Computers-for-Student-Eyeballs Scheme Goes Under

mwalker writes "The New York Times is reporting that ZapMe corporation is sending schools the bill for computers that they had given the schools for free. ZapMe's original business model of playing ads for students on the computers, and trading their personal information for "Zap points" towards prizes seems to have fallen afoul of a few privacy advocates."

Comments

Re:Well, What did they think. .

[Xenu]

It''s a shame that the US educates it's folks with teachers that carpool from the trailor park each day and that little johnnies teacher is also trailor park patty, just on her day job because that's the only caliber of people they can find that will work for 20K US a year. Hell, garbage men in my country get more than that.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

If you want to see real data on teacher salaries, look at this page, whick contains the results of the AFT 1998 salary survey. The 1998 U.S. average teacher's salary is $39,347, which is more than most people make.

Many public school teachers (and administrators) are overpaid, incompetent and should be fired.

Volunteering to Schools

[goliard]

Ok, this has gotten surreal, the combination of this thread here and the simultaneous story The Man Who Wouldn't Be King

Geeks should volunteer their time more than the norm.[...]I hadn't really thought seriously about voluteering before reading this, but it appears that public schools are desperate enough to submit to the demands of greedy profiteers. Its got to stop, and it appears the only way to stop it is to offer alternatives.

Dude, do what you think is right, but I am not going to volunteer or donate anything so a school where:

the school principal charged that the 17-year-old Griffiths "disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied the valid authority of supervisors, teachers, administrators, school officials or other school personnel engaged in the performance of their duties." [for refusing the homecoming crown]

Put another way: I was suspended once, for getting beat up. Why on earth would I do anything for the institution that not only turned a blind eye on assault and battery, but reprised against a victim?

Face it: as geeks many of us have very schizophrenic attitudes about schools. On one hand, we say things like "we should contribute to our schools to advance learning and education and people picking themselves up by their bootstraps". On the other, our personal experience of school was, well, the Hellmouth.

Until the Hellmouth series here, it was possible -- or even highly plausible -- for geeks to look at their own experience as anomalous. They disregarded their first-person empirical evidence of what schools are like, so that they could continue to support the abstract ideal of schools. They could say "Yeah, I got beaten up every day at school, but schools are still a wonderful thing."

But now we know our experience isn't anomalous. Teachers are biggotted against the smart and the odd. Funding is poured into athletics and not academics. Violence against certain classes of students is condoned. And this happens all over, not just in isolated cases.

It's just about impossible for us to kid ourselves now. I can't be the only one who loathes the idea of supporting the institution which abused me.

How could I possibly be willing to give -- without restraints -- to an institution which is so vile, which treated me so vilely?

How do I know that if I donate computers to my local HS's computer lab, that they won't say "Great, we got computers for free this year, so we can take the new computer budget for the lab and spend it on the football team"??

How do I know that I am not enabling the school's continuing abuse of it's students? Do I want to work on a computer net which lets teachers know where teens surfed?

How do I know my serving as a volunteer would not be taken as a sign of endorsement of repressive school administrators or board members?

Frankly, at the absolute minimum, a school would have to convince me that it was addressing these issues, and that it was committed to improving them, before I would help it.

I want, bluntly, a quid pro quo. I want to know that if I give to them, they are going to work to improve the lot of the geeks and outcasts who are getting stepped on, and the civil rights of all students.

I'd far and away rather directly support the students, than the institutions: supporting non-school organizations which help students. There's no way I'd want to cart blanche give over any of my time and money to school administrators.

Not unhead of

[wmoyes]

The way I understand it my school district had a similar thing happen. They were promised a grant from a large nameless corporation in the one million-dollar range for computer equipment, and of course they purchased the equipment from the large corporations educational subsidiary. Well the machines arrived, but the grant didn't (I never did find out why they bought the machines without the grant first). Since I was only a student I wasn't in on the full details, but I did get a ear full whenever I went to help fix one of the 'broken' computers.

P.S. For any local computer genius, be careful when offering help to your school. After getting pulled out of class three times in one week for an 'emergency' I had to politely explain that it was inappropriate. Yes it was fun for a while, but trust me, it will get worse than your grandparents/uncle/any other relative asking for computer help.

They had the money. . .

[T. Emthrie]

To do it right. From the archives of the state.

The Beginning

On Dec. 19, 1991, Southern Local and Northern Local school districts filed a lawsuit against the state in the Perry County Common Pleas Court on behalf of Nathan DeRolph, a sophomore in the Northern Local school district. The suit alleged that Pennsylvania's public school funding system was unconstitutional. At the conclusion of the case, Judge Linton Lewis, Jr. ruled that Pennsylvania's system of school funding was unconstitutional. The decision was appealed, and on Aug. 30, 1995 the Pennsylvania Fifth District Court of Appeals reversed Judge Lewis' decision. The case was then appealed, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction of the case on Jan. 17, 1996.

