Slashdot Mirror
Pinnacle, Online Grades, Skipping School and More
Ishkibble writes "The Matrin County School
Board has a new way of post a student's
grades online for a parent to check. Pinnacle is the name of the
program, a simple java applet. Not only does Pinnacle log student's grades, but
also attendance and conduct. The way grades are accessed are by inputting the
first 6 digits of your social security number and the first 5 letters of your
last name. With a logon system as simple as this, one has to question the
security and privacy of the students. This has been making my life a living
hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
So, the only way your parents wouldn't be able to check up on you would be if, say, the site gets Slashdotted? :)
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
I agree that the security of the system is lacking and probably wouldn't take a lot of effort to circumvent.
However, as a parent, having access to my child's progress in school without continually bugging all 7 teachers is an excellent idea. It gives me an opportunity to see if he needs help without waiting 9 weeks. (Mind you, he has NO problem with asking for help when he needs it.)
You indicate that your parents are putting you through hell daily to make sure you've done your homework -- is this an indication that you've had problems getting it done in the past? Maybe if the HW is finished before the fun is started, they might lighten up a bit in the future.
-- Rick
So you being expected to do what you're supposed to is a "living hell"? The real world is gonna eat you alive. :)
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Why don't you just do your homework and quit whining? It seems that you parents wouldn't check in on your progress if they trusted you enough to do it on your own.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
"every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
:)
You'll reap the rewards for your parents vigilence.
Hhahahahahahaha who am I trying to fool...unlucky
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
The system reports conduct .. so with language like that buddy .. you wouldn't be getting good marks!
We'll take care of that little problem for you.
However, you should be doing all your homework without being forced! School is already too easy, and if you skip any of it you'll be the only one at McDonald's who can't make change! You should be asking your teachers for extra homework!
...
Your parents are looking out for your best interest. And you're complaining?
!Sig
Damn kids always slacking. Why in my day we had to walk 6 miles in all weathers and got beaten every day whether we needed it or not. We didn't have these fancy-schmancy Nintendos we had to make our own entertainment blah blah bitch bitch ad nauseum
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Yeah, it must be a real burden to have parents who care that you're doing well and bother to find out how you're doing. You'd be much better off with inattentive parents that didn't give a shit about you.
The system does need better security (like issuing parents a login and password). However, there's pretty much nothing wrong with the idea. Do your homework, punk.
Well, the authentication mechanism does seem unsecure - that is something the school needs to work on, or they're just setting themselves up for a lawsuit if it's used in an inappropriate way.
But... You complain that your parents find out what happens to you at school? That your legal guardians can find out if you try to deceive them and not do schoolwork? Hear - methinks it's the worlds smallest violin playing the worlds saddest song...
How about actually attending school and doing the homework?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Here's a slightly old article on a Supreme Court case related to this issue.
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
more importantly, why does your school look like a 1950's era prison?
As a student, I know how much this sucks. But then again, when I become a parent, I know that I'll be glad that things like this are around. Security is only a small problem.. why the hell would a student hack it just to find out someone else's grades? They won't be able to change their own through it.
Those who watch their backs meet death from the front.
... we use similar systems for checking grades and such. There was a big debate over whether or not it was secure enough, and they eventually switched everyone over to a different system using random numebrs and letters. The result? EVERYONE hated it. They immediately switched back, it turned out no one really cared. Its my guess it'll be the same in this case. -Kiriwas
Wether you believe it or not your parents are doing only because they care. You might not think it now but you will look back at some point and realise they are doing what they think is best for you.
As for the privacy issues ok prehaps its not so great but at least they are trying even though a custom username/password combination might be better
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Could we please refrain from endless posts telling this kid to quit whining and do his homework. I am sure he was exaggerating a little for dramatic effect.
Crack it once and turn them in on a FERPA violation.... (FERPA == Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco/ferpa/)
I work in a Community College and everything we do with student online statistics and information has to follow FERPA security guidelines.
I think we'd all enjoy a nice cold beverage. -David Letterman
Do your homeworkd, slacker. When you're 18, then you can complain about your privacy.
To the poster: your parents sound like they're doing their job. Be glad they're interested in your achievement. If all parents felt the same way, our society would be in a wholly different situation.
That said, the login process probably does need to be changed, but doing that might end up defeating the purpose: if they sent a login via snail mail, kids are likely to intercept it. Then again, if the whole area knows about it, parents would get suspicious about why they haven't received theirs. It's a simple problem to fix, though, and doesn't change the fact that the underlying program keeping parents informed is a great idea.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
ccm have done this for years with ePortal.
moo
Well if someone has that much of your SSN, you probably have bigger security/privacy issues than someone simply looking up your grades. Though in general the idea of using ones SSN (or parts thereof) just doesn't leave you with a warm fuzzy.
As to your parents, well it's unfortunate that they feel compelled to use a tool like this in the way that they do. However, the bigger question is WHY they feel compelled to have to use it. It may be the "wow, we can do this" factor, which often times wears off. It could be that you are flakey and put them in a position to think that they HAVE to do this in order to make sure you are getting your homework done. I don't know which. But in any case, have you tried simply talking to them about the whole issue? Parents CAN be reasonable when talked to in an adult fashion (i.e. talk to them like and adult and they're more likely to treat you like one).
Some schools require that the parents sign all homework that gets turned in!
;-)
This way, you can still do an inferior job.
What's next: radio controlled dog collars that shock you until your homework is done, or if you cut class.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I see no reason why a kid who reads /. should be forced to do the crud I used to get for things like geography homework.
They should bump his grades up for trying to get the site /.ed
I a Customer who uses this *thing*. It has a Win32 "thick client" that back-ends into a Sybase SQL Anywhere database, and this Java client to allow external users to access the database. The dumb thing uses its own security database, so now when we add new teachers to the district-wide LDAP single-sign-on system, we also have to go manually add them to the "Pinnacle" database.
The company that installed it into my Customer site encouraged teachers to use *hard* to guess passwords like their first names. Further, anybody with an ODBC driver for Sybase SQL Anywhere can just "connect" to the back-end database and "go at it". Couple this with the *rancid* filesystem permissions that the installer put on it ("Oh-- why is is a problem that any user can write to the directory where the "thick client" EXE is installed... Ho, hum."), and you've got a recipe for disaster...
Oh, to be young again...
Sorry, Buddy, but this a perfectly justified use of private data- you parenst should know anyway.
And if you really think it's that insecure - prove it
Oh, by the way son, until today, I didn't know that you posted on
testing out my trending skills
This thing is crying out to be hacked.
True story: when I was in High School, an automated phone service was instigated, in which if you skipped class a computer would automatically call home and inform on you. Well, I had better things to do than go to class Every Single Day, and I sure didn't want to wait around in the evening just to be the one that picked up the phone.
So, once I got the call, I taped it; then, using an acquired phone list of the students, randomly, and at a late hour, called and played this message back. Parents were furious that the school was calling them so late; students were pissed that they were getting calls when they had attended; the credibility of the system was shot to shit. So whenever someone actually skipped, they would just report that it must've been the Mad Phone Prankster and that the call wasn't legitimate. A $30K computer system shut down with $1 worth of Memorex.
Yeah Dawgs! Garfield Class of '88.
--
$tar -xvf
1. You should show up to school, it is your parents responsibility to ensure you do.
2. You should do your homework, again your parents should make sure you do.
3. You should have some privacy, and your parents should let you have it. However if you aren't trustworthy enough to do your homework and go to school, you deserve what you get.
4. The risk of use of this system by unauthorized persons is unacceptable.
This is an arguement of privacy vs responsible supervision, like having the "internet computer" facing back into the room to watch what your kids are doing.
I'd be willing ot bet that if you always show up for school, and always do your homework (or at least get near perfect grades). Your parents won't bother checking up on you.
Otherwise wait till you're 18, then bitch out any school that releases personal information without your consent.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any home work and won't let me do anything till it's done
Life is unfair isn't it? Poor little guy, he must do homeworks now! And that's because his parent now know he has homeworks to do.
Dude, you should regroup with all you exploited friends and march against the system! Maybe you can even get Bush jr. to take out the regime you are living under!
So you have to do your homework. Big, fat, hairy deal.
The real world is going to eat you alive, you little baby. If you don't do your homework, you can't go out with your friends. If you don't do your work in the real world, you don't have a job (unless you are management) and thus don't get to eat.
EFGearman
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
My wife (a High School math teacher) will tell you that her best students usually have parents who are involved with their children's schoolwork. This will make it easier for parents and teachers to help encourage their kids to learn.
Something like this would make both the teacher's and parent's job much easier. The teacher doesn't have to arrange as many meetings with parents (only the parents of really problem kids) and the parent doesn't need to rely on the student for accurate information about their conduct, homework, and grades. I was in High School, too.
I hope people realize that parents that make sure their kids work hard in high school are all too rare these days, and it's a blessing to have them.
Just ask the students in my wife's Geometry class.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
This does assume that the parents are able to use the computer....
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
So all you need is part of a social security number and a name to see what others are doing? I can see coaches doing this to check up on their student-athletes or siblings to rat each other out. Can't wait until someone hacks that system.
Whiney sibling: "Mom, Billy has homework."
Billy: "No I don't, liar!"
Whiney sibling: "Oh yeah, that's not what the webpage says!"
Its really lame that the 8 hours you spend in school isn't enough time. If you have to bring school home with you then someone isn't teaching well. There should be ample to time during school hours for schoolwork to get done if the students wants, instead of being forced home with it. Its basicly training everyone to be ok with bring work home for the rest of their lives and thats not cool and most people don't get paid enough for that.
This is getting way off-topic.
The point isn't that his grades suck, it's the fact that this is happening, and whether or not it is legal. Plus the security.
Those who watch their backs meet death from the front.
What will be interesting to see is if grades are better becuse of the scrutiny your parents may put you under.
We always bang on that greater transparency of Government on Companies will force them to behave better.. I guess it also applies to individuals/smaller groups. If it improves grades great...the security of this is appaling though and perhaps has some legal/privacy implications for the education institutions that use it - in the UK the Data Protection Act requires compaies to secure their data on individuals.
.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
So, you've got parents that make you do homework. Deal.
WTF is this doing on
I don't think you're going to get too much from slashdot. Wait 'till you're older brother. You'll be wanting something like this from the school your children go to.
Though, I'd agree they need to change the authentication system.
Privacy issues aside, which sound dodgy--sounds like you have good parents dude.
-meI'm not trying to be nasty, but it seems to me that if your parents prefer to check with an online system about your homework assignments rather than with you then that's something that is more worth worrying about than the online system's security. Just a thought.
Yeah, it must be a real burden to have parents who care that you're doing well and bother to find out how you're doing. You'd be much better off with inattentive parents that didn't give a shit about you.
Good point. Even if your parents are getting obsessive over this, the problem lies between you and them. Not with the report system.
"The Martin County School Board has a new way of post a student's grades online for a parent to check. Pinnacle is the name of the program(semicolon) a simple java applet. Not only does Pinnacle log student's grades, but also attendance and conduct. The way grades are accessed is by inputting the first 6 digits of your social security number and the first 5 letters of your last name. With a logon system as simple as this, one has to question the security and privacy of the students. This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months(period) Every night my parents go on and check to see if I have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
I'd give you a D
However, if I were you, I'd start planting inscesent viri on your parents computer and messing with their connection. (Ping flooding on the local network with a couple of linux boxes works pretty well.) Then again, if your parents are net savvy, use your judgment.
Best of luck,
-=fshalor
You actually have to do your homework? OMG, more violations of the Geneva Conventions!
The security part needs improving but overall this sounds like a good idea. Homework assignments are all recorded in one place so everyone knows what was assigned, no disagreements or confusion not just between parents & students but also students & teachers. Of course parents should talk to their children about school and their homework but this site shouldn't serve as a substitute but rather a starting point, one which eliminates the dreary recitation of what homework was assigned.
