I feel like it would be an interesting learning tool cuz I learn a ton on here and it gets me writing without anyone having to hold a gun to my head. I mean like even essay-length or at least essay-worthy treatments of things I respond to in longer-form, and even for the shorter-form stuff

  • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Are these alternative tools open source?

      On the federation front, defederating from everything now doesn’t 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.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.