiosity and
+needs. In contrast, by adopting proprietary software, students are
+taught to become mere consumers of a user interface, with no power
+over the technology they are using.</p>
+
+<p>If you independently opted for using Zoom in your classes, we urge
+you to switch to software that respects your students' and your
+freedom.</p>
+
+<p>If Zoom was imposed on you by your school's administration, we
+recommend you to contact them and ask to drop Zoom in favour of free
+software. Ask other teachers for help, and explain why free software
+is paramount for education.</p>
+
+<h3 id="last-resort">Last Resort</h3>
+
+<p>If you really can't remove Zoom, we propose this temporary
+workaround only as a last resort to help your students avoid using
+Zoom in the short term. We do not recommend it as a stable, long-term
+solution.</p>
+
+<ol>
+  <li>A day or two before the class, post the visual materials for
+each day in some freedom-respecting way, so students can download
+them.Any simple old-fashioned web site is suitable for this.</li>
+
+  <li>Encourage students to phone the Zoom server; tell them the phone
+number and the code for the conversation. That way they can listen to
+the audio of the session, while they follow the visual materials
+alongside.</li>
+
+  <li>Tell them that you regret the use of Zoom and show them which
+are the free programs to replace it. Explain <a
+href="/education/edu-why.html">why</a> proprietary software such as
+Zoom has no place in schools (and in any other aspect of life.)  You
+could take this opportunity and talk about free software, and why <a
+href="/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html">software
+freedom is even more important today</a>.</li>
+
+  <li>Make a recording of the Zoom conversation for each session, and
+post it in a freedom-respecting way soon after that session ends.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Simply by telling them about this possibility, which you can do
+more than once, you will help inspire resistance to Zoom and other
+freedom-trampling programs, and avoid inculcating surrender.</p>
+
+<p>You will still be using Zoom, which is deleterious for your
+freedom. Some of your students will probably still be using Zoom,
+which is deleterious for their freedom. But, thanks to your efforts,
+some of them will avoid using Zoom.</p>
+
+<p>If there were situations in which this solution is not feasible,
+such as examinations, and students refuse to use Zoom, then you, as a
+teacher, could set up a different meeting in parallel or an
+alternative exam session using one of the free programs mentioned
+above. Or you could provide a computer in your school with Zoom
+installed, and ask the student to join the exam using that computer.
+That way, the student won't be forced to install non-free software on
+their computer, and the use of Zoom will be limited to the exam. If
+you opt for this choice, we recommend the school computer to run a
+<a
+href="/distros/free-distros.html">free software distribution</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Please note that the workarounds we suggest here are only meant as 
+a short-term solution to help teachers react quickly to oppose the use 
+of nonfree software for remote lectures rather than deferring to the 
+new academic year. In the long-term, it is crucial to migrate to 
+free/libre software and online conferencing programs like <a 
href="https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/";>Jitsi</a> or 
+<a href="https://bigbluebutton.org/";>BigBlueButton</a>.</p>
+
+<p>All software and technology as a whole must be free, and this is a
+small step towards that goal. <a
+href="/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html">Saying <em>NO</em> to
+unjust computing even once is progress</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+<!--#include virtual="/education/education-menu.html" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
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+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
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+to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org";>&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
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+        replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
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+Please see the <a
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+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
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+<p>Copyright &copy; 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p>
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+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/";>Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2020/11/03 12:17:53 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div><!-- for class="inner", starts in the banner include -->
+</body>
+</html>