No computer system should *ever* use SSN's as the user name or password. The ubiquitous presence and use of SSN's for such purposes are one of the main reasons identity theft is going rampant these days.
Instead, they should let every parent create their own pair of user name and password that can't directly be linked back to either student or parent (well, unless they chose to use their real names, of course). That's, for example, how Washington Mutual is handling their online banking service.
On a slightly unrelated note, how is this supposed to work in school districts that by law have to give access to illegal immigrants who by their very nature have no SSN? There are quite a few places, namely in California, where the law says that schools can't ask for citizenship or immigration status and have to accept children regardless of that.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Slashdot Poll
My Crime...
Token Sucking
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Not doing homework
Lovin' too much, baby
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Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I can't believe that we are going to help this kid out from not doing his homework. Sheesh.
The world is really a sucky place, and this is one of the reasons why.
To the kid: listen, you think this sucks now, but later on in life, if you develop a decent work ethic, you will thank your parents. They love you and are doing the right thing.
Regards the privacy concerns, school grades for a minor child just don't seem all that sensitive. I mean, our report cards used to sit on the teacher's desk and it was relatively common knowledge who did well and who didn't. Furthermore, if someone has the SSN of a minor child, something is radically wrong. No credit applications to worry about in the past, for example.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Many dont, and in time those children will live to regret it.
Just be thankfull your parents care enough to be involved.. And do the same for yours when the time comes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sheesh, this may be worse than the uni system that which used only the social. There, of course, the use of a computer script made querying many SSN's easy; and of course the script kiddie could make his attack more successful by setting a reasonable number range based on the region most students come from.
Many of these kids were born near each other will have at least the first three or even five numbers in common. That means it is a trivial thing for your nemesis to hack into your data.
www.cgisecurity.com/lib
I think it sad that it comes to this. That we feel have to use these tools in order to keep tabs on our children. But if our children put us in the position where we have to use these checks, so be it.
The part of this system I dislike is the authentication. Maybe SSN/Name combination could be used for initial login and a personal userid/PIN/password be created once for each student. Or maybe there is a better way to do it.
On the other hand, if you're that embarassed about your grades and attendance, maybe you should try going to school one in a while.
It must really suck having parents that give enough of a shit about you to check up on your schoolwork.
Don't you wish your parents didn't give a damn, so you could goof off, never complete your homework, fail tests, fail classes, and end up being a worthless leech on society?
What do they know, anyway? It's not like they've been through all this.
Check out http://www.parlant.com.
I presented by well meaning but slightly dim parents with any unmarked work, whether it was homework or not. Then for the actual homework I'd just slap out any old rubbish in the 10 minute break before the class began, or even do in the preceeding lesson. That freed up a lot of time for doing the messing about on my sisters microcomputer that eventually led me to a job thats just as interesting and well paid as all my ex-classmates, except for the guy who went into journalism and spends his days interviewing hot babes from TV shows like Buffy and Stargate. Bastard.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
testing out my trending skills
That's really an improper use of SSN. I thought it was illegal to use it as an ID for anything other than tax purposes. I know when my unversity started using it as a student ID, they still allowed people to request another number instead of using it. As for the parents, bust your ass for a few weeks and they'll stop checking so much. It's good for you anyway. Ya, I woulda laughed at me back then too. OTOH, if your grades are acceptable they shouldn't be so picky. Who knows, maybe you schmooze the teacher to get good grades - that's as important as knowing what you're doing in a lot of places I've worked.
Those parents who are conscientious or care enough about their children and their performance in school, that is, those that will use this site, are probably not the parents who SHOULD be using this site.
There are obvious exceptions, but it seems to me that the majority [not all] of kids who have real problems in school are the children of uninvolved parents to begin with.
Sure, there will be those involved parents, who think "B" stands for "Bad" who will be all over this site and love it; they can really pressure their kid to SUCCEED! These are the same parents that probably put up "motivational" posters in their kid's room.
I thought we have established, in general, that "micro-management" in the ADULT world is a bad thing? Are kids really going to learn to be responsible if someone is looking over their shoulder every day? Or, are the periodic student-reviews (report cards) and periodic management meetings (parent-teacher meetings) a better way to allow the student to learn responsibility for themselves...
This of course is all my opinion.
It would be my contention that the rights to privacy outweigh the substantive long term benefits from such a system - because in the end, I'm not seeing any REAL benefit.
CAUTION: It may be possible for someone monitoring your internet connection to view the results of this inquiry.
In marin county this is ALSO written on all windows: CAUTION: It may be possible for someone looking in your windows to view the results of this inquiry.
On Mirrors: CAUTION: It may be possible for someone looking into this mirror at the correct angle to view the results of this inquiry.
On Paper: CAUTION: It may be possible for someone to view the results of this inquiry - when you set down these papers.
Welcome to Paranoia Land, where every unlikely threat must be mentioned... no matter how unlikely... or insignificant the consiquences.
This text to overcome lamness filter: ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
Who's castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power
just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me,
you saw it didn't you?
Shut up, sit down, show some respect (whether it's genuine or not) and learn something, for god's sake, so you don't end up pushing a shopping cart containing all your worldly possessions and scrounging the sidewalks for change and cigarette butts...
-- "Everything to the Internet!" - Michael Capellas -- "Everything to Bangalore!" -
Change a straight-A student's grades to Fs, and see how quickly they implement better security measures.
I mean, hell, one would think that the administration would realize that when it comes to this sort of thing, some of their students are probably smarter than them.
hang brain.
Your job as a minor is to attend school, do your homework, and graduate. That's your job - it's what you do to earn the food/shelter/clothing your parents provide to you. It's what is expected of you. Deal with it.
"Population 1,656"
Feedback is a great tool to motivate people, and I now mean especially the positive feedback. The system described above seems nice, but the teachers should use it (also) for good deeds. Try to give every day as many positive as negative feedbacks and You will be amazed of the effect !
And of course the security stinks. Now the neighbor could see how our kids are doing. That's untolerable !
vi /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 stupid.school.board.edu
esc:wq
Not sure how to make it work on windows though
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Depending how the setup is, that might not require hacking the site itself.
All the sibling has to do is download the HTML document, change it, and then show it to the parents.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
if there is any input, then that system is no good. it would be easy to get the source, see what is really collecting the data (likely just using POST to a script) - then you can bypass the applet and just brute force your way through the number combinations (since it is the first set and not the last, you know that it is much more likely to start with certain numbers) and then last names (there is even probably a public resource with all of the student names).
This is especially easy if the server isn't looking for excessive attempts from the same IP. If you crank through them too quickly, it is feasible that it will actually slow the server down, so finding the right rate is of relative importance there.
if it is read only, it isn't that huge a deal if someone else knows that you failed history and have a lot of homework this week - so who cares?
technically a privacy issue, but nothing too much and it doesn't sound like they are getting any info that they could then either use against you, or use as a way to act as you to some other party (were they able to get bank account numbers, the full SSN, or other data like that, it would be something to care about).
Other than that - you should be glad that your parents show interest in you, and you should do your work and quit whining.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
This is just another instance where lazy adminstrators and programmers use the SSN as a unique identifier. There's nothing inherent about your U.S. SSN that requires it be linked to your grades. I fight this battle all the time with health care providers and other places where you need an 'account number'. It's easy for them - you never forget it, and its guaranteed to be unique. I always force them to generate a random 9 digit number instead. Why link my medical records to my tax accounts?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Back in my day, we started at 7:30, and were done by 2. That's 6.5 hours, and that included at least 45 minutes for lunch. IIRC there were 6 50 minute periods - 5 hours of instructional time per day. Even including waking up, walking to the bus, and transport back home, it wasn't 8 hours.
creation science book
Let see, you are worried about this system because your parents have the ability to check and see what homework you have that night. Riddle me this, if you do your home work (which I gather you don't from your upset comment), then what would you have to worry about?
Regards,
jlk
( Take the hint, do your homework!!! )
yea yea yea, there's a lot of "stupid kid, do your homework, love your parents" stuff going around here. and I totally agree...
/.) and that company can roll over and die.
BUT. This is a serious security concern. In todays world, there is no excuse for lazy password policy and non-encrypted personal informaion flowing over the web. This Pinnicle company needs to get it's shit together because 1 simple hack (which will probably happen now that it's been on
If you are 18 years old you can run for school board. All the other 18 year olds you know can vote for you. Once you are on the school board you can get rid of this system. Isn't it nice how our government works? In the town and county levels there isn't the corruption that exists up top. You can fix things there.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Do what I always used to (and still) do. The more they ask the less they get.
It's the old reward good behaviour ignore bad behaviour training technique.
If I'm given some homework, I may do it.
If they tell me to do it, I probably won't.
If they compalain that I didn't do it, I'm not doing it next time either.
It only took else for the next 5 years at that school....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Why should the parent keep a 24/7 monitoring system on their son or daughter, their no longer a baby and beed to be taught responsibility.
It sets a bad future precedent that someone will always look over their shoulder. Wait until they start cubicle work, then they won't know any difference with someone peeping in on them.
Does that scare you?
if it is windows just hack the hosts file so any access to that ip address goes to ...... ;)
use your imagination
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
What kind of grades are these?
"i 0WNz0r All j00R 9R4De5, j00 w4nK1N9 PiMPL3 P3+r1e diShES!!!3LE+3 H@X0R "
I'm writing a stern note to the principal.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I had the excellent opportunity to attend a private boarding school for my sophomore year of high school. It was quite frankly the best school and time that I had had at school.
Sure, just like in public school, I fell to the bottom of the social structure, but I excelled academically while attending that school. I know that if I had the opportunity to have completed my high school education, I would be much farther ahead in life then I am now.
However, I am digressing...
While at that school, the faculty had full control over the students lives, only the students that excelled in their studies had privelages above the students that didn't excel.
For instance, everyday, we were given roughly two hours after class, prior to dinner of "free-time" where we could go where we wanted to go and do what we wanted to do.
In the evening, prior to hitting the sack, we had mandatory study time. Unless you were excelling in your studies, you were to stay in your own room and study. If you were excelling, then you had the freedom to study where you wished or do whatever other activity that you wished.
So, in my case, straight after classes, I focused on tearing through my homework. After that, I took the evening free-time to keep up with a few television shows, shoot pool with other excelling students, attend evening on campus bonfires and slurry of other activities that simply weren't available durring the after classes free-time.
If my parents had been as forceful on me, as that school was, I would have likely developed a much better study habit then I currently have and would have continued to excel in life.
As it stands, I am doing okay, but I really could be doing better.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
You'll never (in the reasonable future) see this in my town. Partly for budget reasons, partly for training, partly for lack of vision, but mostly just because the schools are trying to barely cope with just about everything else that goes wrong day to day.
We're wired *fairly* well, there seems to be at least 1 computer in every classroom, and several labs containing 10-20 full workstations. But from what I've seen (and I've gone to town level I.T. meetings) the "technical staff" (and make big emphatic air quotes around that) is marginal at best and struggles to keep ANYTHING running. I've been told not to piss her off because she makes about $25k/year and there is no way the town could find a replacement.
The other end of the equation is the end user teachers....I was at a parent teacher conference last night and inquired about the computer in the front of the room. I asked "is it online?", she replied "I don't know".
So there are two problems, 1) inadequate technical staff (they will not accept volunteers) and 2) inadequate end user (teacher) training....both of these can be overcome with lots of money and in Massachusetts, it is just not forthcoming.
SuperID
Help me find a job, win $1000! [macetech.com]
Would this happen to be the voice of experience speaking? :)
Blockwars: a real-time, multiplayer game similar to Tetris.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The ultimate privacy concern is that I know you're going to have chicken nuggets and a hamburger for lunch!
And what is a "yogurt platter"?