(Back to top)

DeRolph I: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's First Decision

On March 24, 1997, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania's public school financing system violates Section 2, Article VI of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which mandates a thorough and efficient system of common school throughout the state. This decision is now known as "DeRolph I."

The Supreme Court's majority opinion cited these specific statutes unconstitutional:

• Operation of the school funding program;
• The emphasis of Pennsylvania's school funding system on property tax may no longer be used as the primary source of funding;
• The requirement of school districts borrowing through the spending reserve and emergency school assistance loan programs; and
• A lack of sufficient funding in the General Assembly's biennium budget for the construction and maintenance of public school buildings.
• The Supreme Court would not retain jurisdiction of the case because it is the trial court's responsibility to rule on the constitutionality of the enacted legislation and render an opinion. Either party could then appeal the trial court's decision directly to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

(Back to top)

The State's Response

After DeRolph I, the General Assembly introduced many different types of legislation and ideas to create a new educational funding system.

Joint subcommittees were formed to create recommendations and many senators and representatives developed their own recommendations. On Jan. 28, 1998, the legislative leaders from the House and the Senate announced a school funding plan. The plan was placed in House Bill 650 (HB 650), and the funding component was a joint resolution that authorized the issuance of general obligation bonds to pay for school facilities. The joint resolution was placed on the ballot and passed by voters on Nov. 2, 1999.

Additional legislation was passed to support the new school funding system. Below is a list of key legislation for the school funding system:

• Senate Bill 102: Created the Pennsylvania School Facilities Commission and provided $300 million in appropriations. Signed May 20, 1997.
• Senate Bill 55: Established school district performance standards. Signed August 22, 1997.
• House Bill 412: Provided for fiscal accountability by requiring school districts to maintain budget reserves, set-asides for building maintenance, textbooks and instructional materials and created the school district solvency assistance fund. Signed August 22, 1997.
• House Bill 650: Outlined the methodology for determining the base cost of an education for 1999 through 2004 and provided $170 million in appropriations for school facilities construction, including an additional $30 million for the Emergency Repair Program. Signed February 13, 1998.
• House Bill 1: Implemented the PennsylvaniaReads initiative that provided reading grants and volunteer tutors to help youngsters from kindergarten through fourth grade improve their reading skills. Signed March 30, 1999.
• House Bill 282: This bill marked the first time the state created an education budget separate from its main operating budget as required in HB 650. Signed June 30, 1999.
• Senate Joint Resolution 1: Authorized issuance of general obligation bonds to pay for school facilities. Approved by voters November 2, 1999.
• Senate Bill 192: Committed $2.5 billion over 12 years for school construction and repair. The funding was a result of the money received by the state from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Signed March 3, 2000.

Click here for a complete list of legislative activity on school funding.

On February 26, 1999 Judge Lewis ruled the state's response unconstitutional and the case was appealed directly to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

(Back to top)

DeRolph II: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Second Decision

On May 11, 2000, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 decision that the state's response to the 1997 DeRolph case had not met the "thorough and efficient" standard set in Section 2, Article VI of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Supreme Court majority cited seven specific areas to be addressed by the state:

• Continued reliance on local property taxes as a primary means to fund Pennsylvania's schools has not been specifically addressed.
• The cost of an adequate education formula that was revised by the state has structural deficiencies and may not reflect the actual amount per pupil that is required to provide an adequate education.
• Continuing attention must be given to the mechanism implemented to fund the construction of new school facilities and to repair older, decaying school buildings, until the task is complete. Additionally, requiring local districts to pass levies as a prerequisite for obtaining state funding should be reviewed.
• The School Solvency Assistance Fund established by House Bill 412 must be reevaluated, so that funds are available and used only in case of extreme emergencies.
• The unfunded mandates in House Bill 412 and Senate Bill 55 must be addressed and immediately funded.
• The phenomenon known as phantom revenue (when the growing property wealth of a school district gives the illusion of an increasing revenue stream that is not realized by the school district for a variety of reasons) has not been eliminated.
• Strict, statewide academic guidelines must be developed and rigorously followed throughout all of Pennsylvania's public school districts.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will retain jurisdiction of the case and continue it until June 15, 2001, when the state will need to prove they have sufficiently addressed the issues listed above.

(Back to top)

ads and personal data are not going to cut it

[josepha48]

Giving people stuff for free and sending them ads is not going to be and isn't an effective business model. With programs like proxomotron (windows) which can filter web page ads and web page content including javascript src and iframe/ilayer, I can block ALL ads from a site. With mozilla I can also block images from certain sites as well as cookies f I choose. There is more tech like that coming which is going to make it difficult for sites to just collect data on there visitors. They'll need to rely just on http data, like IP address and user agent and stuff like that.

