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Colleges Work To Block Net in Class
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.
At least when I attended college as long as you weren't being disruptive it was your choice to pay attention or not. After all, you were paying to attend the class, if you didn't want to get your money's worth that was your choice. The prof. wasn't expected to hold your hand, but rather s/he simply dispensed a grade at the end of the term. If you got a bad one, perhaps you should have been paying closer attention.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
In a public High School, I can understand if the school wants to block students from various sites, sending email, or doing any sorts of other stuff. Because High School is kind of like prison.. you don't get a lot of say in matters.
College, on the other hand, is something you choose to go to. You pay to go. If you'd rather be surfing the web or writing email during class, why should it matter to the professors as long as you aren't disrupting their class? If you fail because you weren't paying attention, that's your own problem and your own waste of money.
I went to a school where every student was required to have a laptop. Professors really didn't seem to care as long as you weren't clacking away on your keyboard really loudly, or surfing for porn, or whatnot.
So what else are they going to do? Walk around the class to make sure nobody's got comics or porn behind those book covers? Read their notes to make sure they aren't doodling in class? Hire a mind reader and make sure they aren't daydreaming about the girl/boy sitting next to them?
How about just trusting that the students that are there to learn will be doing so.
And maybe try including material in the class that isn't read straight from the book so that these idiots wasting $10k+ a year for a phat pipe and a kegger every weekend will have to actually pay attention to pass the class.
I realize you're kidding, but it doesn't help to be alarmist about the DMCA. It protects only access to a copyrighted work, not anything having to do with "hacking" a proxy server to get out of your school's network.
The DMCA is a bad, scary law and should be overturned, but we won't win that battle by making it out to be something it's not. Educate, rather than knee-jerk.
Bottom line: Let the adults paying to surf in your class surf. Or crack down on doodling in notebooks as well.
Sam
Look at the picture in the article. It's an AP photo, so it's probably not the same classroom, but it displays the real problem. Everybody has to face the teacher. It's just reproduction of the same tired low-involvement teaching methods that require little or no interactivity or effort.
A talking head is still a talking head, whether you've got a computer in front of you or not.
This is why lecture is the smallest component of my pedagogy (IMO group work, in-class assignments, big discussions, or just not having class are better alternatives).
cbd.
I hate to lose any of my freedoms on the net, and I think it's wrong for Uni's to limit internet access in your dorm room on your personal computer, but for once I agree with this restriction. The internet in the classroom is there for a specific purpose and people shouldn't be chatting away with their friends or surfing the porno sites when the prof. is trying to teach. That results in those same people asking all the stupid questions at the end of class keeping everyone there for an additional 10 minutes. If someone gives you internet access in your dorm room or at home, it should be unrestricted access, but if you can use the internet in class, they should restrict it to only what you're supposed to be doing.
~ now you know
I have to seriously object to the knee-jerk reaction that the story's submitter seems to be suffering from. This isn't censorship in the classroom. It's not as if these schools are imposing some draconian system of keeping information out of the hands of their students--they just want them to pay attention in class.
The system in place is one that I've actually used as a teaching assistant at UNC. We have, as do many universities, a huge problem with students simply not paying attention in class. The classes I taught were multimedia development, so every student was sitting in front of a computer. You could gurantee that everytime the lights went down for instruction, the email terminals came up. I never actually had a professor use the screen capture, but the fact that it exists doesn't bother me at all.
The reality is, these kinds of measures are not censorous. Institutions of higher learning have been and will continue to be places where freedom on the Internet will be vitally important. When this freedom begins to be limited at schools, we're in serious trouble.
My other computer is your Windows box
There is nothing wrong with a teacher wanting to restrict the use of the internet in the classroom to the task at hand. Students should not be reading their email or instant-messaging on class time. This is not a violation of rights more than it is akin to the teacher asking students not to pass notes in class. It is when these restrictions carry outside the classroom that one must worry about rights violations.
Let me see:
/.
