5 Things I Dislike About Daily Driving Linux #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my eighteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

I don’t try to hide the fact that I use Linux as my OS of choice, but it’s not because I’m a rabid fan. It’s true what they say about it: “Linux would be the worst OS if it wasn’t for every other OS.”

So while I’m sitting back and relaxing using my ad-free, bloatware-free computing experience, I thought I’d list some things I dislike about the experience, limited to the traditional 5 but not necessarily placed in a particular order.

5: Hard-Coded Incompatibility

I figure I might as well start off with one of the major complaints about Linux: That so many things won’t work in it.

The truth is far less severe. Thanks to Wine and Valve’s work on Proton (which is Wine with more effort to get video games to run), if I can’t find a version of the software or a suitable replacement, I can usually still just run the Windows version on Linux.

Sure, Proton is meant for game compatibility, but I’ve gotten other software to run in it just fine. Even so, this usually isn’t much of an issue because there’s almost always something coded for Linux that is either a suitable replacement or, frequently, is the same software, made by the same programming team, but for Linux.

But this isn’t about what’s working. Some companies have hard-coded checks in place, and unless I have a full emulation setup (read: I open Windows in Linux so I’m running 2 operating systems for the price of … 2 operating systems) so that the software’s running in Windows anyway, it just won’t work.

This has only personally been a problem for me with one program: The software I use for my vinyl cutter. This isn’t enough to drag me back to Windows, but it’s annoying.

(Bonus complaint: Some web-based apps will do this as well, but for Chrome. Google Meet has no problems with audio or video in Firefox-based browsers, and yet some 3rd parties insist they can only access your camera and microphone if you’re using a Chrome-based browser. I fail to see how this is anything other than lazy programming when the stance is coming from a rather large company.)

4: Driver Compatibility

This is, again, a rare occurrence, but most of my troubleshooting on Linux, if measured in hours or frustration, has been spent solving this problem.

A lot of hardware just works when I plug it into a computer running Linux. I’ll have the occasional hiccup with Bluetooth, but no more than I did when I used Windows because the problem’s with Bluetooth, not the OS.

There’s two exceptions to this: The new and the niche.

I’ve rarely had the opportunity to install Linux on a freshly manufactured computer, but most of those times something failed to work. The drivers (bits of software that let the hardware talk to the rest of the software) might be out there, but not incorporated into the OS quite yet. Sometimes I’ll find a forum post where someone managed or discovered a workaround and I’ll install some hope-it’s-not-shady code with the terminal so *poof* now I have Wi-Fi on this new machine, but frequently, if I can afford to wait, the problem gets solved in a way where an update will come down the line without me having to do anything strenuous.

(I’m impatient, so waiting is not something I tend to do.)

And then there’s the niche products. Personally, I’ve encountered this with some older (before 2008) tablets and one specific portable USB monitor I picked up at a thrift store. Other devices in those categories will work just fine, but if there isn’t a programmer interested in getting it to run on Linux (or a company willing to pay a programmer to do this) then best case scenario I have something for someone else to use.

3: “Helpful” Instructions

While there’s a lot of incredible resources online for the novice Linux user, most are created/shared for free, by amateur enthusiasts.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and they’ve gotten me out of a jam multiple times (see #4 on this list), but a guide isn’t always written with the assumption that the target audience is a novice.

Or also possible: The author has a different bar for “novice,” and it’s higher than where the actual novice can reach.

On many occasions I’ve found a tutorial for solving an issue that listed step after step after step, with commands I could copy/paste into terminal, but then the whole thing didn’t work because there was something so obvious to the author they didn’t include it, but it was kind of necessary if you wanted a good result.

You know, the classic “Step 1, Step 2, ?????, Step 4” scenario, but the question marks weren’t even implied and Step 4 was labeled Step 3.

(And this is all from people who by all accounts legitimately want to be helpful. I’ve seen others complain about Linux gatekeepers but because I spend less time asking for help on forums than I spend looking for solved problems, I don’t tend to encounter as many of those. When I do see them, it’s because I scrolled past the response that included the solution.)

2: AI Slop

Here we go, the bane of my existence is coming for me even here, in my sanctuary.

