Really no point in doing a Lemmy instance if you're going to defederate from everything. There are easier forums to set up, or better yet, actual tools for classrooms like Blackboard and Moodle.
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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A key issue would be accounts. It would be a pain to have an account for every class. If it's one instance with many communities, it might discourage people from participating if everyone in the school can see what you do. Tools like Piazza make it easier to deal with these issues, and they have a lot of other tools specific to courses.
If it's a general instance for the entire school, then an instance run by students and unaffiliated with the school would be best. Otherwise students wouldn't feel comfortable using it. I help with the community for my university (UBC) And there's a lot of content that wouldn't exist if it was an official thing (reporting issues with professors, asking for help with academic/mental health/relationships, sharing news critical of the school, etc.)
I really do want more academics on the fediverse, but "Lemmy for school" doesn't feel that useful
Ya I forgot about its all anonymous. I don't see how that wouldn't free up everyone to participate without worrying about being tied to anything necessarily. At the very least, using for an after-school homework tool might work
It's still a nice idea, we briefly talked about starting our own instance for [email protected] (run the same way as the subreddit)
I do think universities should run their own fediverse instances. Mastodon is an obvious one and I'm pretty sure my school is still trying to figure out how to move forward after the twitter nonsense. An events platform would be another good step
How dialectical does Mastodon come across? How deep can discussions get in terms of nesting/indentation?
Are these alternative tools open source?
On the federation front, defederating from everything now doesnβt mean it will stay that way. Down the track, it might make sense to federate with similarly aligned instances. So having federation baked in from the get go might actually be a good idea for certain purposes.
Moodle is.
You should probably speak to your heads of IT and safeguarding because there's plenty of ways it could go wrong. You'd probably want to disable DMs for starters. The poor moderation tools might also be an issue.
I'd suggest you go with software designed with schools in mind as they'll have worked through a lot of the potential Issues that could come up.
Ya but is there a truly dialectical-type platform/product that replicates this important aspect of forums like Lemmy?
One of the key reasons you'd use Lemmy over standard forum software is federation. That makes some of the rougher edges something you can live with. In a corporate or educational (eg university)setting you'd need to really assess if the pluses outweighed the minuses. If the users are going to be children you'd want it bolted down hard and I can't see why you wouldn't use a more conventional forum (where you have a lot more control over everything) or something tailored made for education.
But do they really allow for the dialectical UI/approach?
Lemmy is, at it's core just light forum software, the only difference (other than it being bolted onto ActivityPub) is that it is lacking in features, some of which would be key to creating a safe online environment for school kids (in this case a full suite of moderation tools).
The dialectical format/facillitation is the most important part in my view. Like being able to interrogate and cross-examine everything and having lots of nesting levels is a profound thing
That is more a product of the user than the platform. If you want nested discussion you can get that from a range of forums.
I sort of agree but I also don't think platforms like FB etc really lend well to the dialectical format for some reason. Like, I would never try to have a serious discussion there, not to mention all the niceties with Lemmy like markdown, links, nesting levels
Canvas
I don't know about lemmy, probably woudn't be good. But the Idea that there is an exclusive school social media that's reddit-like, maybe with a few tweaks so that "admin"(teacher) posts don't get spammed out, sounds wonderful. Kids can shitpost, ~~gossip~~ and make connections much faster and easier. Not mentioning the fact that some introverts won't even make new friends any other way, thinking about the "clinically-online" types.
There are already several platforms that can do this, including open source ones like Moodle.
I remember moodle from my school. We barely used it because we all hated it, students and teachers. I'm sure it's improved in the past 15 years though.
Can you, as a seemingly more recent student, comment on Lemmy's application to this context?
I wouldn't want to shitpost if my teacher can and will see it. Especially if it is not fully anonymous.
In my experience, many classes and grades still have individual chats, on eg. WhatsApp (privacy yeah I know but they're gen Z, no changing that). Discord is also popular, and there memes etc. would fit too.
oh yeah, right, the backlash you could get. That makes it not worthwhile at all. And as you said Discord is just better if chats between students. Bummer.
I don't see why you couldn't use a defederated version of Lemmy as a kind of private forum. That said, it's most likely easier to use a good old phpBB forum, there is still tons of companies offering you to host one, it's a bit outdated and not that popular anymore, but various clubs still use one because it's what we set 15 years ago, and it's still working (and to be fair, I like that forum keep information over time while it's a hell to search old thread in whatsapp/discord). A lemmy might be a more modern form of a forum for a club/school/whatever. I don't know whether you have "private" forum like you would with the good old phpBB like forum
Searching discord is a nightmare
I also wish I could search communities here to help make things a bit easier to find
Just like you can have your own private Stack Overflow server for your company.
It sounds like an interesting idea but I'd make the server defederated from everything else to start with.
Cant be any worse than Moodle.
Yeah, i captured that in my edit :)
Edit: I also love how you can set it up to "trick" someone into producing a much larger Εuvre of work and they can have a blast doing it. Like with very little coercion
....Personally wouldn't recommend to most of my teenage high/secondary education students, but univerity/tertiary education students would likely benefit from the idea.
Most public (government run) high schools have a private media place for students and staff already, so it's not like it would be a new concept, and federating them between schools but not to the general public would be an interesting concept.
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Because you can't make private communities it's probably not suitable.
But you can host a private instance, which is what OP is actually asking about
I think a good level of granularity would be one community per instance of each class.
So Mrs Joregnsenβs Econ class, Fall of β23 class, would have its own community. You could name it like 2023-Jogensen-Econ to target that unique semester.
The instance is then for the whole school.
Any objections Lemmings?
There's a "Private instance" checkbox in the admin that seems like it would do exactly what you're thinking. No need to defederate, you can turn federation off entirely.
I like how this was posted within a minute of the other person saying "there's no reason to do it"
Kind of funny because they give you the button to do it... It might not be the best software, but it's definitely an option
You certainly do lose a lot of features, but you still have the advantages of offering users a somewhat familiar platform (they're likely familiar with Reddit already), and all of the third-party apps we have for Lemmy already. So even though you could just as well host a Facebook group or a phpBB forum or whatever, it'd probably prefer that as a student because I can log into my favorite app and use it seamlessly. And a single-node instance like that would be very privacy friendly as well. So if OP wants user engagement in a private platform it's not as bad of an idea as it seems, even though without federation you're not getting the most of it.
I think Lemmy would be fun for a school, but I'm not sure if it could replace anything. Mostly because it's made more for link aggregation than data storage itself.
Sure, itβs just publishing/forum/discussion software. It could be used for a lot of things in an educational context. It could be for lists of assignments, question and answers, suggestion box, discussion or student writing submission that other students could read and comment on.
Sounds like a bad idea if I'm being honest.
Obviously they should keep logs or whatever in case there's any need for receipts but I feel like it would be an interesting way to engage and serve content maybe
Edit: like would they probably just "defederate" from everything so it can be a more controlled setting? I'm not super up to speed on how all this works
100%, I feel like I spend way too much time blocking fetish NSFW communities on here.
I don't think its that hard (depends on ur app i guess)