I pay beaucoup bucks so that some old guy can stand and lecture me. If I fail to regurgitate the old guys spew, then I have to pay him to lecture me again (assuming that I want to earn that passport to a decent corporate job known as a degree at some point in the future). So instead of paying attention to the old guys spew, I choose to cruise
Who gives a fuck. Let the idiot cruise. They'll be out of school soon enough, and you'll have your money. If some kid is smart enough to cruise and memorize the spew, let 'em. Quit trying to be everyone's momma and let adults be adults.
For those who consider this a rant, please note my perspective. I finished my degree at the ripe old age of 32. You have a completely different perspective on college after working a few years. Professors go from being overbearing jerks to service providers. Straight out of high school kids cheered when teacher didn't show. I was pissed and would go to the dean. I payed for that class time, and if I wasn't going to get it, I expected a refund. Other students would cheer when teach gave an extension on homework due date. I was pissed, 'cause I had mine done and I didn't want a bunch of lazy dipshit who couldn't get a couple pages of homework done in a week getting the same degree as me. Yes, I wanted them to drop out so that the market wouldn't be flooded with CS degrees that shouldn't exist.
This falls into the same category. Let those without a modicum of self control do what they deserve to do, dig ditches or flip burgers, but damn the nanny state.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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!
I doubt very strongly that the answer to getting around the censorship is a proxy server. And censoring access to the internet has absolutely nothing to do with the DMCA, since the Internet as a whole is not copyrighted.
Basically, the submitter has no real clue, and was trying to increase his chances of getting his submission accepted by linking it to a popular geek issue, the DMCA.
Having been in a classroom that was wired and unrestricted (I took a UI class at college where all 30 students had a PC hooked up to the Internet), I can say that it is VERY distracting when other people are clicking and clacking and surfing the web while the professor is talking. It's certainly your right not to learn if you don't want to - heck, you're just improving my grade - but keep it in the dorm room where you don't bother those of us trying to learn.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Please, it's much easier than that. Bring up a PPP link through SSH and set up a VPN between your laptop in class and your desktop computer in your dorm.
Then just route all non-school addresses to your PPP link and you're done.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Two colleges on the cutting edge of Internet technology are now pioneering solutions to a rapidly growing problem: students who pay more attention to their computers than to their professors.
Hold on, this isn't elem. or high school. This is college. The students are adults. If they want to piss away thier education by NOT paying attention to their professors that's their problem. As long as thier not disturbing class (or using the technology to cheat) who gives a crap if they pay attention or not. They'll reap the benifits of their lack of attention.
I used to teach math in college. If you were a student who was interested, came to class, put forth an effort I'd bend over backwards to help you learn [I love teaching]. BUT, if you never came to class, didn't give a shit and did badly on homework/tests I had no problems failing you. Like I said, these are college students. They are adults.
All very nice, and all very IRRELEVANT to the question, namely why would a class *require* NET access?
Reckon you might want to read before replying next time, eh?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Shouldn't someone point out to this university that intercepting and displaying email you are not a party to is still a federal offense (ECPA - Electronic Communications Privacy Act)?
Your boss can do it because, technically, you're acting as an agent for the company and all email sent to/from your work computer should be done on behalf of the company.
Your ISP and university can block spam, strip executable attachments, etc., because the filtering can be done because 1) it serves an important public need and 2) it can be done in a mechnical manner that does not require human intervention.
But students are not "agents" of a university, they are customers. Universities often impose rules that skirt (or outright break) the law, especially for students living in the university-provided housing, but I'm not sure that they can make any blanket assertion of the right to intercept all email sent through their system. E.g., many non-traditional students will attend class with personal or company-provided laptops which may attempt to send previously queued, but unsent, confidential material that will be transmitted once a network connection can be re-established. If the university doesn't want to allow such communications, they can block outgoing SMTP ports. While it's technically possible to configure a system to only send mail when connected to some networks, it's non-trivial and rarely done in practice.
I don't recall if ECPA covers "instant messages" explicitly, but seems more likely than not to be considered protected than not since they are not broadcast.
