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This should save Texas a lot of time next time they want to rewrite school text books in the interest of religion.

Censorship - Now there's and App for that!

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/09/14/news-release-district-deploys-1300-ipad-alternatives-to-assure-ayp/

You *still* have to run the exploit code in some context. The set of instructions don't just magic themselves into the CPU. Where it would have some utility would be with a hosting company. You get a hosting account, compile code to break out of the hosted environment, and have fun playing with everyone else's data. The nature of the attack will depend on how the hosting company isolates client environments. Another example would be a company that (foolishly, IMO) relied on VMs to separate financial applications from general office work.

But in all probability you are talking about fairly targeted attacks. The bulk of malware these days is client-based and is working very well for the bad guys. I don't remember the district and my google-fu isn't up to snuff to find it again, but current per-instance loses are in the millions. This is less, but an older example: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2009/10/01/computer-virus-steals-325k-from-district/ Two-factor is no cure-all either, as the larger losses have been against such systems (due to implementation details two-factor may allow transactions for a window of time rather than a single, identified transaction which allows a compromised system to piggy-back on approved transactions).

redesigning education for the 21st century

[Mississippi Superintendent of Education Hank] Bounds said he will ask the state Legislature in January to fund the program. By fall 2008, if the program proceeds as planned, students could select from one of seven career paths: health care; agriculture and natural resources; construction and manufacturing; transportation; business management and marketing; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and human services.

Bounds' plan also would redesign computer courses for students in grades 7-9. These courses now include a discovery program for careers (grade seven), computers (grade eight), and technology (grade nine). These would change to Information and Communications Technology I and II, then a STEM course in ninth grade, which Bounds said was "in line" with the president's initiative to boost math and science instruction in schools.

All of these courses would include components that help students meet the math and science requirements for their grade level and career-level applications of these skills. In the 10th grade, students would begin the career path training in their chosen subject area. Finally, Bounds said, a strong, ongoing professional development element would be incorporated into the plan as well.

Students speaking to local news organization The Clarion-Ledger were mixed in their reaction to the program.

Donovan Burse, a seventh-grader at Northwest Jackson Middle School, said he doesn't believe most students are prepared to choose a career path at the life stage targeted by the program.

But Angelyn Irvin, an eighth grader at Northwest Jackson Middle School, said she believes the plan might "actually increase the chances of them staying in school ... I think it will motivate them [and] make them want to stay instead of want to leave."

Before /. posted this item, I had just read a letter to the Scratch team asking Where is the Source? Apparently, the developers got a $2 million grant to produce Scratch, promising in its grant application that it would release code throughout development, but instead closed the project to its own developers and will release the source only later this year. (The link includes a response-letter from Mitchel Resnick, the MIT team leader.) I dunno, not a big deal, but Scratch is an open source project, so stay tuned, ye developers.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?Arti cleID=5812
August 2, 2005--One of the nation's most ambitious programs to equip teachers and students with laptop computers "is no longer an option," declared Kathie Johnstone, chair of the Cobb County, Ga., school board. A county judge ruled against the laptop program on July 29, and Johnstone's announcement came after the school board met with its attorney for two hours and 15 minutes on Aug. 1.

Granted, this was partly ue to the illegal use of the taxes, but there was plenty of opposition to the concept too,

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/custom/blogs/educ ation/entries/2005/02/10/cobbs_laptop_extravaganza .html

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?Ar ticleID=6876

After the security breach at the FSA, and now this, I'm seriously beginning to regret going to college in this country...

according to the FAQs
"The effective range is between 15 and 20 metres. " = That's 65 feet

That's a pretty long distance in the majority of US neighborhoods.

From reading the website and the $937 price (UK£ 495) it's pretty obvious it's not designed for individuals looking to annoy your neighbors. It does effect your neighbors rather than just their children since the page says "the majority of people over the age of 25, have lost the ability to hear at this frequency range" so if you have any neighbors under 25 you're bugging the crap out of them.

