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Colleges Work To Block Net in Class

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the share-your-steamy-aim-session-with-the-class dept.

SkewlD00d writes: "The story is that colleges spent a load of money wiring schools, now they want more money to censor them in class. I bet I can get around any of this, all I need is a proxy server running on campus on port 80. LOL! But breaking it would probably violate the DMCA. Oh no, proxy servers are now all illegal!" From the article: "some classrooms at Bentley have technology that allows teachers to capture a student's e-mails or instant messages and display them on a large screen for the whole class to see." Of course, a lot of classes do (and will) require Internet access -- the article is more about steps taken to control exactly when and to what degree students can reach it. Update: 09/26 13:32 GMT by T : If the AP server-choosing link doesn't work well for you, el_nino-2000 suggests this Yahoo! link to the same text.

4 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. Re:link.... by damiangerous · · Score: 3, Informative

    You have to go into it twice and take a cookie. The first time you'll get the AP Wire page, choose a paper at random. Then back out to Slashdot, and click the link back in. This time you'll get to the story.

  2. Spoken like a true lamer "d00d" by Raunchola · · Score: 5, Informative

    What censorship? I don't see any censorship here. Before any of you go into a "FREE SPEACH!!!" mode, read the article...

    "The software doesn't censor which sites a student can visit on the Internet. Instead, a professor can choose whether classes have access to the entire Internet or just the school's internal network."

    I know this may sound like a foreign concept to some...but you're in class to learn. Wanna use the Internet? Do it in your dorm, and save the rest of the class from your incessant keyboard clacking.

    --

    --
    The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
  3. No good proxies by mr100percent · · Score: 3, Informative

    Proxies won't work everywhere, not when filtering software is installed on the routers and all ports except FTP, SSH, and HTTP are blocked. Our school uses iGear(yech)

    Then again, there's always safeweb. the firewall resticts the site, but using HTTPS circumvents it.

    I'd reccomend VNC, telnet with Lynx, or TCP/IP over HTTP.

  4. What the schools are really trying to do by John+Murdoch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi!

    IANAL-BIAAP (I Am Not A Lawyer But I Am A Professor). The AP article and the sources the writer quotes at Babson are being, um, polite.

    All of you have probably heard of "research services" on the web where students can download papers. This, as you might imagine, scares the wits out of professors--is this brilliant, trenchant insight into the financial impact of the introduction of telegraphy into the American West in the 1870s the product of your dilligent research and extraordinary writing skills? Or am I reading a paper you grabbed off the night this morning for twenty bucks? (Yes--fraternities had and have libraries of course material, but that's much easier to detect.)

    What Babson is trying to deal with is a variant of the same problem: if I ask a question in class, I don't want students looking up the answer on Google. If I give a quiz in class, I particularly don't want students using Instant Messaging clients to share answers. (I haven't seen this happen in my class--but I'm on the Technology Committee of the local school district, and a half-dozen high school kids were caught doing precisely this.)

    This isn't a free speech issue: this is a matter of preventing people from cheating.

    John Murdoch
    Adjunct Lecturer, DeSales University