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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.

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.

Walking Away From The Right Tech #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

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

On the whole I like The Hechinger Report. They have a lenient policy in regards to sharing their articles and they tackle some important issues.

On the other hand, they recently published a guest editorial by Alexandra Walsh, “the chief product officer at Amplify, one of the country’s largest K-12 curriculum and assessment companies.”

To its credit, the opinion piece only mentions Amplify once, and even then it’s in the author bio at the bottom. It’s trying very hard not to be an ad for the company while still leaving people feeling more favorable towards companies like it.

Which is to say, it’s an opinion piece, it doesn’t hide that it’s an opinion piece, and one should approach it as such as they look for the things with which they agree and disagree. (You’ll find both in there, because we’re human.)

As is my theme for Blaugust, I’m not going to give a rundown of the article and go over what I like/dislike about it. It’s what made me want to write something, but that something is not a review.

I used to be an early adopter. New things came out, I played with them, enjoyed them (or didn’t), and tried to figure out how to use them in my classroom.

(At the time I was a traveling visual art teacher and only rarely had access to a computer lab so how I got to use edtech was somewhat limited, but we had our moments.)

The problem was that not every tech “innovation” is actually that. Sometimes disruptions don’t lead to better things, they just make the things that worked well work less well.

This was either harder to spot or just less common back then. It seems nowadays a lot of the “cool, new things” are heavily branded, commercialized, and/or meant to funnel students towards siloed ecosystems where they’ll spend their adult lives making those companies more profitable.

That motivation is incompatible with my motivation as a teacher. I’m not teaching the next generation of Adobe users, I’m teaching the next generation of filmmakers. There’s overlap, but I refuse to see that Venn diagram as a single circle.

(My own alma mater didn’t get it. At the time, they taught that if you wanted to make digital art you needed 1. A Mac and 2. Adobe products. Exceptions weren’t discussed, and to this day there are teachers in my field who believe this.)

In a few days I’ll be honored to give a short talk to newly hired digital media arts teachers in my district. I won’t be the only one talking, but a big emphasis of mine will be on choice.

They’ll be shown Adobe products for editing video. I’m going to point out Kdenlive.

They’ll be shown generative AI (again, from within Adobe tools). I’m going to point out free, openly licensed content made by humans, and tools that can be used to make more of it.

They’ll be shown products that require subscriptions (ones that my district pays) to be useful. I’m going to point out tools that will never require that, some of which will work in a web browser with all of the editing done client-side.

I can’t guarantee they’ll all walk away from what I believe are the “right” things. I don’t want to be in a position where I have that much authority over another teacher. But I do want them to know there are options.

With those options, hopefully enough of them will pick the more sustainable routes.

30 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have. But then again, I didn’t have someone explain it to me.

Games, Blocks, & Filters #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

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

There’s an interesting read on The Hechinger Report where Jackie Mader has written an article about game sites that avoid school web filters.

(The Hechinger Report, interestingly enough, releases articles under a Creative Commons license. That’s super cool of them, and one of the reasons they’re in my RSS feed reader.)

As is my trend for Blaugust, this isn’t a summary of that article, I’m using it as a jumping off point.

I have a love-hate relationship with games in my classroom.

Also internet filters.

Also, the internet.

Also, computers in general.

All for the same reason, in fact – these things that can be powerful tools for learning are also a student’s go-to for distraction. As someone with unmedicated ADHD, I know the struggle is real.

The difference is in the directions, as with most tools.

I don’t just toss my students at Luanti, I set up a modded server and direct students to complete a task, often one that requires teamwork.

I have students produce game review videos where OF COURSE they have to get some b-roll of them playing the game, but they also have to write up glows and grows (positive and constructive criticism, if we’re being fancy), script things out, record their audio, and overlay everything in post-production.

Many of the reviewed games are hosted on websites that do their best to avoid school filter blocks, which I allow so long as the content is not inappropriate for school. Students will ask what is and isn’t fair game, and I usually say “Imagine I’m showing your review to [Principal], because there’s a good chance I’m going to show it to [Principal] and your parents if you choose poorly.”

That’s usually enough guidance for a 6th grader to make the right call without going over the Student Code of Conduct in detail.

Heck, I’ve had students designing games for close to 20 years. The tools we use have changed, but the core concepts remain.

There’s plenty of reasons to block websites in school, and I’m glad it’s not my job to decide where the line is drawn, but I’ve found in my own little corner of education the easiest path forward is to take the distraction and turn it into a curriculum-based lesson.

I did the same thing with phones, back before my school banned them, but that’s another topic full of mixed feelings for a different post.

