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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.
Since when? What kind of classes require Net use? Just a few years ago, we used books and paper and we learned just fine.
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
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.
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
Well, let's say you are takin a class in a computer science field (coding, architecture, etc). Computers suddenly become necessary. Unless you are learning how to design MS user interfaces, in which case crayons and construction paper are all you really need.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
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.
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
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
"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 feel that web surfing during class is sooo important, then why not skip class and stay in your dorm? That's why universities stick those little Ethernet jacks in dorm rooms. The rest of the class probably doesn't care to hear the keyboard clacking or the various annoying sounds of AIM (some idiots at my school still don't know how to turn off the speakers on the machines!).
Some people actually show up to class to learn something. If you have no interest in learning, please don't show up and bother everyone else who's there to learn.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
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.
I have a friend who works at a large and reputable business school. They are quite concerned about wireless networking and the potential for cheating. The department has asked them to shut down the wireless access points during class hours to avoid that problem. They have tried to do this by a combination of perl code and cron jobs. I pointed out to them that most cards can associate with each other in ad-hoc mode. Needless to say, they didn't like that :-)
...
The truly entertaining part is that they provide each of their MBA students with a wireless PDA and similar gadgetry. Some of the folks pointed out that this is the business school so the likelihood of these students knowing how to work around these limitations is limited. I pointed out that there is, in fact, a computer science department and engineering school on this campus. While MBAs are not so good at technology, they excel at networking and getting other people to do their work.
The real issue is how we will deal with this in the future as technology progresses. We see the beginnings in the current arguments about giving kids calculators during tests. I imagine this will follow on into issues along the lines of "what's wrong with being able to do a web search during an exam." At some point it will be up to professors and other educators to develop problems which can't be found via a web search. Inconvenient for them, but it will be a fact of life before long.
Of course, you could just ban technology (PDAs, laptops, etc) during exams
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.
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.
While students like me are the minority, I think those that are understand that if we are going to do anything else during a lecture that we'll do it with minimal disruption in the class. I'd still favor blocking internet access and the like, only because what's on my computer screen can be seen by people behind and to the sides of me, and that can cause a disruption if it's the wrong type of images, and there are other ways of keeping oneself busy without disrupting others in a class.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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.
If you don't want to do what you are supposed to be doing in class, then don't go. Reading email, browsing the web, or blabbering away on instant messengers trying to find out where the next party is in the middle of a class is simply put, rude. If people would act with a little bit of responsibility and common sense these steps would never be looked at.
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.
This is the typical me me me mentality (its MY education, my money, i'll act anyway I damned well please in class) that causes money and resources to be wasted on things like this.
It is your money and your time, but the professor has decided to waste it. Nothing that they students are doing are violating any fundamental set of morals. So let them do what they damn well like.
Do you maybe think that profs got annoyed at hearing the constant giggles and chuckles and tap tap tap of the keyboard going away while they are trying to talk? Or maybe the fact that the prof is annoyed that he or she is taking his time to walk around and see how people are doing on a lab, and you are there ignoring everything and doing your own thing?
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.
As for cell phones and pagers, they should be banned from the classroom unless you have a reason or they vibrate only. No traditional college student is so important that they can't put there phone and pager on hold for 50 minutes.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Taking their cue from kindergarten (a German word; note that Germany was home to the Nazis) classes, many colleges are now requiring students to "raise their hand" before speaking during class. Civil libertarians are outraged. "This procedure will have a chilling affect, a chilling...affect...on discourse in the very institutions that were founded to encourage it," an ACLU spokeswoman stated. When asked whether the ACLU would file suit, she refused to comment. "This is a violation of my first amendment rights!" complained a stupent at a major university. "I should be able to discuss last night's episode of 'Friends' any time I want to! Fascists!"
You might stop the stupid people.
But if you have access to the school's internal network--you can ssh to one of your probably several university shell accounts--you can get out. And for the most part, there isn't anything they can do to stop that. Do your pr0n surfing, etc from another machine. I doubt the prof has a button to turn off all of the traffic going out of the campus.
They say the prof can capture e-mail and/or IM and display it. I have to imagine that isn't a very robust system. Maybe just consists of packet sniffing? That probably won't be useful if you have ssh'ed into another machine and send your mail/IM from there.
So maybe they could shut down ssh on school machines. Well, if you live in a dorm, set up ssh on a different port on a machine there and ssh into that. You could have all kinds of fun with that.
The list of ways to get around this kind of thing goes on and on, and IMHO you will probably learn more about networking than you might from a monotone prof. You get out of class what you put into it. If students don't care enough to pay attention, I say let them fail, and if they can pass anyway, let them pass.
This sig is false.