Software such as this (and Apple's more elaborate PowerSchool ) is at least getting parents more involved in school and their child's schoolwork, which is A Good Thing. As with anything else, the primary problem here is user education, i.e., the school administrators using other things besides SSNs to validate users.
But I'm glad to see more software like this developed for schools: with both parents usually working full-time, it makes it easier for them to get an idea of how their child is doing, and at least makes an attempt to bring them back into their child's education. As many of the other posters have stated, you should at least be glad that your parents are interested enough in your education to take action (which, even though they are technically required to until you're 18, many don't bother).
I am a high-school teacher, and our district is moving in this direction. The electronic gradebook is already in place, and next year parents will be able to see their child's alleged progress at any point during the school year.
Why "alleged"? Because my gradebook, like many teachers' gradebooks, is a work in progress. I might be behind in my grading, so the grade displayed might not be accurate. I might decide to drop a grade, but just haven't done so yet. There are a thousand and one things that need to be adjusted that parents simply can't see.
I intend to fight this by withholding the entry of any grades until the final week of the grading period. This way, parents (and teachers) who check on students' grades will find a 0 for the grade. They'll need to talk to me to find out the student's progress. During that discussion, we can talk about other things that might be affecting the student's grade that wouldn't show up in a simple on-line gradesheet (things like attitude, behavior, motivation, etc.).
I would urge the poster of this story to encourage their teachers (the understanding ones) to do the same.
Your parent's will get a blank page, or page can not be found and they won't know why. Just tell them the program was cancelled for privacy reasons.
If you have the time/skill/inclination you could set up a web server on your parent's computer and a website to post a phony version of your grades for your parent's consumption.
Though all things depending on children not to squeal ( and adults for that matter ) are guaranteed to get you caught, taking the heat for the following scam might be worth the money. You could set up the aforementioned phony website and charge fellow students to host a phony grade login for them to point their parent's host file to.
Of course, I do not advocate doing any of this to your parent's computer without permission, heck it is probably illegal to tamper with their computer in unauthorized ways and that could get you tried as an adult and sent to pound-me-in-the-a** prison for the rest of your life. Though I'd screw with my parent's computers if I happened to be a kid and if my parents happened to be nosy.
http://www.thnt.com/thnt/story/0,21282,720188,00.h tml - That was published today about my old highschool. More student teacher interaction needs to take place, not only to monitor students...but to monitor teachers and make sure they are doing there job. From a parents standpoint, its hard to tell if a teacher is really doing his/her job.
-Rob
notepad c:\windows\hosts. (or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. for WinXP )
add the line
127.0.0.1 www.sbmc.org sbmc.org
Nosy parents problem: SOLVED!
Though in general the idea of using ones SSN (or parts thereof) just doesn't leave you with a warm fuzzy.
Better to require the first part of your SSN than the last, though. The first 3 digits are assigned to a geographical place; either the place of your birth or where you first apply for a SSN, I don't recall which. The next 2 are something to do with birthdate: at the very least, odd year births have an odd here, evens have an even.
The last 4, though, are "random," or at least not explicitly derived from your name or birth or application circumstances. So it really peeves me when people want me to verify the last 4 of the soc number; that's the very part we should be MOST careful about. The first 5 could probably be determined by careful research anyway, so they're not (quite) as harmful to use as a personal "hash number" for things like logins.
In ten years, you'll be damned glad your parents are bothering to check up on you.
Though, IMO, that sounds a bit harsh, wait ten years. When all the hosers who were in school for nothing but social exercise are flipping burgers, you'll look back and laugh heartily at them.
Oy, parents that parent, in this day and age!
What a spectacle!
I live in Martin County, FL. Let me tell you; This system is a great tool for the simple reason that most people's (and kid's) view of education isnt quite the same as elsewhere in the country. The value placed on quality public education is just not sufficient. This new system provides an easy way parents can proactivaly keep their kids on track with minimal effort. Thanks to great beaches and a great climate its no real suprise that all the kids in Taco bell cant count change for poop.
The entire state of FL has its problems with public education, but giving parents instant involvement in their kids' daily shool life is a great start.
It's better than the security we had at my first university.
:p
$30k/year and they couldn't come up with a better student ID number than our social security numbers preceded by a zero. *snort*
Oh, and don't forget the little plastic student ID card, which was used for everything from buying sodas in vending machines, to purchasing things in the campus stores, to eating in the campus dining joints.
I'm still amazed that there haven't been massive identity thefts up there.
So what is, Ishkibble's name and SSN then?
He can have hundreds of nerds checking up on him.
And if he doesn't do his homework, Trogdor is going to burninate him.
The scary thing is that some good social engineering versus the school is bound to turn up some SSN's if you just have the name of a student.
Will this make the local paper?
Will they call Slashdot a "site for hackers"?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
There are some other really cool school management applications like this one. If you work in K-12 education, I think you should take a look!
http://www.askthevoid.com
(Self awareness)
(Realization of self inflicted stupidity)
(Flash forward to cleaning toliets at McDonalds when 62)
(weeping, sniff)
O meh god, i wasted mi lif3......
my high school still used Apple Imagewriter IIs to print the report cards. Well, guess what I happened to have at home.
Mom and Dad didn't see a real report card after the first one my freshman year. That's what they got for thinking that grades mattered.
I see alot of people basically saying "shutup, you're parents should be checking up on you because they care", and I can't help but wonder how the /. crowd can be so immensely stupid. Weren't you people there? Am I the only one here who went to an american public education system?
If the kids parent's cared they'd yank his ass straight out of that school and start trying to teach him something. And I'll bet that something wouldn't be television commercials for coke and nike like channel 1. Or back asswards history like "it was progress when we slaughtered 90 million natives but those nazis were real bastards". Hey, if it wasn't for the public schools, this kid might even get to live up to his potential instead of studying the same damn thing every other year while waiting for his classmates to catch up. Even putting my politics aside, and assuming that commercials and genocide are what all kids should learn, the schools here still suck. I've been up for altogether to long and don't feel like explaining, but I highly recommend "The Comprachicos" by Ayn Rand for a thorough explanation of why our educational system is shit (of course, Rand is a bit more eloquent:)
And one more thing before I go to sleep, what do you people think this kind of surveillance is going to teach kids? Alot have said this kid needs to be more trustworthy, but how the hell is someone supposed to learn trust without seeing it? Without recieving it? Not even from their parents.
And oh yeah, the security sucks.
Don't beg for the right to live - take it.
... damn if my parents knew half of what I did, or didn't do in school...
I am sure to spy on my kids but I am damn happy my parents couldn't spy on me. Of course my real hope is that my kids are smart enough to figure out to circumvent the system like I did. There in is the real education.
hehe.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Back in the day, I used to skip an assload of homework. In addition to leaving me unprepared for having work that I, you know, actually had to do, it occasionally embarassed me in front of teachers and parents in a big way.
;) )
You think this is bad? Try having to carry a little book around with you that your teacher signs every time you turn in an assignment, then having your folks look at that.
(Your privacy concerns over a system like Pinnacle are legitimate, but your carping about folks making sure that you actually do your homework will get you no sympathy here.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done.
Spoken like a true Slashdot poster. Society is thanking your parents, there are enough uneducated opinions as is.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
This system is just begging to be abused. Lets say a student applys for a part-time job at a local fast food emporioum. The employer has your name, has your SSN, knows where you go to school.. whats to stop them from logging in to check your grades and attendance record? Nothing, it sounds like.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Doing a quick google search on Parent Internet Viewer you can come up with hundreds of hits. Also found the manufacturer site http://www.acadtech.com/. The web site appears to have been made with a FrontPage template, doesn't give you a warm fuzzy about the technology and security behind this web app.
Hoyty
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done
No offense to anyone, but how is Slashdot supposed to have credibility on "adult" issues like security, intellectual property, and technology when a story has some kid whining about his parents not letting him out to play until his homework is done?
I think it's pretty pathetic and this kid is pretty pathetic, too. When I was kid before computers, you didn't get to play outside until your homework was done, either. Mom and dad checked the assignments, grades, etc frequently to make sure you weren't fucking up.
If grades came back low at the end of the semester for anything but gym, freedoms were further curtailed until they went back up. If they went up and stayed up, greater freedoms were granted.
I'm glad they did this because -- *gasp* -- that's a lot how the real world works, except that nobody pays as much attention along the way, it all comes down to the the final exam.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
Hmmm, sounds like it's working.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Heh. At my second university, the login name was "sYYZZZZZ", where YY was the last two digits of the year you entered university, and ZZZZZ was a consecutively-assigned number.
The real kicker was that the password was your birthdate. Now, remember that most people entering university at the same time are going to be born within a span of only two years - and you could pretty much collect as many accounts as you wanted with a maximum of 730 tries per login.
There are wars in the world, and you call having to do your homework "living hell"?
-Enfors-
done in a Mexican university a couple of years ago and the main issue was security. At that time (~1996) the only option was using CGIs. I tell you getting RPCs to communicate and have it all in a secure manner was not an easy task.
On the good side students really liked the fact that they could check their grades online and faculty members were happy that they could use the web to upload their grades (or type them) in the browser and they would get all sorts of stats generated instantly.
My penguin ate my sig
Well if you had any questions about security, posting it on slashdot is definitely the acid test. I'm sure they'll log more unauthorized access attempts in the next 24 hours than in the lifetime of the project.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
The site asks for a student ID and pin number, not last name and SSN - now of course, the district may use your ssn as the student id, but I'd doubt it (since there would be obvious legal issues if the info was leaked). I hate to sound skeptical, but there's no evidence from the site that it uses your SSN. And I think there is good reason to doubt it, for the various reasons that have already been posted (most notably, what if you don't have a SSN? I didn't have one until a few years into elementary school.)
;)
Furthermore, unless you knew who you were looking up, the privacy of your infomation is pretty much safe - even if you go looking through the browser cache, the site clearly states that no identifying information is displayed on the pages the site generates - basically you could see somebody's grades, but not know who they were. This is basically equlivent to most classes I take, where they post all of our grades on a spreadsheet, identified by the first 4 digits of our student id (NOT SSN).
I think the district should be commended for making good use of the internet (even though I'm not a huge fan of the marquee, and how they make every sentence a different color.
The education system doesn't work, I doubt it ever has. The only purposes it serves is to make people subservient and give them a basic idea of the world. Schools are one of the root reasons people aren't in control of the goverment anymore. Schools way of making kids working is by saying "This is your only option, you will be happy in the end by doing this, you don't have any choice." I find this to be very close to the USA of today, which give or take is "Live here, you'll be happy if you live here and don't make a fuss, your only choice is to go somewhere else and die there." The only difference is in schools you have no rights. No freedom of speech, no right to talk much of the time, no right to leave, no right to protest, no right to even use the washroom without permission. I'd say its quite simliar to a prision. America itself is heading towards that, for example the patriot act rings a bell. The online grades are just another invadsion of school into homes (first invadsion would be homework). Hours are becoming longer in schools, where I am schools will be extending there day by two minutes next year (might no seem like much but its just a small increase in a slow large increase). Schools are taking away students conciousness, not by some sci-fi device, but by Conditioning (another word would be brainwashing) them. As one whos currently in Grade 11 and has been screwed up completely by schools I can say only this. School has made me neither human, nor a ignorant brainwashed moron. I've become what so many students shall become, a lost, unforfilled, soul. - Buyo-kun
...That I had mod points right now. That is hilarious!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I can't believe the patronizing ageist comments made toward this kid.
He post's an interesting articulate article in a "respected news source", and all people can do is tell him to get with the program and do his homework.
Slashdot is always arguing for free rights for the individual, but it seems to stop when it comes to kids.
And isn't bucking the system a trate of ours too?
This reminds me of the internet spying software parents use against their kids. Which always seems to me sad because the parents can't have honest open supportive discussions with there kids.