5 Things We’re Doing Wrong in Edtech #Blaugust2026

Posted on by Aaron

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

I recently read an article with a similar name to this one that I’ll not link here, because it made me angry enough to draft a rebuttal.

This is not that rebuttal. This isn’t even a tribute.

Instead, this is my own list, different from the other one, and limited to five things simply to keep this post shorter than a novel. I could go on. I could nitpick. I would rather not invite that poison into my soul this morning.

(And yes, these are in a numbered order, but what that order should be has changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis for me. I might adjust it after I’ve written all five. I might not.)

#5 We call it EdTech

TL;DR: I don’t like that it’s shoved over to be a separate thing when technology use should be in everyone’s domain.

There’s plenty of reasons to use labels, but doing so fits things into neat little boxes when the world is not so easy to organize.

I’ve been my school’s “EdTech” teacher for as long as it’s existed, and with that comes a concept held by too many people that I hold a fiefdom over all that has blinking lights and LCD screens.

We’ve moved away from that a bit in the past 6 years (I wonder why…) but the problem persists, with teachers using class Chromebooks for unsupervised “independent study” time because they’re not “techy” enough to do more.

In truth, any technology is a tool that makes life easier for those who are using it. (If it’s making life harder, someone’s doing something wrong.) The first of our ancestors that learned a pointy stick kept their food from running away was using technology. It should not be mystified just because now a lot of it has rocks we tricked into doing math.

There are plenty of people who make loving tech their whole personality and try to build walls up so anyone not on their level doesn’t get to be “in the know” and learn how to use the tools. Those who just want things to work don’t need to help build those walls.

#4 We Let Capitalism Lead It

TL;DR: Nothing in education should be a for-profit enterprise, because that shifts priorities to making money, not supporting students.

Schools, traditionally, are underfunded. Underfunded schools do not traditionally have a lot of money to spend on technology. Therefore, schools will frequently look for the free and/or cheap options.

This means the schools will have tons of open-source software running on refurbished hardware, right? Hahaha, my lab is an outlier and does not get counted.

No, a lot of the tools we use are “freemium” to get us hooked before charging for more features, or ad supported, or have data collection, or are provided at steep discounts so that students (and teachers) get locked into the “but I’ve always used [thing]” mentality.

Look at what Apple did in the 1990s. All of those Mac labs existed for a reason, and it helped keep them afloat for years.

Google’s doing the same thing with Chromebooks, and they don’t even need to deal with hardware or marketing to make it happen.

Sure, to be in my school system they have to promise to not collect any data on our students, but this is Google. If they have someone locked into their ecosystem by 3rd grade then as soon as that kid creates a non-student account the data collection and selling begins.

Adobe makes me the angriest, though, as even my own colleagues in the past have said their students needed Adobe Creative Suite to be successful. Why? It’s the industry standard. Why? Because everyone uses it. Why? Because it’s the industry standard.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, I know. Using open source software in my lab requires me to do more work installing and maintaining things, but my students will still know WHEN to make the cut from one scene to another.

#3 We Lowered Our Standards

TL;DR: Some tools we use are garbage, but we still use them because they’re “educational.”

A long time ago I was really into a handful of Christian Rock bands. Alas, only a handful, because the rest were … developing their skills. Christian Rock was a small enough niche that a band could get their foot in the door and be on the local Christian Rock radio station with a level of quality one could not find on any pop, country, or oldies station because the bar for those was too high.

Most “educational” programs I’ve played with have either been heavy on the fun with a glaze of flash cards on top or heavy on the flash cards with showing a point total to make it “gamified.”

I’ve had far more success taking tools never meant to be limited to the classroom and having students make things with them. Kdenlive isn’t a video editor for kids, it’s a video editor. The lesson is in learning how to use it, and it doesn’t need a cartoon mascot for that.

(Although Tux Paint has a cartoon mascot and is super fun, so there’s always exceptions.)

#2 We Abandoned Old Successes

TL;DR: Things that work well don’t have to be dumped just because we found a new thing.

Remember when blogging and podcasting were big in education? No, not recently, I mean the first time, back in the ’00s, before some of my coworkers were born.

How about game based learning? Gamification? (You know those aren’t the same thing?)

Each of these was a trend that was popular for good reasons that just faded away to obscurity, not because it got worse but because the next new trend showed up and there was only so much time in a school day.

#1 We Jump on Bandwagons Because They’re Bandwagons

TL;DR: If not adopting AI will have me get left behind, then I will leave you to join the lemmings and be here when the bubble has burst with my cognitive skills intact.