One of the many aspects of artistic expression that is getting hit hard by prompt writers posing as creative geniuses is coding, and the advent of “vibe coders” legitimately thinking they’re being helpful by submitting code when they can’t explain how it works is putting a lot of extra strain on the people in charge of approving/denying proposed changes.

It’s not just that those approving the code have a lot more things to sift through, it’s also that the quality of what they have to examine is greatly reduced, with the people “writing” it unable to explain how it works.

If you don’t understand how it works, you’re not going to be able to maintain it. And no, “I’ll just ask an AI to maintain it” is not the solution. You don’t solve a slop problem by stirring the slop around a bit.

The whole thing is stressful enough to make some maintainers want to leave, and any time that happens the brain drain on a project can be intense.

Some projects are implementing “no AI code” policies, either as outright bans or at least limiting the AI assistance to changes that can be explained by the person submitting them to compensate for this.

You might think “Oh, well people will just lie about the AI stuff, then,” but unexplainable code is still unexplainable, and also the vibe coders seem to really like to brag about their lack of talent.

1: Less Than Progressive Personalities

I was very generous with the name for this section, but yeah, some of the heavy hitters in the Linux world are less than savory.

Let’s look at the GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program, frequently touted as an excellent alternative to Adobe Photoshop for those who want to get out from that particular corporate entity’s subscription racket.

Thing is, almost no one calls it the “GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program.” That’s what its acronym stands for, in theory, but it’s actually a “backronym,” where the person behind it really just wanted to name it after an abeleist slur they’d seen used in Pulp Fiction.

There’s alternatives to it (I really like Inkscape), but none of the actively maintained ones have the same feature parity. On a whole the FOSS community ignores that its name is a slur, isn’t aware, or begrudgingly uses it anyway because for what it does there isn’t a lot of good competition. Those who abandoned it for an alternative seem to be few and far between.

And then there’s Framework, which has made a name for itself as a computer company driven to make repairable laptops that you can build yourself. I really want to like Framework, and I want to see other companies trying to compete with them to bring the cost of repairable computers down.

And then they went and gave money to a right-wing extremist. When confronted, their CEO said they’re trying to maintain a “big tent.”

There was some initial push-back about this, but outside of a few vocal pockets this seems to have completely died out. Those who care enough will likely not buy Framework again (if ever). Those who care but not as much as having a repairable laptop when there’s practically no competitors in that niche will silently keep buying Framework. Everyone else decided it was a non-issue or got very, very vocal in support of right-wing extremists.

Do I think this is typical of all Linux users? Of course not, but it bothers me that any percentage of them are like this and that good alternatives to what they provide aren’t readily available.

Linux Rising? Yes, if You Join Us! #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my seventeenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Gardiner Bryant is one of several people rejoicing over Linux making up roughly 10% of the current North American market. (YouTube version here.)

Insert here the general caveat that how OS usage is measured can vary greatly depending on who’s doing the measuring and how they’re doing it, but 10% is generally where I’d expect to see MacOS firmly entrenched.

Naturally, this is cause to bicker and argue.

TechSpot spends some time pointing out that sure, it’s a bump, but we don’t know why. (I have some guesses.)

PCWorld and a few other places are insisting that the 10% market share doesn’t count, because Cloudflare’s data paints a much different picture.

I’m again going to point out that it’s not just the numbers, but who’s measuring them.

I’ll also reiterate that one shouldn’t tie their identity around a single thing. As much as I prefer Linux to other operating systems, it’s not because Linux is amazing; It’s because the others have gotten so much worse.

(You just need to hear a Linux fan get upset to know no one hates Linux as much as a Linux user. We’d switch if there was something better.)

But at 10% or 5%, Linux has still been progressively hitting better numbers as more people get tired of the mess that is Windows. MacOS is better, but comes with its own problems as Apple works to thwart “Right to Repair” and make things proprietary where they can.

And as people get frustrated and reach for something else, many of them are finding that the penguin-themed OS isn’t the terminal-only kind-of-works-if-you-customize-everything hot mess that it was 20 years ago.

I mean … it still can be, if that’s what you want, but that’s a niche I’m not in.