This company had to have been stupid if they thought they could get data from school kids. That is a BIG issue today and it is just not going to fly with parents. hey some web portols don't even allow people under 13 to join and get acounts. I am ammazed that they thought that they would even try to get info from students. If I were an IT admin at that school, I'd set up the systems that students use for surfing and what not, so that they could not submit this kind of data to begin with even if that meant coding a program that would block post operations (except to certain permitted sites like search engines google) at the firewall level. Yes that can be done it is just http header info.

maybe web sites need a rating system. Like a meta tag that says

meta name=rating content=r

Then if people used this then you could filter out sites that are r rated like porn or maybe content=porn would be more appropriate.

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!

Pay for the right to disrupt class!

[erinlee]

ZapMe seems to be asking the schools, "We'll pay you with loans of unreliable computer equipment for the right to distract your kids during class." If one of their classmates were to disrupt and distract the class similarly, they'd likely get suspended. Following this logic, perhaps the guy at Mira Costa could loan the school a malfunctioning computer in exchange for his refusal to accept the homecoming crown and various other "disruptive" acts. Ya think?

Cultural immunization

[kfg]

>I know it's important to protect children from bad influences

No, it is NOT important to protect children from "bad influences."

It is important the teach children how to DEAL with bad influences in a positive manner.

In our current social structure we forcably maintain children as innocents, and then, when they hit 18, say " You're an adult now, behave like one."

But we've never * taught them HOW to behave as adults.* No wonder college age 'kids' have a reputation for appaling behaviour.

The role of a parent is NOT to protect children, but rather to teach them to protect themselves.

IANAL, but...

[Kierthos]

If the contract between the school and the corporation was for free computers, no conditions, then they can't turn around and charge for the computers, no matter what. It's called Breach of Contract, or something like that.

Now, mind you, if the contract had some agreement that the ads would be available for students to use at their discretion, then they still shouldn't be able to charge for the computers, because freedom of choice lets the students answer the ads or not answer the ads at their choice.

Finally, if the contract said that X percentage or X many students had to fill out the ads, then I believe it is patently unenforceable, because a contract between two parties cannot govern a third party who is not a signator of the contract. Which means that the contract would have been made in Bad Faith and is null. Whether the computers have to be returned or not, I don't know, but the schools still shouldn't have to pay for them.

Again, IANAL.

Kierthos

ZapMe! nothing more than professional con artists!

[quamper]

From the start of hearing about the ZapMe! program. At the time when it was at it's "peak" I was working as a network administrator for a fairly large public highschool where one of the science teachers was on fire to sign up. I pretty much stayed out if it and let them deal with it all so I wouldn't be responisble for the consequences. After going to a couple of technology conferences and talking to some of the ZapMe! reps (every time I talked with them they were dressed in a costume! Santa/Bunny/Chicken!&!& never could figure that out!)

Any ways didn't sound too bad, but I refused to sign anything and eventually the school board decided to go with the go ahead to sign up. Well luckily before they signed all the final papers one of the lawyers was going over some of the contract information and they had altered the agreement at the last minute! You can rip of big companies all you want and you can swindle home users because they're idiots! (not flaming just trying to make a point!) But conning public schools is the worst thing in the world! They barely have enough money as it is pay the teachers let alone buy computers!

And for the record we had Channel One and there is no way I would compare it to ZapMe! I was very impressed with Channel One, they were nice as could be and legit all the way. And the commercials for the most part were funny or at least not annoying.
---

The scariest part of the article

[Rurik]

Donna Unterreiner, a library media specialist for the Margaret Buerkle Junior High School in St. Louis, said that the ZapMe lab had been "a godsend for us," since the school district had not been able to pass bond issues that would have otherwise paid for Internet access. The advertising, she said, did not bother her or her students. "Can you turn on a computer anywhere, and they don't have ads on them?" she asked.

I can not believe this. Now the whole computer industry is so tainted and jaded in the eyes of everyday people that they see no problem in advertisements all over their machine. Since when does using a computer entitle you to having to watch dozens of ads sucking up your bandwidth. But it's now a common conception in our minds that that is what has to happen. If we want a computer, we get ads. If we want internet, we have to watch ads on every page. If we want to play games, we have to watch ads.

Re:Well, What did they think. .

[aardvarkjoe]

No, some teachers are incompetant. (I had my share of those while in school.) But there's no way they're overpaid. The starting salary where I live (IIRC), is about $23,000. If there started close to $40,000, it would be fine, but not many people are willing to work the extremely long hours, on starvation wages. That's why there's such a shortage of teachers, and many of the ones we have don't have a clue ... because they can't get anyone else.