I look forward to the day were we can stop treating kids with such disdain, and fear. We make them wear uniforms and and say sir and mrs, we make them queue. They get treated like second class citizens.
And has the school education system ever really helped us so called "geeks". Everything I learnt, and I guess the same would go with most everyone else, is by problem solving, hacking and self-interest. Sure the basic math and english were important, but why do we still think imprisoning children to the day to day grind, when we hate it in our own jobs.
Ok that was my rant. I work at a school.
I think this kid is cool, because he's trying to solve a problem, and he reads slashdot.
The land of the free!
Mr. Ferris Beuler.
Wasn't there a GPS braclet that a parent could use to keep tabs on their children a while back.
Technology won't solve the problems of rearing children, it'll just change them.
When I think of my childhood, and how some of the techocr@p that is being mooted now would have affected me... I wonder what the children of the future will be like.
I copped more than enough trouble for the stuff I did as a kid. If I got nailed for everything I'd Still be Grounded.
What's next,
Portable lie detectors ?
Bugging the kids ?
Compulsary Drug, Alcohol and Nicoteen testing on Monday mornings ?
And even if you hover over a kids shoulder for 18 years, or 21, and correct every single mistake that they make before they make it, what happens then ? How are they going to deal with Adulthood ?
They're going to expect someone else to take responsibility for everything. Not their fault, Societies, the Governments, their Parents.
Damn.
We're Already TO G@D DAMN LATE
Blue Skies,
Soft Landings,
D
The Slashdot Laziness Filter failed to detect this child is wasting his time posting to Slashdot instead of doing his homework.
Obviously the solution is more software.
Dang, that makes me sound old...anyways, when I was in school I had an English teacher that always told us "If you love your kids, you'll beat them regularly."
Maybe the original poster (because he's apparently not doing his homework...or maybe even skipping classes) should be beaten a bit more. Nothing motiviates like a little of the old ultra-violence.
I think people are blowing over the privacy issue wrt to parents. Let's face it, for one legally you don't get any privacy from your parents until you're of age. Two, these grades are *supposed* to beknown by parents. That's why they send home report cards, etc. It's not a matter of the grades being your private data your parents shouldn't know, it's a matter of the fact that most kids don't want their parents to see the grades and hide/alter them, and this is a way for parents to get back to the truth and know how their kids are doing.
You should be able to be open with your parents on a simple thing like your grades, and work through whatever issues that brings up. If you can't work through that with them, god help you on the more troubling aspects of teenage/parent relations.
The system is a good idea overall, and I think every school should be moving this way.
Now on the other hand, there's the issue of their completely lax security. 6/7 social digits plus 5 digits of last name is just too easy. Anyone can get that. This is a serious privacy concern. You have to fix it without making the system cumbersome for the parents though. Probably the only really reliable way would be to have the parents come up to the school and register for the site physically and get a real username/pass - that way the person setting them up can actually verify who they are. I don't think it's too mcuh to ask the parents to care enough to show up at school once in their lifetime to establish a password for something like this. There's probably more creative schemes involving snail-mailing randomly-generated security numbers to parents' mailing addresses to authorize them for their kids and stuff, but the simple walk-in is probably easier to digest for an average school district.
11*43+456^2
Geeze cut the poster some slack. It can all be summed up in the this phrase: "It is the parents job to make your life a living hell." All depends on what side you're looking at. Being closer the the kid side than parent side, I remember lots of homework that was not only usless, but easily done in the 10 mins of homeroom the day it was due. Sure, if I had done every little scrap of hoemwork, I may have gotten As rather than A-s, and today, I'd probably be a College Graduate working at an international engineering firm. Oh wait, I AM!
Skippy
I think this is a bad system for all students, some are arguing that school is easy enough and homework should be done before fun begins anyway, but what if your childs idea of fun is going on the computer and programming C? I went through highschool with a great amount of ease and rarely did homework until the last minute (never if the teacher didn't check or grade it)... Just because school is easy doesn't mean we shoul give mass amounts of homework to correct that, we should change what we learn to more challenging stuff, then homework can be lessened but much more worth while. Most teachers give homework because they are required to, not because the believe it in. And I'm not sure about other schools, but in my old high school we were supposed to be given 40 minutes of homework from each class per day. I'm not sure if you realize this but 40 minutes of homework per class with 6 classes a day (probably the normal amount in any school) comes out to 4 hours of homework a night. So assuming the child gets home at 2:30-3:00 as I did, this brings them to 8:00 with an hour taken out for dinner and maybe going to the bathroom or something. If 2 hours seems like a long enough time to work on your C code per day, you've never been on a coding binge. The privacy issue is another thing. I think it's bad to use any part of your social security number for anything other than stuff which it really is absolutely necessary for. Wasn't there a rather large problem not that long ago relating to school databases getting hacked and those school's using student's social security numbers as their student ID. While mass identity fraud of high school students might not be too useful because their not really old enough to legally do much, the ability to obtain this information in any way because this program has lax security would probably make any parent think twice about wanting it implemented. I'm not a parent, but I understand that homework doesn't mean learning, nor does school. The most important learning I've done has always been outside of school, and it's the reason that college for me right now is as easy as high school. In the end, I don't care how much you think homework works, or how much you think institutionalized education is the best way to go. The BEST thing for all students is to be given a freedom and responsibility to learn as they please and as they see fit, because it's much better to learn the things that interest you so you can excel in those than do poorly all around because your bored to death by your subject matter. I realize there's a certain importance to the basics, but the basics were taught to me in grade school, and I'd like to know how many parents that didn't go to college and actually USE what they learned in high school actually remember anything about it. I know my parents don't. Fact of the matter is, you don't care about Wilson's 14 points, and neither does your kid. If you think for a minute the ability to make sure your son or daughter has wasted vast amounts of time on often tedious and repetative homework, and furthermore that you should, you've got a lot of learning to do yourself. And I don't need a teacher to tell me that.
...
While I personally think this is a great idea, it seems like a very crappy implementation. Not only is the ss# and pin code a really lame way to secure pretty dam private info, but it doesnt even use ssl to secure the transport layer.
They should allow a parent to log in using a preset ss# and pin..then force them to change the pin immediatly.. of course using ssl for the connection the entire time.
I love the concept however.. the kid in me hates it:). Todays kids have way to much freedom IMHO. Keeping parents who are very busy these days informed about their childs progress is an excellent way to get parents involved. I dont have time left and right to visit with a teacher.. but I can check a website easily once a day.
When I was your age the technology was nonexistant but gripe was exactly the same as it always has been. My "privacy concerns"=="concerns about getting caught fucking up".
You'll get over it.
As for the lax security, give it time. Sooner or later some nosey neighbor is going to start checking up on other people's kids. If you can get into the next PTA meeting after that, be sure to bring popcorn; there are bound to be fireworks.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Why do we put so much pressure on our children to perform? Don't they have a rough enough ride as it is?
As a child I was always told that life isn't fair and that your schooling days will be the best days in your life. This used to fill me with horror because that meant that life was only ever going to get worse.
I didn't do homework. I firmly believed, and still do, that kids do enough work during the day between 9am and 4pm. They do not need the extra pressure and extra work in the evenings. I always asked the question at school; "Why do we have to do homework?" The answer was always something along the lines of "To prepare you for the future. You may have to work longer hours than this..." To which I always told the teacher that I wouldn't take a job the required me to work more than 8 hours a day... I haven't worked long hours without extra pay in the last 12 years.
The school should give this kid a break. I'm sure he has enough worries without knowing that Mum and Dad are checking up on him everyday. Sat in class wondering if Mum and Dad are surfing his grades from their place of work is not a good feeling to have.
My advice to you young Ishkibble is to rebel if you haven't started to already. You only get one childhood so make sure you enjoy it. Grades will not bring lifelong happiness.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Another way to look at this problem from the child's perspective is to think about the government and the people under it. The government believes that systems that report on what you do as good and even benefitting you, while many people believe otherwise...much like this case here. A child feels his privacy is invaded, much as you would if the government kept track of you and reported your daily habits to others. Even though this system might help some students, what about the ones who already have no problems? Should they be content to be reported on just because they have no problems? I am sure most would not want the FBI or some other organization watching them everyday, even if they had no problems to worry about. Should students expect less privacy just because they are not considered adults yet?
Well security aside.
In my area the school system is not good at all, its not effective grades are the least of a kids wory hear.
Does anybody have any login ID's that we could use. I'd really like to see the inside of this site. Oh, and even more good stuff, not only is the choice of login ID's insercure, they don't even transmit it over a secure connection.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Even if this were available, I couldn't imagine my parents using it to keep tabs on me. I was always the "self motivated" one, where marks were important enough that I would do the homework (later than sooner sometimes..).
:)
The important thing is I learned to work on my own without parents prodding me on. Now I'm at University, and my parents are 7 hours away -- if I hadn't learned to motivate myself, I wouldn't be where I am now.
My sister's a different story, though. She's smart but she always needs someone to push her. I guess I would say there is a certain age where the parents have to let up and have the kid learn on their own. But up to that point I would say it's the parent's responsibility to help them develop study habits. Then again this might all change when I really am in the parent's position
1. Where the hell do/did you guys go to college? At my college the only out of class work we had fell into one of three catagories:
a) read this long ass engineering book written by someone who speeks english as a 16th language; this will not be covered lecture and it will be on your exam
b) build something that does x
c) write a paper about y
This sort of stuff is very much like what you'll do in the real world (except the dead lines will be 2 weeks ago instead of two weeks from now).
It's been a while but IIRC high school homework was a bunch of repetative stuff: i.e. "Solve these 50 equations for x". This type of work DOES NOT help anyone. If you want to do well in college/real world you need to learn to get something the first time (if you get it the second time around you'll do alright but people will think you are slow).
Teaching kids that they can try something 50 times before they are expected to demonstrate/apply their knowledge is a crutch! In the real world, you have deadlines to produce real work, you spend hours thinking about it and then you implement a solution. There is no simple process to come up with a solution, you have to be creative and grasp the concepts of what you are trying to do. If you don't know everything about this problem you have to go reasearch it and teach yourself. Thankfully I was prepared by college to suceed in the real world.
If this kid's high school is anything like mine, he's wasting time doing homework; get the concepts and know how to apply them so you can use the knowledge (in the real world or on a test), then move on.
Actually, with the No Child Left Behind Act, this type of thing will probably become more and more common.
See http://www.nclb.gov/
In part, the act is an attempt to make schools more accountable to parents. A lot of schools are having to scramble to come up with money to meet some of the provisions in the act. This company may be getting in (somewhat) early on the demand created in the educational market by NCLB.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
Navigating our school's on-line teachers' pages is so incredibly difficult, I simply don't use it. You can't link directly to the page in question, but must navigate through at least 5 drop down boxes to get where you need to be. Not to mention the site works only on Microsoft IE browsers!
You think school is hell? When you make it out in the real world, guess what?
YOUR EMPLOYER WILL BE CHECKING IF YOU GOT YOUR HOMEWORK DONE!
Whether you like it or not, your parents are doing you a favor. You should be grateful to them.
They are you parents.
You are their child.
That's life. Deal with it.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
At my school, the login is through your student ID number, which is openly displayed on the IDs we are required to wear around our neck, and the "password" is our birthday, which isn't that hard to find out. All the files that control this thing are openly available to all who have access to the school network. Read-only of course... Still though, it's a good idea in practice, but I still believe it to be an invasion of privacy. All this students have no rights talk is crap. Students are people too, even if they are under 18. If they want to fail, let them fail in peace. Save the severe beatings for report cards.
We had a science teacher explain to us once how this was possible, only it was "in the snow both ways".
Basically he lived down a hill from his school, so he would walk to school 6 miles in the morning, then while he was at school a massive snow storm would move over his house, dumping up to 10 foot of snow on it. When school was over he would begin the walk home, the closer he got to home the higher the snow got and eventually he walked in the second story window.