I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go: ’80s hairstyles, Bitcoin, NFTs, and candy colored computers are just some of them. You can still find fragments left behind, but they are all shadows of their former selves.

AI is one of these trends, with companies relabeling rather tame algorithms as “AI” because that’s the buzzword of the day.

It disgusts me that so many EdTech “leaders,” some of whom I respected in the ’00s, have seen this as the next big thing and hitched their wagons to it.

Gotta make a buck somehow, if your income is public speaking and book sales, I guess.

Whenever I converse with an AI advocate, I get the same talking points:

  • “You’re not teaching your kids what they need to know.”
    • My students know how to make movies. Yours know how to write a prompt and have a program steal other movies and mash them together to make something that looks the same as every other AI generated piece of slop. Our classes are not the same.
  • “It gives you more time for the important work.”
    • Everything AI generates is subject to errors, and people are getting in trouble when those errors slip through. It takes me less time to make a thing than it does to double-check the output from a plagiarism engine.
  • “It helps students learn.”
    • Citation needed. (I’m never provided any when I ask.)
    • Any time the work is done for my students, they don’t learn. My kindergarten students don’t learn their passwords in classes where the teacher types it for them, but in my class most of them have it down in two weeks. They learn by doing. If AI does the work from them, what are they learning?
    • I teach HTML coding. AI can write code, but AI written code is very hard to maintain. I can look at my hand-coded websites and edit them. My students can do the same. Yours can, what, ask the AI to do better this time?
  • “It’s cheaper than paying an artist.”
    • Theft usually is. Knowing how to steal is not the flex you think it is. Telling an art teacher that kids should know how to steal from artists is certainly a choice.

One last thing about the AI bandwagon that is spreading like a cancer: The people making money in a gold rush are the ones who sell the shovels.

The established shovel makers aren’t building more factories. They see the bubble for what it is, and don’t expect it to last long enough for a new factory to pay for itself before the bubble bursts.

When that happens, I’ll be here – still teaching how to make cool things without typing prompts into a souped up spellchecker, while others have forgotten how to do anything without asking an AI for advice first.

PUWT18 Presentations

Posted on by Aaron

As is apparently tradition for me, I’m presenting two sessions at this year’s Powering Up With Technology Conference. (My first presentation at PUWT was … 2006? 12 years ago? Wow!)

Rather than give long and difficult to type URLS for my presentations, I thought I’d share them here. (Yes, I am aware that “academicaesthetic” is not universally easy to type, but it’s easier than, say, “o03Eil5s,” and people can get here from AaronBSmith.com … hm, maybe that’s the link I’ll share.)

Keep in mind that these Google Slides are primarily my visual aids, as opposed to the talks themselves, and I’ll probably be changing slides around up to and including 5 minutes before my session starts. If all goes well I’ll have recordings of the actual presentations that I can post on this website as a follow-up.

 

Scholar.Social: A Mastodon Network For Teachers

Posted on by Aaron

I wrote a short time ago about how I really liked Mastodon and thought teachers should give it a try. At the time I’d settled on a home server but lamented that there was no instance (each Mastodon server is called an instance) set up specifically for teachers.

Well never fear, because scholar.social has stepped in to fill the void!

As the name implies, scholar.social is not JUST for teachers, but anyone involved in academics. The tag line they use is  “The Mastodon profile that you’re not embarrassed to put on the last slide of a presentation at a conference,” which is a little wordy I’ll admit, but I think it’s  a great ideal to live by.

It’s a small instance at the time I’m writing this, but as someone who has debated making an instance just for myself I don’t see this as a bad thing. Something I enjoy on Mastodon is when I can look at the Local Timeline and not have it scroll past me faster than I can read. I was getting that on mastodon.cloud and mastodon.social, but not on elekk.xyz. I’ll admit, being able to see what others were saying on my instance kind of spoiled me, so I’m glad my new home lets me enjoy that again.

scholar.social logoI’m not going to say this will replace Twitter. Twitter didn’t replace Tumblr for me, and Tumblr didn’t replace this blog. I will say that so far I’m enjoying Mastodon, scholar.social specifically, and think that if you like reading what I put on this site you might enjoy it yourself.

So if you’re a teacher, why not give it a try? When you do, say hello. All the cool kids are doing it.

And so am I.

Adam Savage’s “Sunday Sermon” at Maker Faire 2017

Posted on by Aaron

I’m growing more and more certain that everything Adam Savage touches turns to gold, even the things that fail spectacularly.

For years, now, Mr. Savage has been giving a  short talk at the annual Maker Faire. They are full of inspiration, encouragement, and awesomeness. This year’s talk is no different.

The giant ant he rides in on is a bit of a bonus.