Years ago, when my lab was full of aging computers and there was no funding in sight, I took the plunge and got some Raspberry Pi computers. Those tiny little boards were so underpowered, but they worked well enough for my students to get some work done.

I’d used Linux before, even daily driving it on a Netbook @ 2009, but this was my first time managing it for my students and for the most part they didn’t care.

Some even preferred it.

Very quickly, I learned that it was cheaper to get a used computer from a thrift store. If I got a laptop it would often have more RAM, a larger hard drive, and a built-in monitor. These wouldn’t run the Raspbian OS (a specific flavor of Linux made specifically for Raspberry Pis) I’d been using, but my practice there made installing and maintaining Linux Mint much more efficient.

Again, my students didn’t care. Many barely noticed.

My Kindergarten students, enamored with Tux Paint, Tux Math, and Tux Typing, thrived.

Last year, when my family were sharing Christmas wish lists, my kid sister said she wanted a computer that “wouldn’t give her sass.” She expected some advice from me, given my job description, so she laid out her use cases.

Instead of bringing her a recommendation, I brought her a laptop. It was far from new and would be considered underpowered by modern standards, but it had Linux Mint and a few software options that met her use cases. I spent maybe 10 minutes giving her an overview of how it worked compared to Windows and Mac.

My sister’s a mother of two, she doesn’t have time to make computers be a full time hobby, but not once has she complained about it. It works. It does what it needs to do. It doesn’t give her “sass” like she expects from other devices.

If my sister and my 5 year old students can manage Linux, it’s no longer too hard for the average person.

But don’t just take my word for it, give it a test drive. It’s best if you try it out on an older device. If you have a computer from 2010 or later that’s collecting dust because you bought a new one, that’s an ideal candidate for a first attempt. Not because you’re likely to screw things up, but because you’ll be less afraid to do that.

You might find that using a computer isn’t as bad as some companies expect you to assume.

You Get What You Incentivize #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my sixteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Emanuel Maiberg has an article on 404 Media that tells the tale of Microsoft saying “No, not like that!” after insisting that their employees should all be diving head-first into the slop-fest that is AI.

It turns out that AI use can get expensive, and when you expect those under you to use the expensive things more and more, you start realizing how wasteful that is.

One could draw parallels to school level high-stakes testing. We talk a lot about “teaching to the test” like it’s a bad thing, but very little is done about it because those tests are how we measure student success.

If those in charge (we’re talking politicians and those appointed by them, here) thought teaching to the test was actually bad, they wouldn’t make the test so darned important.

In a recent post on this very site, I mentioned that until recently the big event for digital media arts programs in my district is a district-wide Film Festival. It’s still seen as the biggest thing, with more pomp and circumstance pumped into that than most events.

This, in spite of the push to cover the other aspects of digital media covered in our curriculum. It’s slow going, in part, I think, because the big prize is for video production, not the other things.

We have other awards, now, an I welcome the improvements. Inertia’s a pain sometimes, though.

I think about stuff like this when I’m writing my rubrics. What’s that particular project’s big thing? If that’s not the part getting most of the instructional time, why not?

And if I don’t like the results I’m getting, what do I need to change? How much needs to be changed, and how do I present those changes to my students?

Always Be Branding? #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my fifteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Kate Garibaldi has an article over on PetaPixel covering custom lens caps for cameras so any time the camera’s out but not in use you’re carrying around a tiny billboard.

My knee-jerk reaction was of course “Thanks, I hate it” because I don’t like the idea of tying my identity to a brand or product, but the article wasn’t about selling ad space to companies so much as it was promoting self-branding, and now there’s a company that prints custom images on lens caps.

I think this is neat, but not because I intend to use this service. (I’m on a teacher budget, after all, and I’m buying enough things for my classroom.)

Branding is, unfortunately, everywhere. Our lens caps already have manufacturer logos on them, as do the cameras, monitors, computers, keyboards, mice, and I’m going to stop the list here. This was particularly “fun” when our rules for our district level Film Festival forbade any trademarked logos from being shown on-camera.