(IANAL, but familiarity with the ECPA should be considered required knowledge for anyone with system administration duties.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
So many of the 'problems' we've got with technology are really problems with human interaction. Another example is all the jumping through hoops businesses do to restrict employee usage of the internet using expensive hardware and software rather than handling misuse of the internet as stated in company policy in a similar way to handling employee tardiness or any other situation in the employer-employee relationship that you can't fit a fancy software filter between. In school/college of all places teaching people to correct inappropriate behavior rather than trying to simulate an environment where it will never occur seems more productive to me in the long run, even if it is inconvenient when trying to run a class.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I used to teach at a major university. If students are not paying attention to what's happening at the front of the class, I would much prefer they leave and go elsewhere. This is not so much because I care about what they are doing to themselves, but that I care about what they are doing to others who *are* interested: Students reading a paper or sleeping are distracting to the instructor and (worse) they are distracting to other students. If students were surfing the Net they would be even more disruptive. Should instructors and the class need to worry about someone hitting a webpage that plays music in his class ? Should the university worry about possible lawsuits stemming from students viewing pornography (inadvertently or otherwise) and offending others?
Teachers commonly prohibit behaviour like chewing gum and talking in class and can throw students out for doing so precisely because this behaviour can disturb the class. So why in these cases are civil liberties people not running around crying about abridgements of freedom of speech ? Because even they understand such activity is only detrimental to everyone involved.
A little sanity and a little less arm-waving, please.
See, the thing is: a classroom isn't a democracy.
And good thing too.
-B
-B
Now I have the right to a fair course that I paid for. My salary is going for this guy's food. I expect to be taught well and not some kind of bullshit which i've had to deal with.
No, what you are looking for are good grades, not learning. Go back, learn and try again.
It's short-sighted to think that once the net access is cut that students will pay attention. The net use is a symptom, not a disease. People will always find a way to goof off if they want. No net? Just doodle.
It's not much different than the poor IS guy who has to go on a seek 'n' destroy mission on all N-hundred company PCs for C:\WINDOWS\SOL.EXE because Upper Management decided that people were spending too much time playing solitaire. The IS guy's time is wasted, and the benefit to the company is negligible, since lazy workers find other things to waste company time with.
Not really an option, most introductory classes are required attendance, even if it's not worth your time and you don't pay attention. Don't show and you fail. I take it you haven't been in college for a while. Schools don't cancel class in very bad weather because they say it's your option to go or not, but since attendance is required, you usually must go anyway I don't know where you went to school, but my university cancelled classes in very bad weather and disasters. And the fact that your attendance in your classes is mandatory is irrelevant. That doesn't give you the right to disturb your fellow classmates who may or may not be interested in the topic. You do have a right to do your own thing quietly (I've slept, read magazines, the textbook, etc), but not to tap away at a keyboard (unless you have some kind of silent keyboard). Do you think students get annoyed by professors who just read out of the book, don't make the lectures even worthwhile to hear? The street runs both ways, but since the profs have the power their point of view (which is cheaper to fix, so it's their way.) Classes should be interesting and engaging intrinsicly, not because someone mandated that you cannot do anything else, but must sit here and listen to me. If a class isn't interesting to you, it's not the classes fault. Take a different class or, if that isn't possible, don't blame the class or the instructor that it's not what you call interesting. I fell asleep just about every time I went to my Stats classes, but I didn't complain that the teacher didn't interest me. It's not his job to make sure I'm being entertained or interested. Also, there are some classes that are only interesting to people who want to do that kind of stuff. I mean, think about Lambda Calculus. Some people get off on that crap. Me? I didn't go for math, so I took a different track. For freshman just out of college that may be true, but a lot of people in college now have something called a life. Heard of it? They're returning to college, or have other responiblities, they may be expecting a baby. Blanket statements just don't cut it. Although cell phone use should be discouraged since it tends to make all the students not pay attention to what is going around on campus, because they're talking on the cells instead of listening. Sorry, but I don't think that movie times and party addresses are more important than an education. A student's social life should be left behind at the classroom door. I don't think I haven't seen a pager or cell phone that can't be put on vibrate (either with special batteries or with a flip of a switch). There is no excuse for your cell phone to ring aloud in class. IMHO, students should be kicked out of the classroom for that, and punished. It's a horrible disturbance, and made even moreso due to the fact that is can so easily avoided (either turn it off or turn it to vibrate). In the end, it's better to actually try to improve classes and the college, so that the tendancy to do these "distracting" things would be reduced or even eliminated. But that is the sensible thing to do, and if college has taught me anything it's that it never actually does the senible thing. Almost always the excat oppisite. In my experience, if there is candy on the table, people are going to eat it, even if they know they shouldn't. There is no way that a classroom of students with full internet access would be able to resist the temptation to log onto /., AIM, ICQ, IRC, Bearshare, whatever. The best way to keep the student from partaking of such forbidden fruit is to simply fence it off.