Why This Site Is Self-Hosted

Posted on by Aaron

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr (the list goes on…) are (or have been) extremely popular, in part because they’re free, but also because they’ve reached a “critical mass” of users. I know many people who only use Facebook because their friends and family use Facebook, for example.

Separate from this is a trend known as POSSE, or Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Like it implies, following a POSSE strategy doesn’t forego having and using the free social media sites that are so hip with the kids these days, particularly the ones who don’t describe neato things with the word “hip” (or “neato,” for that matter…). Instead, you put your meaningful content on a site you host yourself, then link to it on those networks.

I like this plan. Here’s why.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

A sizable portion of the things I have made were uploaded to services that no longer exist. Remember Geocities? Mac.com web hosting? Tumblr is still around, but I apparently went so long without using it that an older account of mine was deactivated and resurrected by someone spamming ads for real estate.

We assume when we create an account on a free service that it will stay online forever, or at least until we’ve lost interest. Those of us with more gray hairs know that this is simply not the case. A lot of people today are mourning the loss of Vine, but it’s far from the first to go and certainly won’t be the last.

(Side note: My wife did all her blogging on a Tumblr account. I’m going to have to find a way to preserve that somehow.)

You’re the product.

I’ve heard “If you’re getting a service for free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product” so often that it almost loses meaning now. Unfortunately, it is frequently true.

Google doesn’t make money hand over fist because they’re selling physical items or search results, they’re making money because so many people see the stuff they do that buying ads from them is cost effective. (I say this knowing full well that some pages on this website include ads  from Google. I didn’t say all advertising is bad.) The same is true for Facebook. Twitter is … working on it, but they have a problem still with bots and harassers so their store of products seems a bit tainted to prospective buyers.

I pay a company for server space. Because that’s their product and keeping me happy is the best way to keep me sending them money, they work hard to do so. On a free service that is mostly depending on ad revenue and/or data collection, the people they want to make happy are the ones sending them money.

This happened recently on YouTube, where advertisers got particularly annoyed when their ads started showing up in front of incredibly offensive content. As a result, YouTube has seriously cut back on which videos can be monetized. So far, so good, right? Yes, except the algorithm isn’t as fine-tuned as it could be, and now non-bigoted people (I’m assuming, but I like to assume the best when possible) who depend on YouTube ad revenue to pay their rent are a bit concerned about their drop in income.

I like YouTube. It’s where I post all of my tutorials as well as my more recent conference presentations and vlogs, but I wouldn’t depend on it for my income even if my channel subscriptions went through the roof because I’d be relying wholly on a company NOT designed or motivated to keep me happy meeting my needs. (I’d also be squeamish about forcing my students to watch tutorials that make me money. The channel I use to host my tutorials is currently not set up for monetization. If you see ads, the revenue isn’t going to me.)

Self-hosted content is (more) mobile.

I said before that I like my web host. I do, but if I somehow change my mind it would take only a little bit of work to back up this entire site with YEARS of content and move it to another host. There are a few other companies that do that, but it isn’t universal and it isn’t always easy.

Google is one of the few, which is part of the reason I was able to move from Blogger to WordPress without copy/pasting blog posts by hand.

Flickr theoretically has an option for downloading all your photos, but the last several times I tried it didn’t work. If I had been uploading all my photos to a self-hosted site instead of Flickr, I wouldn’t be so concerned about this.

Twitter allows you to request an archive of all of your tweets.

I haven’t seen anything on Facebook or their subsidiaries (Instagram, etc.) allowing you to download all of your content from them.

Vine offered this, but they’re gone now.

You don’t need to leave, but a permanent home would be good.

This entire post was inspired by Doug Belshaw’s post about why he’s “leaving” Twitter. I use quotes because he’s not abandoning Twitter like I abandoned my old nameless-to-not-support-a-spammer Tumblr account. Instead, he’s switching strategies.

To Mr. Belshaw, the Twitter of yesteryear was a place where he had conversations. Now, it will be a place where he uses a bullhorn to tell followers about the cool stuff he’s doing elsewhere. It’s a viable use for the medium, and many people use Twitter for mostly that anyway.

“But blogs are for long form content, not rapid-fire ephemeral but public communication,” you might counter. “Surely he’ll continue to use Twitter for that.”

Eh, Twitter’s not the only option for that, either.

(I’m on Mastodon as well, if you want to follow me. UPDATE: I found an academics themed instance and I’m giving that one a try.)

(Also, if you want to try self-hosting and help support this blog at the same time, try Dreamhost. If you don’t like clicking affiliate links, here’s one to Dreamhost that doesn’t support me at all.)