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.

Comments

college is a service.

[McFly777]

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.

Re:college is a service.

[s20451]

At least when I attended college as long as you weren't being disruptive it was your choice to pay attention or not.

It depends on your definition of "disruptive". As a grad student I've instructed my share of classes, and I can definitely tell the difference between a class that is largely paying attention and one that is not. It's tough to teach a class that is disinterested; there's no give-and-take between the lecturer and the students. It's difficult to quantify, but there is a definite relationship between the instructor and students such that a more interactive class leads to a better teaching environment for everyone.

Further, although they're indispensible in labs, I dispute the usefulness of an internet-connected computer in a lecture. Even if it can be used to display instructional material, in my opinion it's a rather sterile way to teach (and learn). Of all the instructional aids I have seen, nothing beats the chalkboard. There's something about the pacing and flow of a chalkboard lecture that's impossible to capture using transparencies, PowerPoint, or the Internet -- probably because a lecturer using the chalkboard is proceeding at the same pace that the students are writing notes, so the students have time to absorb.

Besides, if you're going to be surfing the web anyway, why do it in class? Why not skip and do it from your dorm room or wherever?

DMCA?

[Tom7]

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.

Fix the problem, not the symptom

[dilger]

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.

Spoken like a true lamer "d00d"

[Raunchola]

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.

I actually agree with this one

[Uttles]

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.

Submitter simply wrong

[JimRay]

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.

Huh?

[Shotgun]

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.

They're worried about cheating

[speed_bump]

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 ...

Can be distracting to those of us TRYING to learn

[sid_vicious]

The prevailing argument for not restricting access seems to be "I've paid the money - if I don't want to learn, I should be able to distract myself in any way I see fit."

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.

What the schools are really trying to do

[John Murdoch]

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

In related news....

[dillon_rinker]

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!"