(Things are a bit more relaxed, now, but a lot of the tech from back then still has tape over the marketing, because it was more efficient to use a bit of tape once than to apply a blur effect to each shot.)

Here’s the thing: Our classes can have their own branding. Most schools have mascots and logos already. My department has a district-wide logo used on all of our press releases and event signage. On the school level, I design a new variation each year and we silkscreen t-shirts for the students.

(I also cut a lot of vinyl stickers with my Cricut, though I won’t recommend that brand due to my experiences.)

Having branding for your classroom can help to promote a group identity, and while practice makes the act of logo creation easier, one doesn’t need a lot of skill to get started.

“But Aaron,” you say, “I’m no good at art, how could I manage to do this?”

I have students making logos as young as 3rd Grade with a simple web-based vector editor. They take an image and add some words to it. Done.

“But Aaron, it’s not going to POP without a cool graphic, and I’ve no skill with making those!”

(H&R Block couldn’t manage it either, you’ll be fine.)

Go to OpenClipArt.org and search for your school mascot or something that relates to your content area. (I’ll often look for a camera or microphone.) Grab one with high contrast that doesn’t look like slop. You lose a lot of respect if your image looks like slop.

“But Aaron, how do I get this to be ON things?”

This one’s trickier. You could go my route and use a vinyl cutter, though your image will have to be monocolor a free of floating objects. (Floating objects are parts of the design that are not physically attached to the rest of it, so they require additional effort to place correctly after you peel off the backing.)

Me, I like that challenge, but not everyone does.

If you have access to a printer, printer-friendly sticker paper has been around for decades. In a pinch you can use address labels. Being pre-cut is a bonus, though you’re stuck with those dimensions. Visit your office supply store of choice and look for “sticker paper.” You’ll find options.

Now if you don’t mind, I have some stickers to cut out.

Why Are We Still Using High Stakes Tests? #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my fourteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Ars Technica recently reported on Mexico’s largest university doing a completely remote entrance exam, and the disaster that resulted from it.

I won’t be using this to rant about AI, though the anti-cheat cameras were “AI powered.” I won’t be using this to rant about anti-cheat lockdown procedures either, though I’m also not a fan of those.

Neither of those would be needed if we didn’t still rely on high-stakes testing as a measure for student aptitude and accomplishment.

Now I’m not opposed to the occasional quiz. More often is better, because one off day can be balanced out by the rest. If done well, quizzes can even be used as tools for reinforcing the information students need to know.

But the big chunks of a student’s assessment should be evaluated by looking at what they can do, and I’m not going to get that by looking at how often they picked the right answer out of four possible options.

Show me a movie they made, an image they painted, a book they wrote, a business they planned, a robot they built, or anything other than a series of A, B, C, and D answers.

There’s a reason why some colleges have stopped caring about SAT scores, and it might be related to the reason why there’s no peer reviewed evidence showing a correlation between high test scores and success after school. (I vaguely remember Pearson publishing a study on their website that showed it, but their bias alone would probably prevent it from getting through peer review.)

If there’s one thing the SAT is known to show, it’s how wealthy the students’ parents are.

But we still use them, because, and say it with me, now: “We’ve always done it this way.“

And of course we have.

Multiple choice questions are easy to grade. Easier, now that we can have computers do it for us, but I’m old enough to remember Scantrons and hand grading.

We picked the easy over the good, because we have so many other things we’re told to get done and, quite frankly, grading tests is tedious.

(I will not segue into complaining about AI here, but I want you to know there was effort involved in that decision.)

There’s so much more value and reward in seeing students make something. It can still be graded objectively, you just need a rubric.

What amazes me is how many teachers don’t even know how easy rubric grading can be. They’re taught the test and then told to teach to it. I don’t have an article to link for that one, but I recall my days as a traveling art teacher where the principal specifically asked me to show sample rubrics to the teachers in her building because the teachers didn’t know how to use them.

The Better Way: Rubrics

When I’m making a rubric, I ask a simple question: “What do I want the student to accomplish with this specific project?”

We’re not talking a course-long activity here, we’re frequently looking at a single day’s worth of work (maximum 2 weeks, for my older students).