Yes I know it's a horrible joke.
Oh and if you don't think it's possible to get a massive snowstorm in one spot and none 6 miles away, you haven't lived in Illinois.
This may sound a bit harsh, but I hope you've learned some responsibility since then.
Ok a better system would be something which emailed the parent IF the grades were low (cause for concern) or if the student was regularly missing lessons (come on everyone misses one now and again).
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
for having to do homework before playing?
...
my heart bleeds
I work for a software company that produces a vaguely similar product for schools. From my experience when it comes to "Parental Involvement" issues (such as Pinnacle and our product are supposed to help encourage) security is just about the last thing on any school administrators mind. Compared to some other stories I could tell this school using the soc sec # and name combined is like freaking Fort Knox. This is becuase most school officials I have come in contact with that are considering using this kind of technology aren't doing it out of concern for the kids or parents best interest but becuase there is some state mandate, or so they have an easy way of getting most parents off their backs.
I swear PowerPoint is going to be the downfall of higher education in western society.
Please note that parents have a obligation to ensure their children receive proper care (which includes education).
A government is an organization intended solely to undertake those tasks required to ensure sufficient living standards for the population - and that is all it should be.
I don't know if the original poster's parents would fall for it, but personally, I'd just run an identical looking site on my LAN, and add sbmc.org to the hosts file on their machine to point to your local web server (this could even work on a single machine, if necessary).
Obviously, you'd have to tell the truth within a reasonable degree (or they'll certainly hit the roof when your daily status says straight-A's and you get all C's at the end of the quarter), but the "small stuff" like homework and class conduct, they never need to see.
Hell, I never did homework myself, and for my "class conduct", I considered class a good time to sleep (why else would they possibly schedule them before noon, if they didn't mean for me to sleep there?). Complete waste of time, and the *only* classes it hurt my grade in consisted of those that actually graded the homework. What BS. I remember more than once getting into a classic circular argument about this... "Why do I need to do homework?" "Because you can't do well in this class without doing the homework" "But I've scored over 100% on every test you've given, and haven't done any of the homework so far" "Yes, but since the homework counts toward your grade, you only have a B average as a result". Repeat from step 1.
How about this concept moved into the corporate world -- a three-click report that gives you the productivity level, amount of time spent talking, idleness, last 5 applications opened, last 20 websites accessed, and whatever else might be relevant. Typing speed. Current assignment. Last unauthorized break from working. Exact length of lunch break.
If people are exposed to this kind of treatment from the beginning of his or her socialization, then they will expect it -- and perhaps be unable to function without it.
----------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Not doing homework
RTFFAQ
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I've written some open-source software that can do this: gradebook, server. I'm a college teacher, so I wrote it with the assumption that parents weren't even an issue.
If the goal is to allow access to both the student and her parents, I think it gets a little more complicated. They'd really have to have two separate passwords for accessing the same account. Otherwise the student just changes the password and doesn't tell the parents.
Actually, the feature high school teachers have asked me for is the ability to print custom-formatted report cards. I don't think most school districts are that technologically sophisticated, nor are many parents, so the assumption is that it has to go home on paper. My software allows reports to be printed out, but there's no provision for customization. If anyone's interested in adding such a feature, please let me know! I think the right way to do it is to use the facilities in a word-processor (OpenOffice?) for creating forms and filling in the blanks.
Find free books.
if that were the case then I doubt that Pinnacle is making his life a living hell
at the age group of kids this effects there is no right or wrong space accross the board. it is a young adult individual need. in my family it just drove us away, perhaps in others it may work well.
rather then just trying to force our kids to do better in highschool why isnt the whole idea of highschool restructured? i would estimate that a third of my highschool had kids who knew what they wanted to be. Why not for these kids have a program that actualy starts them on their way? i realize most states have a post secondary program now (go to college (in minnesota its paid for by the state) and receive credit for both highschool and college) and while its a nice idea it does affect classes at the college having the very young and inmature in classes. how about the other third of the kids who dont plan on doing a thing after highschool, the same kids who get truance charges etc. why are we forcing these kids to go? the other students are getting hurt by the pace the class must take to try and teach these kids. when i skipped school they kicked me out for a day.
let me say that once more.
When i skipped school they kicked me out for a day.
what genius thought that up? do they want to help this group of kids truly? or not?
i think a better ask slashdot would be, what can we do to improve our country's school system as a whole?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Note that this message assumes that neither of your parents have an intimate knowledge of computer networking. Anyway, here's what you need to do:
There's a little file called "hosts" that's either in c:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc, or c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc, depending on what version of windows you're running. There should be an entry in it that looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
Change that line to:
127.0.0.1 localhost my.high.school.edu
(where you of course replace "my.high.school.edu" with whatever your high school's website is). If you happen to be running Linux, this file is "/etc/hosts". In any case, you'll need administrator access.
Once you've changed this, your high school's website will stop responding to requests from your computer, because your computer will be looking at the wrong place. Hope this helps.
Since when do minors have any rights? The parents are responsible for their children until they reach the age of majority.
Getting parents involved is a wonderful thing. Now, instead of having to call the office and inquire if little Johnny or Jenny is skipping class, we can have daily updates! All too often kids will bend the truth about grades, homework, and skipping, until it is too late to address the problems this creates. It is nice to see a system that lets parents who care about their kids get involved in this way. Twice a semester is not nearly often enough to learn that Junior or Junior-ette is not preforming, especially when all that homework has piled up and there is an exam on the horizon.
As far as security goes, concerns are as old as profs posting test results listed by social security numbers in class hallways in college. Posting the information this way is no more or less secure than having them handed out to the kids themselves. If someone is truly intent on doing harm, then there are many other avenues that need to be protected. Home address, phone number, padlock numbers, are the things that are dangerous, not student ID's.
There are some concerns about the rights and _priviglages_ of the students concerned. Just remember, all the information that is offered is, was, and probally always will be readily avaliable to parents. This just allows them to take a more involved role than they would normaly be allowed due to constraints of a job. I hope to see this system spread more throughout the country.
You expect sympathy when we hear that your parents are doing the right thing? Maybe you could learn the lesson of getting it done first without them having to "make" you do it, eh? You're right to bring up privacy concerns (you don't need other people checking your status, and that is a pretty easy password), but quit whining about having to do homework.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
As I sit here and look at my fifteen year old being home schooled I wonder how much time is wasted at school. Before we pulled him out of public school we figured he was getting about 20 minutes of instruction out of each hour class on a good day. His homework was busywork bullcrap. All the school wanted was for the student to sit down be quiet and study for the state tests to mae the school look good. Yes We live in Texas. Maybe this student needs to do his homework but maybe the parents need to look at what is the homework.
I am not your child.
Nazi !
I know for a fact that this would not have worked at my old school. I found out accidentally that the first 6 digits of my SS were the same as another student there. I'm sure it's a matter of time before a similar incedent happens -- all I would have to do is use the yearbook to find out what their last name was.
I know it's sort of a moot point now that every poster says 'yes it's insecure', but perhaps this illustrates another problem on top of general SS security issues, which just about every institution seems to easily forget about.
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
How are they using (part of) your Social Security Number as an identifier? Why does your school have your SSN? Are we talking public high school?
You only need to disclose your SSN to your employer and your financial institutions (oh, and the DMV if you *chose* to get a license). Why would you give it to anyone else?
For those of you working in K-12 education, there are some really nice school management systems finally coming out. Check this one out.
June 2001 press release
April 2003 press release
http://www.askthevoid.com
Security for this tool seems silly to the extreme, both from the password side and technical issues of what appears to be an open d-base for anyone that knows how to tie in to the back end. That aside...
I don't buy the argument that this is just a micromanaging parents wet dream. Parents that think B stands for Bad or not good enough don't need any excuse to do so. In other words this isn't going to make those parents any better or worse. However as the new generation of parents currently raising kids are more internet savy this kind of tool does present a very important advancement that has been very slow and comming. That is a Parent Teacher communication avenue that takes into account the simple fact both parents work in todays modern family.
This fact means parent teacher conferences are difficult things to arrange. They are often hasty and accomplish little. Sometimes they do not happen untill weeks after they become necesarry. Phone calls are also troublesome due to the fact it is difficult for teachers to contact parents during the day for any length of time and just like you and I they like to go home at the end of the day so contacting at night is an 'on their time' action many do but is not fair to expect, certainly not an any kind of consistent basis.
A method of keeping parents informed of day to day and week to week progress of their child in a time shifted format where teahcers can keep the information updated during their time at work and parents can check on their time would be an invaluable addition to the educational tool chest. With the new more technology savy parents with children at school becoming more common the internet provides a realistic tool for re-connecting parents and students. It also reduces the amount of effort necesarry for a parent to be more invovled in their childs education.
Yes children are important enough that arranging parent teacher conferences should not be subject to parents work. Yes its important enough that there should never be a problem with a parent being invovled in their childrens education without prodding. However, thats as it should be in an ideal world, unfortunatly we live in the real world and in the real world parents work schedules are a major obstacle to meaningful and timely parent teacher communication.
Yes Teachers should be totaly commited to the advancement of our youth. But we can't expect them to live and breathe our childrens lives 24/7. They exist and have lives of a sort outside of work and already demands are made on their time that most any one else in this world would scream bloody murder about if they were expected to do the same at their job... especially at the rates teachers are paid.
The new technology available in the world is making painfully slow in roads into our educational system. How many jobs exist anymore without a computer terminal of some sort as a part of if not your entire daily experience ? How many classrooms have even one computer in it much less 1 for each student ?
I don't think the question here is if this system is a good idea. I think the question is why has it taken so long and why is it such poorly implemented system ?
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
As a minor your rights are mighty few, and none of them involve privacy from your parents.
Parents will watch kids like a hawk, electronic tools or no. Don't imagine that you'd be freed from the burden of homework without this tool. You'd just have your parents grilling you every night, instead of grilling the computer.
Trust me on this. We don't have such cool electronic tools for monitoring our kids' performance, so we do it the old fashioned way: ask them.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
Step 1. Create your own Java applet/screens with fake data. Give yourself straight A's, you deserve it.
Step 2. Create a line in your parents' hosts file that points the school URL towards your bogus site.
Step 3. Do your homework when you damn well feel like it.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
There are no grades and no homework. I trust the kids to find challenges and learn what they need to learn.
The kids who come out this environment are amazingly self-confident and capable.
I work in a successful nationwide company. I also attend a University part-time working on a BS in Computer Engineering. Both the university, and the company have had to completely redo everything to NOT require the SSN as any type of unique identifier on correspondence or sign-on's due to federal regulations that came out around July 2001 (IIRC).
Is this school just begging to be sued and picketted by angry people right out of existence??? What happens when the entire class of 2003 gets accepted to Harvard with glowing 4.5 GPA's become some astute student hacked into the system, rewrote the grades the day before they were printed and automatically mailed out, and gave everyone A's for AP courses?
This sounds like a sure recipe for disaster and cheating and even worse abuse of the education system than BEFORE this system was implemented! Leave it to clueless public school administrators to pick "what's best" for our children when they have no concept of what the risks/rewards are inherent in the system.
As a someday future parent, I would be COMPLETELY PISSED OFF at any school that put such a sloppy system into place, because I ALREADY care enough not to let a future son or daughter of mine to not be taught BY ME how to excel in their learning.
If you click on the link, you will see that the authentication system uses a student id and pin #, not a social security # and last name. I think the poster was able to get more people criticizing the system by misstating how the application works....
