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On the Problems with Laptops in School?

Posted by Cliff on from the distractions-in-class dept.

resistor2004 asks: "My school has recently implemented a program of issuing laptops to all students from 7th grade through highschool seniors, and providing a massive 802.11b network across the campus. As you can imagine, it's a serious nightmare for the IT department. Apart from the usual run of broken laptops we have had a major problem with students usign email during class. Is there any effective way to allow the teacher to monitor the student's activity from his/her own laptop? Some of our teachers have come up with creative methods like installing mirrors in the back of the classroom so that they can see the students' screens, but a method that could be performed on the laptop would be even better." Might VNC be a potential solution to this problem. I would think that with a few creative scripts, and a working VNC client, a teacher can pop up a window to see what students are doing on their school-provided computers. Can you think of other ways teachers may be able to monitor students laptop use in-class to insure that they are at least not horsing around when they should be learning?

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. If you are the lucky school that gets Apple iBooks by soyle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apple has a system called "Apple Network Administrators Toolkit". Amongst other things, it lets you remote control a Mac just like VNC. If you are the teacher you could have the admin tool on your computer and monitor up to nine (I think) screens as minitures on your own screen. It is up to the admin to decide wether those being monitored will see a pair of eyeballs in the menubar when they're being monitored.

    Very typical for Apple, it is extremely difficult to find any information on their website. The closest is probably http://www.apple.com/networking/ana

    Last I checked the client came free with every copy of Mac OS and the serverpart was included in AppleShare IP.

  2. VNC monitor is an answer by iamcadaver · · Score: 3, Informative
    This is under the 'contributed' section of AT&T's vnc site:

    VncMonitor John Wilson writes:

    VncMonitor is intended for those people who need to monitor several remote systems. A single window is used to present all the displays. The tab or backtab key allows the user to switch between systems. The return key causes the currently viewed system display to be transferred to its own window and the user can interact with the system using the mouse and keyboard. Closing the new window returns the monitored system display back to the initial window.

    The configuration of VncMonitor is controlled by a file which contains all the information about what systems are to be monitored.

    A version can be downloaded from:

    VncMonitor

    --
    Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
  3. Re:Another non-technical solution by Alan+Shutko · · Score: 3, Informative
    Benefits over a paper notebook:

    • I'm much faster at typing than at handwriting. I'm much more likely to take detailed notes if typing.
    • My typing is much neater than my handwriting. I'm much more likely to be able to read my notes later if typing.
    • Electronic notes can be searched much more easily than paper. I'm much more likely to be able to find something in old notes if typing.
    • Electronic notes take less space than paper notebooks and are easier to store for long periods of time across multiple moves (ie, when said student goes to college). I'm more likely to continue to get use from my notes if typing.


    How likely is that? Well, my wife took notes on her laptop throughout college and found all the above advantages to be significant. If one believes in notes at all, they should probably agree that computerized notes are good. If you don't agree notes are good, then the laptop would have no additional benefit.
  4. Re:Plenty of ways. by El+Kevbo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Assuming that these are Windows computers, there are several tools that allow you to query a computer remotely and obtain a list of the currently running processes and kill them. For example, sysinternals has just such a suite of tools available freely.

    You could easily set up a scheduled task to look at the processes running on each computer and generate a list of ones that aren't on the "approved" list. I don't think that this is the right solution to this problem, but it is a possible one.

    Kevin