This is where my ADHD comes into play. I’m going to have a short list, because if I start getting distracted while writing it there’s no way I should expect a student to focus through the whole list.

The result is going to be 3-5 things I want their work to include. My youngest students might only have 3 “look-fors,” and even the older students are usually going to have 4. Point values may or may not be distributed evenly, depending on what I want valued.

My older students, for example, will usually have a list of 4 requirements, each worth 25% of their grade. In the beginning of the year my youngest students might instead have a ranked list of scenarios, where managing to log into the computer without help gets them most of the way to an A.

“When the ink was still wet on my certification I sometimes made a list of 10 things I needed to see. Granted, I was teaching high school at the time, but that was still a lot to get done. I like my current method much more.

“But Aaron,” you might ask, “How do I make sure they know everything the test checks in Chapter 5 of the math textbook?”

Great question.

How do you know they’ll remember any of that the day after the test?

My students don’t forget how to make movies, because it’s interesting and compelling enough that the knowledge sticks with them. If I have them make a movie covering a math concept they might not memorize a whole chapter, but they’ll be more likely to have that part down.

Now have the rest of the class make videos about the other sections in that chapter.

Have everyone in the class critique each other’s videos. Give them the rubric, and ask for positive and constructive feedback.

I do this in my classroom. The Critique Days count as an assessment score. My classes aren’t small enough for everyone to watch everything in one day, so I limit them to 10 critiques, with any extras as extra credit.

(I sort them alphabetically by student name and have every student start with their own video, so ideally no two students are grading the exact same list of videos.)

If you want to be really daring, you can average the scores the students give together and have that be a portion of the grade. Reserve the right to override the result, though. I’ve found my students collectively tend to be on the mark for a lot of things but every now and then a misunderstanding results in what would result in an unfairly low grade without me correcting things.

(I’m not the only voice in my classroom, but I reserve the right to be the loudest one.)

So, yeah, ditch high stakes tests. They’re bad. The people who make us have to use them should feel bad for doing so. Assign a project. Use a rubric. Everyone’s going to have a lot more fun learning that way.

The Right Camera For The Photo #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my thirteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Ewen Bell is an Australian professional photographer who appeared on my radar last year when I started spending more time on PeerTube, though he has a podcast and a YouTube presence as well.

His recent video, A Long Chat About Learning The Art of Photography (Here’s the YT link, if you prefer that.), is true to its name and gives an overview of a lot of the things you may want to consider if you want to get into photography.

Given the same responsibility I wouldn’t stress all the things he does in the same amount, but if photography’s a hobby you’re thinking of diving into, there’s far worse places to start.

Mr. Bell spends a significant amount of time talking about types of gear you can use, and makes a point of bringing up phone cameras.

After all, most of us have them, they’re decent enough these days, and they fit in our pockets! Why not use them for the hobby?

There’s a saying among a lot of photographers: The best camera is the one you have on you. If what you have is a phone, that works. You can lament not having the $30k DSLR with a lens that needs its own insurance policy, or you can take a photo.

My students don’t have phones. Last year we started a school-wide phone ban, and suddenly they had to rely on lab equipment.

We’ve a mix of cameras, with low end but modern DSLRs, ancient but serviceable DSLRs, a handful of compact cameras, and a growing collection of bridge cameras. Because my classroom projects involve a lot of student choice, I have to ask students what they’re working on when they want to borrow a camera.

Someone trying to take photos of silhouettes is more likely to need a DSLR than someone trying to demonstrate an understanding of the Rule of Thirds, for example.

For myself, I’ve barely touched my DSLR since Summer Break started. I love it, and enjoy when there’s a good reason to use it, but it has a lot of settings to manage.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s why I bought it. I WANT it to have those settings. The downside is that when I’m using it, I’m in the mindset that has me thinking about those settings, trying to get the best photo possible.

That’s great for the results, but lousy for being THERE. I’m doing a job with the camera, not soaking in the moment.

This summer, I’ve had a few opportunities to go places and see things. Most of these involved family who live across a state border. I didn’t bring my DSLR, I brought my Camp Snap Pro.