It should use SSL of course, but at least seriously compromising information is not going over the wire unencrypted.
what ever happend to benefit of the doubt or the simple concept of trusting a child to be doing what he or she is supposed to? parents dont realize that this kind of activity is a slap in the face to their kids trust, it obviously shows that the parent doesnt trust their kid enough to perform up to par without them checking in on their every move. you can say its your responsibility as a parent and blah blah etc, but that reasoning is watered down and over used. im not saying to not pay any attention to your childs life but this screams of Big Brother.
sincerely,
random 18 yr old that does half assed in highschool but has a 144 IQ
In ten years you'll thank your parents. Trust me.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Well, I for one am willing to bet that there's either a Smith or Jones at the school. So if you pick one of those, there's only 1 million possible SSN combinations...
Feel sorry for them... =]
Besides the fact that they need better security for this thing, it is a great idea. I was a high school student not too long ago and my parents watched me like a hawk for my first year or two. They let up on me when I demonstrated my responsibility to them by consistently bringing home good grades. This is exactly what will happen to students that perform well. Students that do not perform well or choose not to perform well, need to be closely minded. I know that the predominating high-school mentality is all about individualism and privacy (well, we can debate the individualism), but some bounderies have to be made. You can blame the school systems, you can blame the teachers, you can blame society, but the true root of most teenaged problems today is a lack of parental involvement. Their is no escaping this truth. I believe that a system like this will encourage parents to play a more active role in the education of their children. I also believe that many parents feel that their hands are tied down by the school system, worryied that scolding their children for misbehavior can be construed as "emotional abuse" or that consistently tracking their students progress may be viewed by the school counselor as "invasive" and "counter productive". This system may be one of the first steps in empowering parents to once again, take charge when it comes to the lives and education of their children.
public education is a joke anyways.
3 R's of education:
1. repetition
2. redundancy
3. repetition
I am currently working on a system very much like this developed inhouse in Southern Mississippi. Our login system is somewhat like theirs for elementary students, but you can change your password...it's only a default value initially. We even have a way of creating one parent account that maps several students to it...etc..
But our biggest problem was cooperation within the schools themselves. They seem to be the ones that hate this type of stuff. Whenever you change the way someone (especially a teacher) has to do something they tend to freak out.
Most everyone liked the system once it was put in however. Students, parents, teachers and administrators for the majority say now that it's a godsend.
I really want someone to mod this up
Social security numbers are not random.
The first 3 digits come from the zip code where you were born. The next 2 are a "group id" that may be a little bit random, but it doesn't change very often. The last 4 are just incremented for each new ssn. In this case only the most significant bit matters so it's easy to guess.
Obviously the last name is not even a secret.
People seem to be coming to the conclusion that this new mechanism is somehow forcing parents to use it, and forcing parents to constantly press their children, potentially to the child's deteriment.
This simply is not the case. This is another mechanism that a parent can choose to check up on the progress of their child, much like a parent-teacher conference (which can generally be initiated by either side at any time anyway). How a parent chooses to use this new technology is a completely different issue. If there are trust issues here, they need to be discussed between the parent and the child.
We should be giving parents the means to parent their children, but we should not tell them when and how they should use it. Each child is different, each parent is different, and each relationship is different.
When you are older, you will thank your parents for actually being involved and caring. I have 2 kids in the public school system (3rd grade and 9th grade), and I can assure you an alarming number of parents are not involved in their children's education and really don't seem to care, almost treating school as a free day-care. What a shame.
I agree the security aspect is unacceptable, but your parents should be commended for not only caring, but actually checking up on you.
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
I often times skipped class in HS
I also often times didn't do my homework
But I'm in college now, doing very well in my Junior Year, and have landed a great job as a Network Admin for a branch of a rather large (global) company.
My old high school tried to implement a similar sort of thing, though it wasn't web based.
It was a homework hotline. You could call in, choose some options and find out what was assigned that day in whatever class.
The administration thought it would be great for students to call in and get what they missed.
Great
But when parents started calling in and finding out what their kids had to do, it got outrageous.
Often times _my_ parents would call in and check to see if I had any homework to do.
The system can't tell them that "I" had some spare time in 6th period and got it done early.
Therefore, my parents didn't allow me to leave the house until I produced the homework.
Which I left at school(who wants to drag 7 big books back and forth to school everyday?)
And, OF COURSE, the "I already did it" excuse didn't cut it, for my parents.
My question is, when does simply checking how your kid is doing, turn into overkill?
Sure, I procrastinated a lot in HS, and had to haul ass to get some projects and papers done on time. Hell, there were some I just plain didn't do.
But in the end, I graduated in the top 10% of my class, was accepted to MANY top schools, and have a well paying job for a 20 year old.
(for those of you wondering how i'm only 20 and am a Junior....It's called tri-mesters, (3)15 week terms scrunched into a year. 2.6 years here = 4 years at a normal college)
Anyway, I understand where the parents come from, BUT I _HAVE_ to sympathize with the students on this one.
MORAL:
You can force your kid to go to school, but you can't MAKE them learn.
Let them do it on their own, and they'll appreciate it 10-fold.
Yes, wait until you are 18, when a magic fairy comes at midnight and gives you the gift of responsibility.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
My school uses edline.net. They started using it last year for grades, absesnces, and posting homework. Other than the fact that my parents check it, it is cool.
http://phreakinb.com
I am not a parent and have only been out of that system for a few years but I think it is a great idea. Yes, it has major security issues that should be dealt with before used, but if it helps keep kids on top of things then great. You have no rights under your parents....deal with it and just do the work you $#&$*%@ lazy slackers. Take some responcibily.
I graduated 2 years ago.
I had tutorials like that (in class problem assignments). But they just reviewed the course material from the lectures.
The real information was passed in the lectures, and they were generally quite good.
Maybe you're having a run of bad instructors, your program/school isn't that good. Alternatively if you're in your first year (or two) they might still treat you like a HS student.
While i do question the security of it...privacy? Until you graduate and no longer live with your family you have no privacy other than what our family gives you! The sooner you learn that fact the better. And really...how long could that homework take? Just do it when you get home and be done with it!
Derek Greene
in /etc/hosts
myschool.edu 127.0.0.1
Run a local "miror" on that server.
What signature defines me as a person?
My parents loved the idea and supported it with serious enthusiasm.
I'm seriously incapable of memorizing things so I came close to just flunking the course until I stopped taking notes, stopped taking the notebook home and cut my parents out.
After that I got straight A's in the class. I managed to stop hating the teacher (well, maybe I just didn't hate the teacher quite so much) and seriously resenting my parents.
Notifying parents and getting them involved is not always a good thing for the kids. (And yes, not everyone learns in the same way so this is quite unlikely to apply to all kids.)
the odds of guessing the last 4 digits for anyone's SSN is only 9999:1 (0000 is not a valid number). That's about 34 times easier than guessing someone's first 6 without any other information (344500:1).
I have to point out to the readership that ALL public schools are moving toward this model of instant accountability.\ Here at Bishop Elementary and Bishop Union High School in Inyo County, California, we will be rolling out a very similar system, whereby parents and students will have instant access to their attendance (including tardies, absences, the whole schmeer), grades, discipline records, standardized test scores, and homeowrk. Most school administration software (Aeries, SASI XP, etc.) allow an online component based on passworded security to give parents and teachers access to this information. The driver for this is increased accountability for public schools. This is not a bad thing. Parents will be able to see instantly if their child blew a test, or if they're struggling with a particular section during a course. The key is NOT to make a student's life "a living hell" but rather to get parents and teachers to support students when they're struggling, and to praise them when they're doing well. It's so common-sense that most *involved* parents will yawn, because they ALREADY DO THIS by talking with their children's teachers, talking with school administrators, and talking with their kids. But hey, putting it on the web, that's so newfangled that people get all worked up about it. I say, get used to it. With the federal No Child Left Behind act now law, school districts throughout the country will be making more and more information available online for parents and teachers to show their progress, or lack thereof. Joe Griego Director, Information Technology Bishop Union Elementary/High School Districts Inyo County, California
Don't Die Wondering
Jesus christ, listen to yourself.
Just do the damned work... it'd be easier to do the work than to go through that much trouble!
my god...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Actually, chances are it is not a FERPA violation. FERPA allows institutions that were using social security numbers to continue using them. Chances are, that school, like most public schools, has been using social security numbers for a long time. Also, most public schools do receive some form of federal funding, even if it's just through the free/reduced price lunch program.
I also noticed a post where people were asking about illegal immigrants. Any student without a social security number can generally be assigned a 999 (ie 999-99-9999) number in place of a ssn. That way, ever student still has a unique number in the school's system. Some schools will even allow students or parents to request a 999 number for use in place of their ssn.
-Patrick
Actually I think this is and excellent Idea and more schools should adopt this. At lease I will be able to tell how my daughter is doing in school, and weather or not she is skipping classes. Oh course any concerned parent should already know this, but we are all YOUNG once and we all know ways around the system.
I am a student in high school, and like any good student, I doo my work, i will admit that homework and I do not, and have never gotten along well, i attended a school that gave 2+ hours of homework a night to 5TH GRADERS! (/me), only after spending 6.5 hrs at school and 2 hr round trip on the bus!, i had 30 mins of a life for the worst 180 days of my life (in school i was the scapegoat for every bully in the 5th grade). Now that the school board has gotten out of the stone age and actualy started putting stuff online (teachers have done it individually for a few years now) the teachers are setting up a school-admined online database of grades secured by Lname + a unique student-generated password, one step in the right direction, but it is hardly centralized. my parents don't check it, my mother can barely check her e-mail (re: a email returned: "who is this erver demon guy?") and my dad isn't interested (the guy believes "saving often" is a viable alternative to UPS's and RAID). they may be techo. illiterate, but at least they care, teacher conferences have abounded right up until HS, now my teachers do not give much HW, everything is done in class (i'm motivated in class, at home i either code, tweak or game ) a centralized online attendence, gradesheet and conduct DB is a great idea if properly implements, unfortunatly my parents would never use it, but when I eventually have kids, you can bet that i would (i don't like my parents spying on me either).
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
...is the utterly abysmal security. Seriously; the potential for privacy invention all stems from this.
It's already well-established that parents have a right to know their children's grades, conduct, and such. This is why we have report cards; they're one manifestation of this right, and there are good reasons for it. It's also been established that parents have a right to know what's going on assignment-wise.
The question is, what reason is there for this right to be limited to once or maybe twice a quarter or semester, rather than in realtime (or as close to realtime as is feasible)? The simple fact is, there's no reason for that. Thus, the concept of a system such as this is a Good Thing, because it allows parents to better exercise their responsibility to their children, but it doesn't act as a babysitter, so it doesn't absolve parents of that responsibility.
The problem is, this information must be made available to the parents in a secure manner. This SSN/name crap is simply not good enough. The parents have a right to know what's going on in their kids' lives, but the whole world doesn't have that right, and such a trivial-to-hack system as this just doesn't cut it for defending that. To be perfectly frank, using systems this insecure to transmit such personal data as this should be illegal, but alas, there's really not a way to quantify security in such a manner that you could put it into law.
Don't forget what the "C" stands for.
As I am the Technology Coordinator in a smaller size school district and we are looking at offering the same thing for our students with the same features, teachers entering daily assignments being due, with the grades after they are handed in. Lunch total available, fees due, and more along with comments from the teachers. I persoanlly as a parent who's daughter will be going to school this next school year find it useful in keeping her on task. As for the login, it doesn't state if the SSN & Name are avaible to the public to browse and I highly doubt that. What they probably ended up doing is sending a memo home saying your password will be your last 6 digits of your SSN and your login is your first 5 letters of your last name. By sending it that way, you don't actually let them know, just giving them how to with information that really they should have memorized.
But doesn't Apple's PowerSchool do this and more, more securely, in any Web browser without needing Java?
That "more securely" bit is the most important part of that equation, mind you.
Sounsd to me like this poster has good parents and doesn't know it, at least as far as homework goes.
This scheme has security issues however, there should be some authentication mechanism used, aside from that, this is nothing but a step in the right direction.
