The teachers’ group in the Society for Computer Science (GI) describes the change to commercial solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 for the planned by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture Education platform as a “big step backwards”. This would affect “all areas” such as data protection, education for democracy in the digital area, methodology and didactics as well as “uniformity, openness and collaboration”.

Moodle open source platform “It is very important to us that the excellent infrastructure in Baden-Württemberg’s schools is maintained on an open source basis” , stated the committee in a position paper that has now been published. “The center of a digital school should always be a learning management system that is really focused on learning.” With the already used open source platform Moodle this is available – “including open standards and interoperability”.

For the teachers’ group it is also questionable, ” whether our training and collaboration structures would cope with the parallel operation of several systems “. An additional platform certainly only makes sense if it reliably supports “an open export and exchange of the materials created”. For Moodle with the associated video conference system Big Blue Button this is “the case now and in the future”, with proprietary systems like those from Microsoft “usually not”.

“Damage to the image of our technology country” The switch to a commercial solution could after the 2018 education platform Ella, which was declared failed “The next damage to the image of our technology country will be”, warns the Gesellschaft für Informatik. Baden-Württemberg threatens to “lose its digital sovereignty in the education system”.

With their plan to introduce Microsoft 365, move Education Minister Susanne Eisenmann (CDU) is “on thin ice,” it says. Because: “The software collects telemetry data of unknown type and scope.” The fact that the legal basis for this ceased to exist in the summer in the course of the “Schrems II judgment” “does not seem to concern anyone”. The Cloud Act also obliges Microsoft to “break European law” and to release this information to US authorities.

Open and low-threshold Even today, sensitive student data such as behavior, performance, health and absenteeism “should not actually be processed by teachers on digital devices”, states the GI. “At least permanent storage must currently take place in the school’s administration network.” If the information just went into a Microsoft cloud, “the problem worsens”. The pragmatic consequence is likely to be a prohibition of such storage processes: The responsibility will be “again shifted to teachers”.

The Society for Computer Science therefore appeals to the state government: “Take responsibility – stay open source ! ” Platforms with free software made broad access “independent of the operating system and device” possible. Even with the mini computer Raspberry Pi, schoolchildren could participate in digital school life. The executive could “also do justice to the freedom of teaching materials at low cost”.

Data flow could not be stopped Similar had The Association for the Promotion of MINT Teaching (MUN), which campaigns for the subjects of mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology and “clearly opposes the use of Microsoft Office 365 – tools “in schools. Even a specially developed, more data-efficient version of the office package, as it is now to be tested at vocational schools in cooperation with the state data protection officer, is unsuitable: due to US surveillance laws, the use of European servers does not guarantee adequate data protection, since the obligation to publish remains.

The market strategy of the lock-in effect, which begins at school, implies “a strengthening of the Microsoft monopoly and an already dangerous technological dependence of Europe on an American company”, emphasizes the MUN in its submission to Eisenmann. This development can be countered with Linux and open source programs of European origin. A rethinking has to “start early, that is, at school”. Other parent and teacher associations and other civil society organizations also see no place for Microsoft at educational institutions.

(kbe)