Most of the administrators are grossly overpaid and completely inept. In high school, my principal was completely clueless, and perpetually drunk. She caused nothing but trouble, and all the teachers hated her. (I was fortunate to have quite a few very good teachers, but that's the exception rather than the rule.) The brand-new school superintendant is making well over $200,000 a year. (He gets paid as much as 8 teachers put together for showing up to meetings and saying things like, "I think that we should try to have a 100% graduation rate." Not exactly the correct wording, but that's what he said.) My high school physics teacher taught 7 classes a day, with 35-40 students in each class, as well as being the head of the science department, because they couldn't be bothered to hire someone else to take some of the load.

It's depressing that conditions never get better, even though politicians keep on claiming that they're constantly raising school budgets. In truth, there's so much corruption in the public school system that it will never get better until we get rid of the pork and the overhead that sucks up every available dollar.

I'll admit this is somewhat off topic but....

[dasunt]

Is there anyway that Slashdot could get an equivalent of a general user's account at the New York Times? There seems to be plenty of stories that are linked to the paper, and we must send plenty of traffic in their direction, has anyone at Slashdot/Andover tried to come to an agreement with the NYT over being able to copy the article cited or have a slashdot account all slashdot users could use?

I'm probably spitting into the wind here, but it can't hurt to ask now.

Re:I'll admit this is somewhat off topic but....

[Fist Prost]

I think what he means is something where traffic coming from slashdot is automatically let into a story, without having to log in at all.

Perhaps if they explained that pretty much noone here is going to give correct demographic information to read stories about invasion of privacy (can you smell the irony here?)anyway. I would reccomend Roblimo or whoever does the wheeling/dealing get in touch with them, and in exchange for not having everyone here mess with their marketing department by listing themselves as 120 year old brain surgeons with interests in cars and modeling, offer some basic info that would still allow them to target ads to traffic coming from slashdot (computer companies, technotoys, etc) so that we could click a link and have it log in with a blessed generic user/pass, and everyone wins.

Failing that, just click the link and on the login page, erase everything up to and including the second "www" and type in there "partners". Works every time...

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

Channel One

[trolebus]

I used to go to a school in California that subscribed to a service called Channel 1. Basically in excange for free TVs and VCRs the school would show us an add ridden, could not be called news by any stretch of the immagination, "news" program that lasted about 20 minutes a morning. While it was a great time to get some homework done it was sickening to see how low schools had to go to get equipment. The really sad part is that even though they got all that gear very few teachers even used it.

It was amazing how many people took it for real news. Some of their tech coverage bordered on blantant lying.

a bit extreme?

[Thackeri]

Erm, is it just me or isn't the site obligation.org a little extreme, strident, odd? Two bits that jumped out at me were:

• [pic of doom II box] Picture of ultra-violent video game taken from ZapBuys web site.
  
  
• [pic of marylin manson] ZapMe! allows children to have full access to Amazon.com. All they need is a credit card number and they can order the most vile music and sleaziest movies. Make no mistake - ZapMe! wants to convert children's allowance money into revenue for its advertisers. That is how they will make money.

I know it's important to protect children from bad influences but I don't think the people who wrote the page referred to are particularly objective on this.

Not that I'm standing up for amazon but they're hardly major corrupters of children. It wouldn't suprise me if this site is against the Simpsons and Buffy!

Thank goodness this is in America!

No need to signup with NYT

[biftek]

As usual, try the partners.nytimes link

http://partners.ny tim es.com/2000/11/02/technology/02COMP.html

Bad business models.

[tippergore]

One more example of a bad business model that should have never been accepted by anyone. Just like channel one, students get a small benefit in exchange for the inescapable corporatist propaganda they are forced to swallow.

This stuff is partially our fault. Geeks should volunteer their time more than the norm. Imagine what could be accomplished if a few nerds got ahold of a four thousand dollars? You could build many good usable computers for that pricetag. Maybe they wouldn't be up to par for running Word 2000, but they would certainly be capable of teaching introductory to advanced computer courses, that's for sure.

Microsoft 'innovation' forces many schools to get into an inescapable loop of buying newer hardware to run software that's not all that much different from previos versions. My friend is currently working as a student teacher, and he's completely stranded technologically when he enters the school. They just don't have the resources or the know-how to get wired, a little linux and a little help would help out a lot.

I hadn't really thought seriously about voluteering before reading this, but it appears that public schools are desperate enough to submit to the demands of greedy profiteers. Its got to stop, and it appears the only way to stop it is to offer alternatives.

What's wrong with some commercialism in schools?

[paeanblack]

Bobby buys a pack of Marlboro Lights. He smokes alf of them, then a friend bums one, then he smokes a third of what's left. How many does he have left?

KRAFT:NABISCO as THE GAP:
a) WALMART
b) ANN TAYLOR
c) L.L. BEAN
d) SEAGRAMS

Describe the process used by Dr. Hammond to bring the dinosaurs back from extinction:

----------------------------
Viral marketing of your test answers will require taking student ethics classes.