Your arguments are based on a selfish view of your education (I don't like it, so it doesn't matter what I do). The fact of the matter is, you are ONE student among many, and your actions can completely mess up the environment for everyone else. If you want to waste your tuition money, go ahead, it's your right. But it is NOT your right to interfere with other students and their tuition money.
This is the reason blind consumerism is ruining higher education.
Just because you paid your money doesn't mean that you don't owe respect to the people around you, and the teachers who are trying (in vain, apparently) to instruct you.
Thanks for dropping out.
/bluesninja
Everyone keeps mentioning this deafening keyboard clicking that keeps them from being able to learn anything. Most "web surfers" I've seen in classrooms click a link...read for a few minutes...click a link...read for a few minutes...type "yahoo.com" and read their email for a few minutes.
Is that any more or less distracting than a roomfull of flipping notebook/textbook pages every minute?
It seems there are knee-jerk reactions in both sides of this argument. Everyone is either "No net censorship! Damn the DMCA(?) !" or "These sonic-booming keyboards with the ultra-loud clicky keys are preventing my education!"
Maybe if you can't handle reading with keyboard/mouse noise in the background, you have deeper issues? How do you ever plan on working at a real job with a room full of keyboards all going at once?
My wife is an English professor and she loves the online essay providers. She loves the way she can simply load the RTF file she requests from her students into EVE and watch the computer tell her which students she needs to drum out of college (she averages around five or six a semester). She also uses google to search for phrases that don't sound like the students work. Take a look at the Essay Verifacation Engine (EVE) at http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml.
As for using google to answer questions, well if your questions are so simple or fact based that google returns a good answer in a reasonable amount of time then your question was bad. Good questions require thought and processing.
Quizes and tests are a different matter altogether; computers should be on the floor with the book(s) unless it is an open book test.
The thing to remember about cheaters is that they are lazy (and I am not talking about laziness as a virtue here). They tend to fuck up and get caught.
The only people who fear technology are those who don't understand it.
schools jumping on the technology bandwagon, buying computer equipment etc, without having any notion of what to do with computers once they get them. The focus of many schools is obtaining technology that is supposed to aid the student's learning process while neglecting to train the teachers these computers will go to how to use them.
I can personally atest that I have seen brand new PCs and Macs sit idle in schools I did volunteer work in because the teacher either didn't know how make use of the computer or the computer didn't augment the material in any meaningful way.
The only use I have seen computers in these situations get any meaningful use are through those students who have interest in computers and take the initiative to explore them outside of class.
Don't get me wrong, I believe there should be computers in schools, but there should be a greater emphasis on integrating teachers and relevant course material with computers. Buying dozens of computers just to spend grant money and appear bleeding edge serves no one.
We're talking about kids here. There is nothing
to be gained by preserving the rights of
Immature adults to goof off in class.
Remember passing notes in class when you were a kid? Allowing unfettered messages/email is like that on steriods.
I taught middle school students (7th grade) for
a few weeks in 1995, when the public net
was young. All they had was email access to
me and each other. After 1 day, several kids had mailed about hundred messages to each other, including sexually explicit messages to every
girl in the class.
And these were supposededly "good kids." The
only option I had at the time was
to pull the plug on the net and it was a computer
class! What is being proposed to me sounds like
a better sol'n than that, don't you think?
ayershome.org/users/eric