I taught in high school for several decades and can tell you I saw this shift happen over the past 15 years (by the way I saw my students were just using search rather than folder hierarchies.)
I went from teaching in a Google environment to teaching in a Microsoft environment this year.
Though Google now feels familiar and relatively easy (though try moving documents from one folder to another online...), I'd almost forgotten that when it was first introduced, it was met with a lot of resistance, and teachers and students alike were confused for years.
Microsoft spaces (Teams, Edge) are far, far worse.
Since the schools I've worked at run their own servers locally, I think using Nextcloud as your main platform should be very doable. The apps you can install are mostly very slick and modern. (I use Talk for calls now, for example).
https://nextcloud.com/blog/keep-your-data-in-your-school-use...
I see the point about the clunkiness of LibreOffice. But as a teacher, I see great value in thinking carefully about what you introduce students to, because once a decision is in place, the effect multiplies with each new cohort of students.
> refurbished hardware (a random mix of old laptops in a large-scale deployment lol)
On the refurbished laptop market, I see large amounts of the same series of laptops, often Thinkpads, for example. I assume this is because companies will replace entire collections of hardware dated for their purposes. I don't think it is too far-fetched to connect this market to schools in individual districts.
> a laundry list of other "technology solutions" which would be, obviously, impossible for a school system to smoothly maintain or even deploy.
When I started writing (and the other stuff that comes with it - planning, editing, posting, follow-up, archiving) I stopped making music, because blogging takes up a lot of time.
A calculator is an impressive single-function tool. LLMs and other forms of AI are multi-function problem solving tools. ChatGPT and other AI tools are closer to the introduction of the world wide web than they are to the invention of the calculator.
The main issue that is not addressed is that students need points to pass their subjects and get a high school diploma. LLMs are a magical shortcut to these points for many students, and therefore very tempting to use, for a number of normal reasons (time-shortage, laziness, fatigue, not comprehending, insecurity, parental pressure, status, etc.). This is the current, urgent problem with ChatGPT in schools that is not being addressed well.
Anyone who has spent some time with ChatGPT knows that the 'show your work' (plan, outline, draft, etc.) argument is moot, because AI can retroactively produce all of these earlier drafts and plans.
I'm mainly worried about a permanent record of a profile of a range of my online activities. A realistic first step is to break that up a little.
With the Google Maps mention I was suggesting it's ok not to go hard core privacy, because that really takes a lot of time an energy. I use google Maps maybe 4 times a month on my PC, in a browser dedicated to it with a Google account just for that activity. I use a VPN. On the road, I use Organic Maps on CalyxOS.