...there should be a way to opt-out your children from a less-than-secure system like this. I'd like to see what recourse a parent would have in the case of the database being hacked, the information stolen, and then used to steal a child's identity. Schools already (or used to) share information with outside sources (and without permission). Whats to stop them from 'accidentially' giving this info out?
Example: When I was in highschool, we had an unlisted number. The school had it, and 'mysteriously' about the time I turned 18 I started getting unsolicited calls from military recruiters. The only place they could've got this information was from the school district.
Had I had the guts at the time (and the time/money) I would've raised a holy stink with the district over this.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
They obviously have their security proprities out of place. At the school I work at, all numbers have caler ID blocking. If everyone could know the number the system was dialing from, you could call the number and hold it open with your own phone line to disable it. The downside of course is that your own phone becomes useless momentarly. Police have a prebuilt device that prevents a trace from failing as a result of the caller hanging up.
If the grades are what is current for the student progress mid term, then I have a problem with it, the student may have no chance to correct for themselves the any problem they may have in school. The parents should allow the student a chance to work on thier own first to correct any problems. In real life, your parents can't always run to your aid or life.
If the grades are at an end of the quarter type of thing, I have no problem with it. If I remember correctly, all my report cards were mailed to my parents and this had all my grades, absenses, and anything else of note. I don't see any difference, and I can see better quarterly feedback to the parents if its easier for teachers to fill in comments to the parents for a student.
As far as security, what they are doing deserve's them an D- (they at least thought of privacy even if they did a stupid implementation). They should create a sign up system, with a secured login and identification.
I'm wondering how a system like this teaches kids responsibility? My parents, even from a very early age, left schoolwork up to me so long as my report card was good. They would be there to help me if I asked, but I wouldn't get repeatedly bothered about whether or not my homework was done. Perhaps if such things are left to the child, they will appreciate it more and work harder at it. I'm graduating with a BS in a month and then heading off to the University of Michigan for a PhD, so it's worked for me. I think much of what's lacking in the current system is reponsibility, kids just don't seem to care about school.
The web could be a powerful tool if it is used to help students, and not just single out those for whom the system has failed.
From a business perspective, students are customers and society pays the price if they are not well-served.
Teachers and administrators need tools that let them focus on their core job duty -- teaching.
Cause if you don't get into the special reading class in 4th grade timmy you won't get into that advanced math class and sixth and then they'll never let you into AP Chem your junior year!
High school is fine and all, but to imply that you're giving up on your future if you screw around in these grades is just obsessive. I know plenty of kids that were the goofoffs in high school, some stoners, some clowns, some just uncaring. I compare where most of them are at to where some people that were anal about every grade, and guess what I see more successes and happy lives with the goofoffs than the anal retentives. Just my observations.
-- taking over the world, we are.
People spelling fuck wrong?
OK, so you put the domain name of the site in your hosts file as 127.0.0.1 then setup a fake site with "Timmy's done all his homework and is straight A" on it.
#include <sig.h>
Oh, really? That shows how little you know. You clearly have never been to a parent-teacher conference. It is precisely the opposite of a "more thorough/convenient" conference. It eliminates all pedagogical context from the communication with the parent, thereby leaving it ripe for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
I'm shocked at how many /.rs actually believe in grades. That's like believing that if the fuel gauge on your car always reads empty regardless of how much fuel you put in it must be because your gas tank is never full. Grades are but an indicator light, a massively condensed index of information, a short-hand for someone's performance. They tell you very, very little.
In a proper parent-teacher conference, things come up like "I have to give your Johnny an A because his work is so much better than his peers', but he clearly is not working up to his potential, and he's spending a lot of time cutting up in class." Or "Yes, Susie is only getting a C in this class, but for someone who transfered in and didn't have the prerequisite, she's doing a great job, and considering how well she's managed so far, I expect she'll be at the top of the class by semester's end." Or, "Yes, Timmy is only getting a B in my class. My class is very hard, and I don't grade as lightly as the other teachers here. In my class, that's a good grade."
In this system, all you get to see is a letter grade. The parents have no context to judge what it means. Basically it's a recipe for parents to leap to all sorts of erroneous conclusions.
I strongly suggest that all you "rah, grades mean something absolute" slashdotters go get your consciousness raised. One of the best books for this is out of print Wad-Ja-Get? the Grading Game in American Education, which covers the history and theory of grades in American education, including information about academic studies of the rigorousness (or rather, lack there of) of grades.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
the provision of information that parents have been seeking for quite some time (and, in my opinion, have every right to).
Amen.
The kid posting this is taking a "my parents are tyrannical", "I'm not a kid", "I want to have more control" approach. Same as kids and teens have been doing for ever and ever.
He really should take a second and put things in perspective. He has parents (still together, not divorced!) that care enough about him doing well in life to *nightly* for at least six months check all his work and talk to him about it if it isn't done. This is despite the fact that they certainly aren't getting thanks for it -- instead, constant complaining from him about doing so.
The kid here may not realize it, but this is an expression of love. It make take him years to pick up on it, but he will eventually.
May we never see th
Imagine the horror when soccer-mom clicks on a link to what she thinks should be Johnny's semester grade, ONLY TO BE REDIRECTED TO TUBGIRL.COM
The mere thought of this far-fetched occurrence makes me want to tip my virtual hat to the malicious hacker community.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done.
Just tell your parents to piss off and that you don't give a shit about getting an education.
Hope you enjoy your future employment as a Mcdonalds fry technician that your education may bring you if you are lucky. If you can't add 1+1 and get 2 with out cheating then the only job left is kill yourself so that you don't reproduce.
So the primary key is the first 6 digits of your social and the first five characters of your last name.
So, if I have twins, and apply for SSNs at the same time, they're likely to get similar SSNs, right? I mean, my SSN is identical to my DAUGHTER's SSN to the first 5 digits, and we're 25 years apart.
So when the twins get to school, whose account will I see? As far as I can tell, this is a primary key chosen without any lack of foresight, not to mention any consideration of security.
apparently a lot of you don't. There's a whole lot of "do your homework, kid!" going on in these replies and I would just like to remind you of when you were in high school, remember what that was like?
... they want to have a good time and experience life, enjoy their life while they're young. I somehow managed to get (most of) my work done when i found the time, get a compsci degree, and jump into the tech industry - WITHOUT having my parents breathe down my neck to get my work done. I probably would have done less work if that was the case.
Kids don't want to be holed up in their rooms doing homework
try to see it from this poor kid's point of view.
sorry if I came across a little harsh, or ranting.
Damn right you little fuk tard!!! Are you bitching that your parents are taking an interest in your education instead of you wasting your time on Playstation, Internet Porn or Ripping off Musicians.
I agree the security needs to be changed, but until you pay your own bills and your own taxes you have nothing to bitch about.
I have to say, as a 20 year old who slacked his way through high school, at the time I would have feared greatly this system as would most high school students who's daily activites include finding waldo and drooling on the desk. However, the security is what worries me. Granted if there was a password option most people would use the easily decrypted passwords. Still, something more should be in place than a social security and the first five letters. Even in the college I am attending they allow a password option with only 4 characters on top of SS. With out that option I could only imagine the access people would have to my records. Obviously the likely scenario is not going to be 'hey, check this out I found Billy's grades I'm going to post them in the NYT!'. But still, I would want that extra security on a subject matter I would consider private, even if I was a slacking snot-nosed teenager. :)
You are going to fight the proper recording of a students grades, by not recording them at all?
Mark their work, record their grades, do your job. The people whos child you are teaching should be allowed to check on his/her progress, why do they have to do it your way?
If you think there is a problem, you can contact them, if they think there is a problem they can contact you.
Do you really want every parent calling you at dinner time asking how little Timmy did today?
Making it easier for parents to check on their childs progress will improve thier follow up. By not doing your job properly you're not helping the child, parents, or even yourself.
This is somewhat off-topic, but it relates to allowing sensitive data to be accessed in an insecure manner.
I am a physician at a major hospital that is implementing off-site access to medical records over the internet. The setup is incredibly brain-dead. The passwords and user ids are, shall we say, not within a light year of constituting an acceptably secure unix login. The system itself is implemented entirely around ActiveX controls, making it only usable with IE. Instead of simple text links to click on, all navigation is done via buttons with complex graphics, making the pages take a long time to load. Finally, and most preposterous, if you look up a single lab result (e.g. potassium: 4.3), the server sends out a several hundred KB graphic of the printed page with the result, rather than just the few bytes needed for the result itself.
Dude, if you're in public school, the government's already got your performance records if it wants them. Putting things on the internet won't affect that one way or the other.
Next time, instead of the article just post your homework to "ask slashdot" :)
Well, by law your parents have complete total dominant control over you until you're 18. Like it or not, you have to put up with it.
My old highschool, Fayetteville Highschool, fayetteville, Arkansas, has been running this application since 1999. It was mildly useful but horrendously insecure. Happy Grade changing everyone!
go to run: mmc -> file: add/remove snap-in -> in the standalone tab, add ip security policy management (pick local computer)-> close the add snap-in window
in the main mmc window, on the left side there should be the snap-in that you just added. Right click on it and pick create ip security policy. -> click through the next set of windows. You can pick your own name if you want, and make sure you uncheck activate default response rule.
after that the properties window should come up. in the rules tab click add -> click next (defaults are fine) until you get to ip filter list, and click add there
in the new window click add. use "my ip address" as the source, and "a specific dns name" as the destination. Type in the url for the site you want to blcok and it will get the ip for you. Say yes to the ip. -> pick any for the protocol type then click finish.
click ok on the ip filter list window to get rid of it. now back in the rule wizard, select the filter you just made (if you didn't change the name, that would be the "New IP filter list") and click next.
the next window is filter action. click add, and click through twice (pick a name if you want) and select "block". Then click through till that window goes away.
Now select the filter action you just created and click next. There's no need to look at the properties. You can close the "New IP Security Policy Properties" window too.
Now all you have to do is assign the policy and you're done. To do that (on the right side back in the main mmc screen) right click the policy you just spent all that time on and pick assign. That's it. You can't go to that web page from that comptuer anymore. (to turn it off you can pick un-assign).
Of course if your parents find out you did this, you're in deep shit.
Whoa, to think, my school board is on slashdot... I'm defo getting a screencap and bookmark of this. I actually went to Martin County High School.
P.S. Fix it, it's Martin, not Matrin
I'm glad they did this because -- *gasp* -- that's a lot how the real world works
No, thats not how the real world works at all. By breathing down the kids neck all the time that becomes his sole motivation to do anything. Or as in Office Space, "(paraphrased) sure you can threaten to fire me, but that will only make me do just enough to not get fired".
In other words, the kid isn't motivated to get his homework done because he's a go-getter or because he wants to better himself, but because you'll bitch at him. Said kid turns 18, goes off to college, but without you bitching at him and without any personal movotivation, he'll fall flat on his face.
Same thing once he gets out to the workplace. You need to install self-motivation and a sense of pride in kids for them to go out and succed, and sticking your nose over their shoulders ever day isn't going to accomplish that.
Indexing against SSNs is breaking the law here.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
"even good kids miss up really big"
if you became aware he was having trouble in say . . . English?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
bedouin said:and spend an extra 30-seconds proofreading before I hit the submit button.
This is a bad idea? Seriously... if you are willing to post a comment that might be read by tens of thousands of people, why wouldn't you take an extra thirty seconds to proof it? Are you in such a hurry to get back to your bookmarked porn?
Side note: Do you scoff at people who are "so anal" about their resumes, too? Just wondering...
(I know, I know, you should never feed the trolls, it just means they'll come back for more. But STILL...)
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
be a terrorist, the HSF will be calling I am sure.
can the applet protocol be reversed engineered? a simple iptables module and a couple of rules couled rewrite the the packets on the fly, you are targeting a specific connection to a specific host. so this should be pretty easy.... anyone???
of course this is assuming that you have a iptables based firewall that you have root access to.
