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That's cool, but you can't give out mailboxes for free like you can give away computers. It needs to run somewhere, the servers maintained by someone. Do you ha

That's cool, but you can't give out mailboxes for free like you can give away computers. It needs to run somewhere, the servers maintained by someone. Do you have a better solution than Gmail? I know only about Microsoft, is that even an improvement?

lrvick 4y ago
I host email for hundreds of people with a $10/mo VPS. Schools classically self hosted their network services and they can do so again. It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  It's great that you do, but that's not a typical school admin skillset. People who know this have zero reason to slave for a school. > Schools classically self hosted their network services Back when encryption wasn't even needed, hackers were a curiosity and deliverability wasn't a concern. This is never coming back. School is a very important part of people's lives (parents, children, teachers, other staff), deliverability and security must be perfect. Schools also manage loads of very private data. As a parent, I don't want the school admin to touch it with a 10-meter pole, I want them to use a managed service that they can't screw up even if they tried very hard (and sometimes school admins look at data themselves - the less opportunity they have the better). > It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too. The point is to have working email that everyone can rely on, not to groom kids/teachers to become sysadmins. It's better for everyone if the school admin focuses on solving things no one else can solve (e.g. handing out the free computers and installing Linux on them) rather than wasting time tinkering with email hosting for public money.
0xedd 4y ago
You can Google free email services rather than use bing. Protonmail is one. Free version includes much more than what a student needs. Students can sign up themselves.
- EUROCARE 4y ago
  The point here is data privacy. Freemail means you explicitly hand over your (meta)data as a payment. Students are not going to go for Protonmail, they're going to use their already existing Gmail. You can't rely on students having their own inboxes anyways. They will claim they forgot the password, it doesn't work, they are not getting teacher's messages, etc etc. You need a place where you can deliver critical information and be sure it arrived, and have a way of proving it was/wasn't read, a way of restoring lost access (without losing the messages), a way of proving that access is possible and happened, a way of recovering deleted messages...
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    They can _choose_ to use whatever they want, as long as the school doesn't force them to use proprietary stuff. It is responsibility of the school system to create an ethical learning environment and not to promote proprietary service providers. Gmail probably doesn't finance schools in Denmark either, so even less of a reason for schools there to do no-cost promotion of Gmail. And that is just one example. Edit: After choosing something different than the school suggests, the pupils then themselves become responsible for making sure it is a suitable alternative to the non-proprietary ethical solution, that the school suggested.
    - EUROCARE 4y ago
      Email inboxes are one of the many services schools buy, it's not about any promotion and of course Google doesn't promote them, this is a service they provide for money, not some barter. This is like saying they promote a catering provider, furniture manufacturer or paper factory by buying from them... It's not like people aren't capable of using other email providers after using Gmail - email looks just the same regardless of the company (usually works worse though), and people have their own email too, their school inbox is usually not their first nor last contact with it. Pupils' personal email inbox is their own stuff and completely out of the question. We're talking about school-managed inboxes with addresses ending with the school's domain.

lrvick 4y ago

I host email for hundreds of people with a $10/mo VPS. Schools classically self hosted their network services and they can do so again. It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too.

EUROCARE 4y ago
It's great that you do, but that's not a typical school admin skillset. People who know this have zero reason to slave for a school. > Schools classically self hosted their network services Back when encryption wasn't even needed, hackers were a curiosity and deliverability wasn't a concern. This is never coming back. School is a very important part of people's lives (parents, children, teachers, other staff), deliverability and security must be perfect. Schools also manage loads of very private data. As a parent, I don't want the school admin to touch it with a 10-meter pole, I want them to use a managed service that they can't screw up even if they tried very hard (and sometimes school admins look at data themselves - the less opportunity they have the better). > It is a good opportunity to mentor future sysadmins too. The point is to have working email that everyone can rely on, not to groom kids/teachers to become sysadmins. It's better for everyone if the school admin focuses on solving things no one else can solve (e.g. handing out the free computers and installing Linux on them) rather than wasting time tinkering with email hosting for public money.

0xedd 4y ago

You can Google free email services rather than use bing. Protonmail is one. Free version includes much more than what a student needs. Students can sign up themselves.

EUROCARE 4y ago
The point here is data privacy. Freemail means you explicitly hand over your (meta)data as a payment. Students are not going to go for Protonmail, they're going to use their already existing Gmail. You can't rely on students having their own inboxes anyways. They will claim they forgot the password, it doesn't work, they are not getting teacher's messages, etc etc. You need a place where you can deliver critical information and be sure it arrived, and have a way of proving it was/wasn't read, a way of restoring lost access (without losing the messages), a way of proving that access is possible and happened, a way of recovering deleted messages...
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  They can _choose_ to use whatever they want, as long as the school doesn't force them to use proprietary stuff. It is responsibility of the school system to create an ethical learning environment and not to promote proprietary service providers. Gmail probably doesn't finance schools in Denmark either, so even less of a reason for schools there to do no-cost promotion of Gmail. And that is just one example. Edit: After choosing something different than the school suggests, the pupils then themselves become responsible for making sure it is a suitable alternative to the non-proprietary ethical solution, that the school suggested.
  - EUROCARE 4y ago
    Email inboxes are one of the many services schools buy, it's not about any promotion and of course Google doesn't promote them, this is a service they provide for money, not some barter. This is like saying they promote a catering provider, furniture manufacturer or paper factory by buying from them... It's not like people aren't capable of using other email providers after using Gmail - email looks just the same regardless of the company (usually works worse though), and people have their own email too, their school inbox is usually not their first nor last contact with it. Pupils' personal email inbox is their own stuff and completely out of the question. We're talking about school-managed inboxes with addresses ending with the school's domain.