(This isn’t an ad for Camp Snap. There’s other cameras that can fit the niche of being a compact camera built to take photos but not distract you while you use it to take photos. Some of them do a better job, some are worse. It just so happens that Camp Snap is the one I’ve been using.)

My phone will take a better photo. It has a bigger sensor (not by much), better lenses, and a not insignificant amount of software that tries to clean things up before I even see what I took, but I don’t trust it. The more my phone does to make my pictures pretty, the less the photo can be called my own.

The draw for using my phone is convenience – it’s the best camera if I have no other camera at hand.

The draw for the Camp Snap and others like it is it’s simple enough to be cheap and not a distraction from the life experiences you’re documenting.

The draw for a DSLR (or mirrorless) camera is the significant control you get over everything.

Mr. Bell spends most of his time talking about DSLR/mirrorless gear, because that’s seen as the end goal. If you’re a professional or serious hobbyist, that’s where you’re going to go, and for the most part he’s not wrong.

There’s something to be said for other paths, though. I don’t wave a finger at someone using a phone to take a photo.

I might make a face at someone using a DSLR on the Auto setting, but that’s just force of habit.

Content Diversity #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my twelfth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

There’s a guest “Opinion” post by Oz Alon over on PetaPixel that talks about how photographers are doing less specialization in order to make a living as photographers.

Now Oz Alon is a CEO if a business management platform so I’m looking at this article as more of an ad than a photo news story, but the idea that it’s hard to make ends meet by just doing wedding photography is not too much of a stretch for me.

I’ve been teaching at a K-8 arts academy for almost 20 years, now. When I started, I just taught elective classes. There was barely any photography, no videography to speak of (On 32 bit computers? Surely, you jest!), and the initial job description that I was told to go beyond only mentioned Microsoft Office products as my content area.

There were students making videos, but that was the purview of the TV Production teacher.

Move forward a couple years and budget cuts hit hard. I remember furloughs. It wasn’t a good time. In the shake-up, the TV Production department (our art department with the lowest enrollment) was cut and I inherited those students.

I started out trying to copy what they’d been doing. I had some experience with video at that point (I’d been posting videos here for a few years by then) and I’d been teaching storyboards for years in my previous visual art classes.

All videos, all the time. If it wasn’t a video, it was a plan for a video or critiques of student videos.

It was extremely limiting, but it’s what I thought was expected.

Here’s the thing, though: My class was never called “TV Production.” That program was gone. Mine was brand new. I could have done whatever I wanted, provided I found state or national standards that backed me up.

Eventually I branched out in bits and pieces. Students dipped their toes in music production using GarageBand, since we had a MacBook cart we could use.

We started taking more photos.

We made animations.

We made podcasts.

Minecraft came along and I started letting students create “adventure maps” so long as they scripted the challenges and recorded themselves completing them. I had them doing game design and it was wonderful.

Eventually the remaining TV Production departments in my district were rolled into a new department, Digital Media Arts, with its own state standards and everything. You know what? Those standards matched what I was doing with my more diverse lessons.

You know what most teachers did?

Video production, and nothing else.

You know why? You may want to make sure you’re sitting for this one:

“We’ve always done it this way.”

Inertia’s a heck of a thing.

There’s efforts to change this. On the district level my department still has its annual film festival, but now we also have a festival for podcasting and photography. We’re encouraged to branch out to those areas as well, and given sample lessons to help us step out of our comfort zones.

(Most of the high school photos come from the vis art students, though, because photography “has always been” visual arts and, again, inertia.)

But as slow as they may seem, changes are happening. Tomorrow, before I give my own song and dance to new teachers about things they can do, another awesome colleague will be talking to them about photography.

We’re not just TV Production any more. Haven’t been, for as long as my students have been breathing.

It’s good to see other people agree.

Load-Bearing Corners #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my eleventh post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

There’s a guide by Pye Jirsa on headshot photography over on SLR Lounge. As someone who doesn’t do a lot of portrait photography, it’s a good read.

What strikes me is how different this is to what we experience with school photos.

School Photo day is a mass disruption to the school schedule. The photographers have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time and teachers just accept that maybe we’re not going to get our lesson done for every class we see.

