4 chapters across the catalog
School districts transitioning to online learning via Google Classroom are facing a severe shortage of Chromebooks due to supply chain issues in China. In Arizona, a veteran science teacher and several colleagues resigned after their district voted to return to in-person teaching. The teachers cited safety concerns regarding the density of students in classrooms for multiple periods a day.
The Texas State Teachers Union and other labor groups are lobbying to delay school reopenings, while New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has pushed for in-person classes. Amidst the shift to remote learning, Google Classroom has grown from 15 million to 100 million students, raising concerns about the long-term data mining of children.
A Google Classroom outage disrupts schools across the U.S., highlighting the risks of relying on cloud-based education tools. In British Columbia, a severed fiber optic line causes a "cash emergency" as ATMs and payment systems fail. The hosts use these events to advocate for an "Off The Grid" (OTG) lifestyle and emergency preparedness.
The widespread adoption of Google Chromebooks and the Google Education Suite in schools is criticized for creating "Google slaves." A teacher reports that programs like "Striving Readers" often replace traditional textbooks with digital devices that students use to access YouTube. The hosts argue that human-to-human instruction is far more effective than computer-based learning.