I think I'd contact the website and explain to them that you're a early 20s home owner and your elderly neighbor is trying to run you out of your house. I'd also print out the webpage and show it to the police, maybe you just need to have a younger police officer come out to the house?

While searching information on the Mosquito I found this interesting: teenagers are actually using it as a ringtone in schools because teachers can't hear it.

It ran for a few months, and others at our school found out about it. The original domain was blocked by the censorship software the school uses, and it was changed a few times to get around this

They did not initialy ask the student to stop the website, they merely blocked it, which you say they have the full right to do. Only after he engaged in premeadiated. willful, and repeated attempted to circumvent the filtering did the school escalate the consequences tha put his diploma in danger.

I don't know about you, but I think the school was being really cool. They could have done all sorts of things like expellng him for repeated misuse of school equipment or disruption of the classroom. They probably could have sent him to a month in some jail school, but they tried to reason with the kid. The kid was just too dense. So what hapens is that dense kids don't get diploma. Oh well, too bad, so sad. But this is not about running a website. This is about the school blocking a site, asking a student to behave, and the student refuseing to behave. Remember, no one initially asks the student to modify behaviour outside of school. If the kid has not changed domain names in an effort to circumvent the school filters, we cannot assume that their would have been any further actions.

If it were me, at this point I would not threaten the kids diploma. I would document the case and send it to federal court. I agree in most cases such action is contraindicated, but if a student is presistantly circumventing security measures, it is a defensible action.

They have. http://www.laptop.org/map.en_US.html Most countries in the world have already expressed interest in this education project.

About your chat extension. No extensions needed. The planned default is a UI based on chat. http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2006/05/001414.php

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?Arti cleID=6101

"Overall, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) would receive $54.4 billion next year, down from $57.6 billion in 2006."

In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County, Pa., juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility, and a few months of probation.

"The probation department realizes this is small potatoes," said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students.

The 13 initially were charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.

The Kutztown Area School District said it reported the students to police only after detentions, suspensions, and other punishments failed to deter them from breaking school rules governing computer usage. (See "Felony charges for computer-abusing kids.")

But the students, their families, and outraged supporters around the nation said that authorities overreacted, punishing the kids not for any horrible behavior but because they outsmarted the district's technology workers.

The trouble began last fall after the school district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Students easily breached security and began downloading forbidden internet programs, such as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool. Some students also turned off a remote monitoring function that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens--or used the monitoring function to view administrators' own computer screens.

School district officials and prosecutors did not return phone messages left Aug. 25 and had not been heard from by press time.

In legal terms, the students have been offered an "informal adjustment"--the least severe form of punishment.

Bispels said a few students are thinking about refusing the deal because they don't feel they have broken any laws. "A lot of these parents would like to fight this on principle, but it's hard to put the kids at risk on principle," he said.

Mike Boland, who represents one student, said his client likely will accept the offer. "It doesn't require my client to acknowledge he is guilty of anything," he said.

"It's about as mild as you can go," agreed James Shrawder, whose 15-year-old nephew was among those offered the deal. "It's more of a face-saving measure."

One student who has had prior dealings with the juvenile probation office was not offered a deal. That case is expected to proceed.

Links:

Students' web site
  http://www.cutusabreak.org

Kutztown Area School District's response
  http://www.kasd.org/districtinfo/kasdPressrelease. htm

Yes, they're iBooks. Here's a somewhat more complete article on the subject (use "bobsmith@mailinator.com" to log in).

eSchool News just did a recent story on Linux in schools. Nice read.

