Software Downloads Information: Microsoft and Education: the government calls it …

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Microsoft and Education: the government calls it … – Numerama

“Do not hesitate to propose” replied the office of the Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the free software advocates who protest the agreement signed Monday with Microsoft .

Monday, TorrentFreak reported the agreement (.pdf) signed between the Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Microsoft, by which the Redmond company will invest 13 million euros to bring Office365 in schools, train teachers, or contribute to equipping students shelves.

The agreement (.pdf) provides for an “ availability of the Cloud ecosystem Microsoft (Office 365 Education, Microsoft Azure Directory, etc …) for all schools in the Digital Map to School so wishing “and” co-construct with the Ministry and field users experimental deployment situations based on the Microsoft ecosystem . “

algorithms for analyzing performance pupils and students

More problematic perhaps, it also allows Microsoft to integrate its custom tracking solutions for the development of the individual student learning with “ analysis algorithms “which will be a” ethical and legal monitoring . ” It will analyze student scores and detailed results for individual evaluations, to be better able to identify challenges and strengths, and help guide students according to their areas of expertise identified by the software . “ Special attention will be given to confidentiality and security of data used ,” promises the text.

In practice, Microsoft will deploy its Adaptive Learning APIs that accomplish learning tools that adapt to each student, according to his pace and skills. The issue of exporting data and interoperability algorithms in case of change of supplier is not mentioned in the document. Also pose the question of the role of the Ministry and academies in determining evaluation criteria and the development of learning materials, monitoring of work traditionally vested in the public authority being delegated to the private sector party .

The announcement of the agreement has not failed to react the free software communities. “ This is how they work, the first dose is free ,” confided yesterday Representative Framasoft association, which does not hesitate to make the analogy between Microsoft products and drugs. “ What Microsoft wants right now, [...] is that you use Microsoft software, to get used to .”

Questioned by Léa Linux association reports that “ would have been preferable to a partnership between the Ministry of Education and Free Software ,” the firm Najat Vallaud-Belkacem returned the ball in the court of software publishers. He assured that the Ministry “ is technologically neutral ” that “ works with the free ,” and asks publishers to also offer their agreements – even if ‘ it will be difficult for them to sign a big check too:

But many netizens immediately reminded the office of the Minister of Education that free is not just technology, but that it is above all a philosophy and specific legal and practical offering extra technological benefits.

Others proposed to the Ministry lists Prévert free software without understanding maybe the challenges of the XXI ^th century were less in software themselves in the data and their exploitation.

Now this key area the publishers of free solutions are struggling to compete, both for cultural issues more sensitive to the protection of privacy and cost issues, data mining asking servers and high-level processing capabilities that publishers of free software are often unable to offer. This is a huge challenge for those facing proprietary software in the field of education as in others (think of artificial intelligence, home automation, voice recognition, translation in real time ….)