Figma's Design Tools Are Now Free On Chromebooks For All US School Students (theverge.com) 25
Figma is expanding its partnership with Google for Education in a bid to introduce more school-age students to its product design and collaboration platforms. Announced during the Config event on Wednesday, June 21st, all K-12 students across the US can now access Figma for free on education Chromebooks. Figma is also expanding its educational partnership with Chromebooks outside of the US, starting with Google schools in Japan. The Verge reports: Today's announcement effectively opens up the beta program that Figma released last year, which was initially limited to select US high schools. As with the beta, students will have access to both Figma (the company's flagship product design platform) and FigJam, Figma's collaborative whiteboarding app. Figma's Google program is only available on Chromebooks, though the company said that schools using non-Google systems can apply for access on an individual class basis.
While Figma already provides free account tiers, these restrict users to a limited number of files and features. This offering for educational markets gives students and educators access to the company's Enterprise tier -- which typically starts at $75 a month per editor -- without paying a dime. The Enterprise tier for Figma and FigJam is the company's most powerful offering, allowing large groups of students to collaborate at scale. It also grants educators full control over their Figma environments to ensure student safety and support class management.
The Chromebook-specific perks of this partnership allow school admins running Google Workspace for Education to deploy and manage Figma to numerous Chromebooks with a few clicks, directly within the Google Admin console. And given how popular Chromebooks are in educational settings (largely because they're cheap, cloud-based, and easy to use), it's not unreasonable to expect schools to have some lying around.
While Figma already provides free account tiers, these restrict users to a limited number of files and features. This offering for educational markets gives students and educators access to the company's Enterprise tier -- which typically starts at $75 a month per editor -- without paying a dime. The Enterprise tier for Figma and FigJam is the company's most powerful offering, allowing large groups of students to collaborate at scale. It also grants educators full control over their Figma environments to ensure student safety and support class management.
The Chromebook-specific perks of this partnership allow school admins running Google Workspace for Education to deploy and manage Figma to numerous Chromebooks with a few clicks, directly within the Google Admin console. And given how popular Chromebooks are in educational settings (largely because they're cheap, cloud-based, and easy to use), it's not unreasonable to expect schools to have some lying around.
What is Figma? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Is this the Figma from the summary? https://www.figma.com/ [figma.com]
I still don’t have a clue what they are. Something about collaboration? What are they selling and what does it do?
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You idiot that's I for Integral.
Re:What is Figma? (Score:4, Informative)
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A ligament of my imagination?
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Yes, but in ball form...
Cartoon (Score:2)
It appears to be the cartoon network version of an LMS, like Moodle but with more doodle.
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LMS? Large Model of Senility? Is this a geriatric AI?
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Learning Management System
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https://moodle.com/solutions/l... [moodle.com]
What's a Ligma? (Score:2)
"Free" (Score:2)
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It will remain free for students. When these students graduate into paid employment they are going to want to use Figma's products -- this is when Figma gets payback.
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Of course, why do you think Adobe is so interested in acquiring it?
It's free now, and you know it's popular that Adobe wants to take it over.
Free now, hook you then you pay (Score:2)
How much did Figma pay for free advertisement? (Score:2)
The march toward Computing as a Service (Score:2)
With Chromebooks, your hardware is of very limited usefulness without an internet connection and a Google account. This means that Google can effectively shut down your computer on a whim. Google has access to all your data, and if you ever have any serious account problems - but that never happens with Google, right? - you're S.O.L.
Microsoft is poised to do the same thing [slashdot.org]. Soon the vast majority of people will be dependent on "cloud services" for all their computing needs. I've said it before - the WEF's p
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This should be modded up. It is all absolutely true.
In addition, Chromebooks are typically weak performers out of the gate, and have a very limited lifespan in terms of software support.