I’ve got the steps down for school photos. Sit on the stool. Place your feet on the marker (this turns you to the side for a 3/4 view), if you’re wearing glasses, tilt your head down so there isn’t a glare.

You can ask for a retake but it’ll look the same as the first one.

If you’ve read through the SLR Lounge article, you may have noticed a lot of things have been left out. Perhaps the contracted photographers would care about that if they weren’t photographing 500+ students and their teachers, but they just don’t have the time.

The article even includes advice for having an actual conversation with the subject. That’s not happening when photos are being taken on the stage in the cafeteria during one of the lunches, I assure you.

If you have the idea that school photos don’t turn out nearly as well as professional headshots, well, you’re darned right. For all of the expertise of the school photographers, they’re not given the time or environment to output the same quality.

Switch over to what I do in my classroom. Students learn by doing, as any art teacher will tell you. Early on in my digital media arts position, I decided that meant more assignments would equal more learning.

In some ways, it did. Student had a homework assignment video due every week, and every two weeks they had a more intense project video due. It was a lot of work, and the ones who managed it learned to streamline their workflows to get things done on time.

Many corners were cut, but what we didn’t understand was that those corners were load-bearing. An unscripted, unplanned video by an 11 year old is exactly as high-quality as you think it is, because they don’t have the 10,000 hours needed to do that without a script.

I’ve been doing this for a bit longer, now, and I’ve learned to know better. Students still have a project due roughly every two weeks, but it might not be a video. There’s no homework that’s labeled as such, though they may still work outside of class.

The learning is still happening. There’s actually more learning taking place, because those corners that were being cut were load bearing, but they didn’t have the time.

The quality of the work has also predictably improved, and they’re getting more awards for their efforts to prove it.

There’s still the complaint that they have too much work, but these are 10-13 year old kids. If I asked for one video a month I’d get the same complaint. (In fact, this has happened.)

I think about this when I read news stories about companies giving employees more work to improve productivity. I’m not sure it’s understood that if you scrap your quality, what you’re producing isn’t worth selling.

As I said, the corners that get cut are sometimes load-bearing.

“College & Career Ready” is a Moving Goalpost #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my tenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

Ariel Gilreath wrote a recent article in The Hechinger Report on what Niagra Falls, New York is doing to prepare students for a rapidly changing career ecosystem.

Two main things they’re doing involve not always emphasizing college and starting to think about career paths as early as 9th grade.

I’ve mixed feelings about this.

As the son of an electrician and grandson of a carpenter, neither of whom used college degrees to do those lines of work, I can get behind the idea of the trades as important lifelong career paths. College was the right call for me for a lot of reasons I don’t intend to itemize here, but I’m not everyone.

As for starting looking at careers in 9th grade… Well, I started that in Jr. High. I kid you not, I frequently used a library pass during Study Hall to go and research different careers, including benefits, drawbacks, required education, and expected salaries.

I’ve always been a nerd.

I also did this at a time when the employment landscape wasn’t getting “disrupted” every few years by a techbro with a shiny, environmentally unsafe new toy.

It was over 8 years from when I latched onto art education as a career goal to when I stepped into my first classroom I could call my own. During that time there were two major changes that affected me:

  1. Internet use was more prevalent when I graduated, allowing me to apply to more school districts at a faster rate than what I’d have managed otherwise.
  2. My college requirements grew slightly more lenient, allowing me to take any elective in the humanities instead of being limited to a foreign language credit. (After taking 4+ years of French and scraping by each time, I was fine with this.)

That’s 8 years.

At the time I’m writing this, 2020 was closer today than my college graduation date was to when I entered 9th grade. Since then we’ve gone to distance everything to get everyone back into buildings. We’ve gone from Bitcoin to NFTs to the AI Bubble.

In 2017-18 Maryland’s Governor Hogan spearheaded adding Computer Science to Maryland public school requirements. I’ve mixed feelings about Hogan (I mostly dislike his constant desire to cut public school funding) but that push is why I teach a coding class.

It was added because there was significant worry that there weren’t going to be enough people entering the workforce with coding skills in the following decade.

You know … the one we’re in now.

The one where coders are getting laid off because “Vibe coding” can do the work for you, so you don’t need a team of coders any more.