For us, we are so locked into MS right now - the licensing fees are unbelievable. Servers, Cals, Office, Mail, etc cost us around 30K per year. In one recent example of price schemes - Office 97 and Pub 97 were separate packages (we didn't get Pub). For Office 2000 MS combined them and you got Pub for free. Office 2002 - they yank Pub back out (nice bait and switch!) and it costs an additional $5 per seat (5x1000+ pcs) We opted out and decided not be jerked around like that. We are a very technologically robust district with a computer at every teacher's desk and 1 to 5 computers in each classroom for student use, plus labs, libraries and tech ed rooms. In addition to the MS licensing, we have a huge investment in educational software and various databases to run the district. Our student pop is around 4000. Our anti-virus alone runs us 10K a year, plus firewall and citrix 10/10. There's more. I am stunned at how much we spend, versus starting with a meager 100K budget for everything, several years ago. We need our enterprise antivirus and firewall. We need our student information database and electronic libraries. But we were sucked into the MS spiral out-of-control licensing. We have invested years of training students and staff and administrators. It is very difficult to switch now. If I were starting fresh, I'd switch to free/open in a heartbeat.

It is so difficult to form any type of organization aimed at bridging the digital divide. Here in the US the PowerUp program just died. If a program like that can't survive in one well-developed country, how can something similar take on the world's technology deficiencies?

From the article: "Though it failed to eliminate the divide, the program--established in 1999--did succeed in equipping nearly 1,000 high-tech computer labs in underserved areas across the country before pulling the plug."

eSchool link: (sorry about that)

There are a couple, so the best way is to go to eSchool News and search for sexual discrimination. (www.eschoolnews.com)

M$ might have not cared a few years ago when MS was flush with money and sales from companies also flush with money. However this is no longer the case, and MS has been doing everything to get cash from strapped companies. In particular M$ is trying to extorts as much money from schools as possible with only the Linux counter threat saving taxpayers from a multi-million dollar theft.

First and formost, if you want your kids to get a leg up in life, teach them to program little games. You are teaching them to think systematically through layers of abstraction, and teaching them to bring a creative vision to life in such a way that their labors can be enjoyed by other students... Your math and art department will thank you.

2nd, give them a scavenger hunt with maps of your city (and phone numbers in case a group / group leader gets lost). You wouldn't believe how many high - school kids haven't ventured out further than a block or two away from home.

Have them jot notes at a city-council meeting, and ask the council members afterwards about their experience. Have them go to a meeting of the district school board and interview them. OK, this isn't directly related to the handspring, but removing the mistique from the way a city is run is important for developing citizens.

Of course, get a good graphing calculator application for the math courses... Just not too good of one. You want a calculator that will let kids visualize the look of a graph, but not one that will let them plug in equasions and have the calc solve calculus for them.

English / english, english / spanish dictionaries. This will really depend upon the kind of RAM you will have available, but dictionaries will really help out the ESL kids. And you should consider having an all-spanish day of some sort, to make the english kids' brains work in a way they may not be accustomed to.

There is also Avant-Go, which is a free service that may not be terribly educational but will let your kids download and read specific sites like news.bbc.co.uk from their palms. Reading is never a bad thing. Speaking of which, a quick search will net you thousands of free classic books... It might save your english department a little bit of money to download and beam a copy of Romeo and Juliette or The Scarlett Letter, rather than buying paperback versions... though with the added advantage of letting kids highlight the heck out of their books a cheap dover thrift edition might be educationally sound.

And if you have already read down this far, palm boulevard is reporting that eSchool News just voted the palm the best OS for teaching. While I can't get through to the site to confirm details, I bet you could find some great ideas there.

Whatever you choose, remember to get very hard, very durable covers for these things. My girlfriend and I have a wall devoted to our broken palm pilots... with five up there and climbing, and we're not going to be any near as hard on these things as your kids will be. Good luck! I hope this helps. -chris

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?Arti cleID=2828
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/10/micro soft_school/index2.html
http://www.microsoft.com/education/downloads/licen sing/BSALetter.doc (Sorry, I know, MS Word)

OK, so I can't find any links specifically relating to the above story. But seriously, finding stories on how BSA screws over schools is (no pun intended) child's play.

I've been interviewed by a nationally distributed magazine about technology in education, concerning thin clients. I've got no agenda, only my opinions.