[smc-discuss] WhatsApp and mental torture in school communities

[Pirate Praveen]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 12:41 pm, Pirate Praveen 
<praveen at onenetbeyond.org> wrote:
> I don't think peer to peer or centralized is the right approach, 
> there are things in the middle. People have a choice of servers whom 
> they can trust and someone like KITE can also setup a server.
> 
> Also we not asking them to remove WhatsApp. They can just install a 
> matrix client for school use.

I just talked to Hussainar Mankada, a master trainer at IT at School 
project. They already use Moodle for training teachers, but their 
problem is with scaling, even with 20,000 teachers using the server, 
they have capacity problems. So when lakhs of students join, they won't 
be able to scale it. Also cost of running such large capacity service 
comes to picture.

They don't actually force WhatsApp, but only mention messaging apps, 
but at school level it becomes just WhatsApp.

So we should offer to train those teacher who are willing to use it as 
a start. if we can demonstrate you can effectively do all the tasks 
without WhatsApp, we may be in a better position to convinse more 
teachers.

Even though I prefer to recommend Matrix, considering the strong push 
by Nandakumar for Signal, I have added that as an option we can 
propose. Also Telegram allows bridgin to Matrix making participation 
via Matrix possible, so we can offer that too.

If you'd like to volunteer, please vote here so we can give a stronger 
proposal to KITE CEO.

https://codema.in/d/LDwsanKx/open-letter-to-kerala-it-school-kite-director-on-forcing-teachers-students-and-parents-to-use-whatsapp/5

The idea is, since KITE is not officially pushing for WhatsApp, we can 
ask them to write to all teachers about Free Software options and then 
we support the teachers who show interest to use the Free Software 
alternatives. I think this will not have much opposition as it is 
optional and only people who are willing to take extra effort need to 
use it.