I’m still teaching coding this year, but next year I might not. I’ve heard tell that the Computer Science requirement may be broadened to include the other classes I teach, and having me teach 2 different Middle School subjects is easier on the scheduling than having me teach three of them.

Employment Landscapes change, and they’re changing faster now than they used to be. I hope that some of them bounce back after the AI bubble bursts, but someone who picked Computer Science as their major 4 years ago because it was in high demand is graduating into a hellscape today.

But you know what? People still need plumbing. They still need their houses wired, and faulty wires fixed. (My father wired new houses from time to time but spent much more of his time doing the small jobs that big contractors charged too much to touch.)

Going into a career that still needs training but perhaps not a college degree will get most people earning money faster while also not racking up massive debt that, legally, they can’t even clear out with a bankruptcy.

There are still people who are going to want the careers that require a degree. Future doctors, lawyers, scientists, and even, in spite of all warnings, future teachers, are all still going to head off to universities, but it’s going to be a much smaller number.

I’m absolutely thrilled that I’m not the only one tapping the “you don’t need a college degree to be financially independent” sign, but it’s going to cause problems. Not for the trades, we need people there, but for the colleges.

College is already far too expensive. Reduced enrollment is not going to help, and when some degrees see their applicants drop far enough, they’re going to go away.

My own alma mater is known as a great school for future teachers and a great school for artists. You know what you don’t need to be an artist? A 4 year degree. It’s great if you can afford it, but fewer people can and an income has never been guaranteed.

(Heck, with the teacher shortages, in some places the 4 year degree requirement’s on shaky ground.)

There are going to be changes. There’s going to be changes because of those changes.

I just hope that when the dust settles I still recognize the landscape.

Don’t Make Me Get Inside the Mechanical Turk #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

(This is my ninth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

There’s an interesting read by Luke Plunkett over at Aftermath about employees pretending to use AI but still doing all of the work themselves.( Note that this is a more informal news site meant for more video game themed content, and profanity exists. Maybe don’t open this link up in front of students.)

I’m fortunate to not be in their shoes. Granted, my employer has opened the door to AI use, but with many limitations, even more so for student use, and at no point have I been told it’s mandatory.

(The people who want me to use it really, really want me to use it, but if I want to be favorable I’ll point out people who really, really like a TV show would like you to watch it, also.)

As I don’t teach higher than 8th grade I’m under even more restrictions. We do have access to Adobe products but the GenAI portions are only enabled for High School staff and students, at least as of last school year. (I did not complain when I found out.)

Not so for employees outside of my small corner of education, it seems, as companies needing to brag to shareholders and other investors that they’re being the most productive ever with the newest of buzzword tools are mandating AI usage and even implying bad things will happen (career-wise) if they don’t ramp up token use.

(I’m going to acknowledge here that some places are learning the financial downside of this and move on, grateful that learning by doing can still exist among adults.)

I marvel at the dichotomy of some trying to hide their AI use in certain situations, like student papers and, very notably, legal cases, while elsewhere people are having to pretend AI had a hand in their work because someone higher up the chain is certain that’s a better outcome.

I can tell you right now: AI does not make a student film better. It makes it look like slop.

AI can’t help me write better. Proofreading is the hardest part of the writing process for me, and because AI shows what an answer looks like (instead of showing an answer) I’d have to check over anything it does more thoroughly. It’s emotionally draining in a way that proofreading my own work or even student work never is.

(Besides, everyone knows the best way to check for errors is to publish the document and read over it after you know someone else has already seen it. You find ALL the errors that way.)

I can’t see a time when supervisors in my content area will put me in the same boat as the anonymous interviewees in the Aftermath article for a few reasons, most notably the emphasis on teacher and student choice that weaves through everything in our digital media arts department. We’re given tool options, not tool mandates.

Beyond that, things cost money. You know what my department does when they’ve paid for a thing and people don’t use it?

They stop paying for it.

It’s a novel concept, I know. You’d think businesses that can afford to lose more than my school system’s entire operating budget and still somehow stay afloat would be able to grasp the concept.

Instead, their employees have to lie about running what they did through an AI to “check” it.