Your parents love you enough to care about your success. If you spend less time fighting with them, you'll have more time to play after you get your homework done.
You ought to thank them for caring enough to check the gradebook every night.
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
was how to perform well WITHOUT someone constantly watching and the threat of having some kind of punishment the minute I messed up.
In the real world, people are expected to do well without having someone constantly monitor you. The reason? Monitoring is expensive, and you might as well have the person doing the monitoring do your job instead.
Of course, if you are hoping your child will be able to get a job as a low paid phone rep then . . . this system should really give your dreams a boost.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Suddenly, crackers all over the world gets top grades. I wonder why?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
and not the one on MTV
As a new parent get over it be happy your parents care enough to make your life a living hell. The kids I knew whose parents did not bother them had lots of fun in high school but are having problems with life right now. My advice do what you are supposed to do in school (get into a little trouble to keep life fun) then try to have a succesful life. Then you can have fun by bothering you kids. ie become your parents.
If you are a minor you have no real rite to privacy from your parents. Get over it. I didn't when I was a kid either. We didn't have this when I was in school, but I had teachers who published a course outline which included a subject timeline and how much homework a student could expect to do every night. These needed to be signed and returned. At least you have proof you have no homework on some nights.
This can be good too. You know exactly where you stand in a class and what is needed to either keep your grade or improve it. Not to mention that you never need to remember your homework.
I had a teacher once who looked at her grade book wrong. She gave me a quarter average of a D instead of a B. We got report cards on a Friday afternoon and my parents knew to expect them. The teacher was gone at the end of the day so I was forced to go home with an incorrect grade. Try convincing your parents "the teacher made a mistake" all weekend. The teacher wrote a note explaining everything and apologized on Monday, but it was a long tense weekend.
It is a parent's responsibility to make sure their kids attend school and do their homework. As a parent all you hear from the teachers is that the parents are not involved. This can help, although I would complain about the security.
Edit hosts file that redirects back to 127.0.0.1, where you have a server running in the background that always comes back with a "Server is down...Try again later" message.
You have to trust your kids, but you also have to have a sense of what is going on. If online grades are available, that is but one method to find out. No different than report cards, calling the teachers, etc.
Good parents DO know what is happening in their kids school lives.
But you do have to use that power wisely.
First, regarding the security of the system, it might be in violation of federal privacy guidelines. I teach at the University of Southern California, and our administrators are taking those guidelines pretty seriously. To wit, I cannot discuss grades or anything substantive with students via email, and I cannot post grades anywhere that they could be read unless I generate random codes for lookup that are in no way related to the student's true information. That the product in question uses the social security number and a few letters of the last name probably doesn't pass legal muster from what I've been told.
Second, regarding the homework: suck it up. Every day I deal with college students that are literally incapable of performing basic mathematics (e.g., multiplying two single-digit numbers), writing a simple declarative sentence (in any language, mind you, not just English), and show a shocking lack of any reasoning skills. Do your homework now while you're young. I know it isn't much fun, but trust me, it's better than being an idiot later in life.
"With a logon system as simple as this, one has to question the security and privacy of the students."
:-)
Doug and I designed that site back in 2000. There is even a comment showing that at the bottom of page source.
Seems that Patrick Lyons forgot to "clean" the html up before taking credit for designing it. (he is listed at bottom of all the webpages plus at his website.)
It was secure in 2000...
AdFuel
No-one seems to have mentioned this yet, but school is not there to give you an education (at least not in Canada). I mean, if it was, it's pretty pathetic - we didn't really have to do *anything* until our final year.
School, in Canada, is used to develop study habits. That is why the material is so easy that anyone could do it. That's also why so much emphasis is put on homework, and so little on exams (the true test of whether you know your stuff).
With that in mind, the constant checking is *not* a good thing! The student must learn to force himself to study, instead of studying because he's being pushed to do so by his parents. What this new way will achieve, is that when students get to university, they will slack off because they've never developed the needed willpower and self-organization to get all the work done. That's *kind of* what's happening to me, though i just didn't do the schoolwork 'cause i found it too easy, and was still able to get good marks.
I think the old system of having 4 report cards is in fact optimal. It allows the parents to know the student's marks, but leaves earning those marks to the student. Knowing the marks after a term the parents can still control the student (for example, if my sister doesn't maintain an 80+ average, she will be pulled out of her ballet class). However, the student will still be able to learn the necessary skills (and trust me, those skills are *not* simply knowledge of calculus).
We'd absolutely love it if the school system my partner's kids attend would implement that kind of system. We would, however, like to see a more secure authentication system.
"Goodness is love in action, love with its hand to the plow." James Hamilton
Teach makes good points about the key criteria for such a system, mod him up
From your post it seems you disagree with constant monitoring. What would an appropriate monitoring interval be for you? Weekly (my choice)? Monthly?
..this seems to be working quite well. :)
"This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done."
This is an age-old issue: is middle-high school a learning environment, or simply "day care for teenagers"? The answer, of course, is that it depends on the family.
If your family structure is such that you never discuss classes or homework with other family members or friends, there is absolutely no motivation for you to learn. Parents who view school as "day-care" are imposing those same views on their children. Think about it: we excel in areas that are important to our social groups, be they at school, home, or otherwise. If you have no social interactions encouraging high achievement in school, you (typically) won't do well. Why should you work for no reward other than a mass-printed grade sheet?
So, this system may be a good way to open up family discussions about schoolwork.
Just my 2 cents.
First, a better login system needs to be implemented so that not just anyone can see a students grade. However, aside from that, as a student, I wish my school had this. I would love to be able to long in every night to see what my grades are and what homework I have.
Weel isn't this interesting, since above there is a discussion on the security problems associated with M$'s Java, the MS Virtual Machine, which is found on many users' XP machines today. Pinnacle seems (need more research + facts) similar to the technolgy used for blackboard.com, an "online classroom" that serves to compliment the in-school classroom for assignments and the like. Blackboard.com has ahd problems since it started, prompting many teachers to abandon the system. Now you have Pinnacle, threatening the work, and no-work, of students in Marin (or whatever the fuckking place is called) County. Idiots!
When I was in the fifth grade, we had to copy the definitions of our spelling words out of our book. It would take me about and hour to do the assignment, and another 3 hours after my mom checked it to make sure that it was EXACTLY right. I finally started lying to her and telling her that I didn't have to do them, so she wouldn't check them. (but still doing the assignment) When I turned in my definitions I still got a 100%. After this I almost always lied to my parents about my homework.
This sounds like a great idea to me. When I was in school, most of my fellow students wasted
huge amounts of time worrying about concealing their grades and attendance records from their parents.
I on the other hand learned very quickly to completely disregard my parents opinions on the matter.
By making it harder for students to snow their parents,
they will be forced to learn a proper measure of disrespect for authority.
-- this is not a
Be careful with your argument style here; there is no need to have personal insults like "you don't know how to do a progress report" in your Slashdot postings. I have a habit of putting people who engage in personal insults on my foes list. This time, I won't put you on my foes list, since this was something said in the heat of a flame war caused by two people who have fundamentally different views of the world.
However, please watch the personal insults; these kinds of insults indicate that you are incapable of understanding why some people might not be as obsessive about structure as you are.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Good parents will check the system and find out they have good kids.
Bad parents won't check the system and it won't help them fix their broken kids.
This could slightly increase the disparity between the bad ones and the good ones, but it's not going to help the bad ones become good ones.
How about a system that allows the neighborhood to check up on how a parent is doing his job? It'd prevent a lot of graffiti.
When I was going to school (way back when) I had a thriving business of selling fireworks (bringing them to BC from US Indian Reserves) and selling single cigs (a pack was $2.50 then and I sold them for 25 cents each).
Considering most viruses/worms and other hacks are usually done by individuals who are of school age, how long do you think it's going to take for some enterprising kid to hack this site and offer to modify other student's records for a price?
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Are you upset because random strangers might be able to see what your grade in Math is, or are you upset because your school made it remarkably simple to keep your parents involved in your education?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
My little sister's school recently began a similar program. The logons are more secure, but the principles are the same. No pun intended. The system is called ParentCONNECT and allows parents to check grades, behavior reports, and attendance records. Since my sister has been more than a handful recently, my parents were quite glad to see this system implemented.
Seriously. I saw no need to carry a heavy textbook home for something I could do in 10 minutes during roll call.
/.ers who seem to think homework needs to be done at home.
I'm surprised at the number of
I am the parent of two boys 5 1/2 and 2 1/2, and will be adopting a daughter from China this fall. My wife and I have struggled over the choice of school and final settled on what we think is an excellent choice, the Children's International School, soon to be renamed Bowman International School, in Palo Alto, CA. The watch word at Bowman International School is "freedom within limits". Let me give you a sense of how things are handled...
Bowman Internaional School is a year-round school with only 10 school holidays a year. Families schedule vacations outside of these school holidays much as they would at work. Each quarter the teacher, parents, and the student (degree of involvement depending on their age, ability, and interest) develop a "plan". Think of these like the quarterly goals that many companies have in place. At the beginning of each week, the teacher and the student review these goals and develop a weekly plan. Each day the student and teacher review the progress for the week and make sure that things are on track. within these limits of accountability, the student is free to tackle the work in front of them in their preferred order and pace. Each day the teacher makes available a status report with a summary at the end of the end of the week, which the parents can check. This is available offline, but I believe they have considered putting it online. At the end of teh quarter, the progess against plan is reviewed and the plan for the next quarter is set.
We were attracted to this school for a lot of reasons. One was the ability for our children to work through materials at the appropriate pace and for them to be involved in and responsible for their education. I want my children to learn how to be responsible in big things by being responsible for small things. To do this means that I have to give them autonomy in small things and over time grow that autonomy in a series of concentric circles of authority, responsibility, and accountability.
To the young person that started this discussion, I would say, have you proven yourself responsibile to your parents? Have you demonstrated that they don't have to ride you to insure that you are engaged in your schooling? Have you demonstrated that you are responsible in your use of the freedom within the limits you have been given? Based on your description, it sounds like you haven't. Remember, the flip-side of responsibility and freedom is accountabiilty. If you don't act in a responsible way in the use of your freedom, then you will be held accountable. Of course, this is painful for you, because this technology has shortend the feedback loop. All of a sudden, the accountablity that would come at the middle or end of the term is happening on a daily basis and you are having to confront the consequences of your actions. My word to you, focus on execution, have your homework done first, prior to doing anything else, attend class, and make sure that you are behaving in an appropriate manner. Once you are clean here, discuss with them how you would like to structure things within the limits of doing well in school. Earn their trust. With their trust will come freedom within the limits that they rightfully impose.
Of course, the starter of this thread won't want to hear it, but Bowman International School in general doesn't have homework. They run a 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM school day, and it is their expectation that students will finish their homework during the school day. If they don't, then it is homework. In many ways, like how things are at work. It is only when I can't clear things (too often unfortunately) that I have to take them home.
Instead of repeating myself, I'll simply link to a post I made during a similar discussion.
broward county in FL (laudeerdale, sunrise ...) has had this for over a year, i like it except for the part about shitty authentication. i like bing able to see my grades real time, i just dont like the idea that anyone with my student number and birthdate can too. the potential for abuse is big
Kaoslord [quote goes here] define("slashdot purity","67.5");
My high school has had a similar program for about 2 or 3 years now. Its called Powerschool and made by Apple. It keeps track of our grades, attendance, and all that good stuff. As soon as teachers enter the grades on their computers at school, the updated quarter average along with the grades of each assignment is available online. I like the system because it allows me to keep track of my grades all through the quarter, so I am never surprised when report cards roll around. Our school gives each student a unique number (that is not based on anything else) and a random password inorder to access the system.
SIGFAULT
I agree that a lot of high school seems pretty dumb, but actually, if you forget the bad experiences, most people do actually learn some important stuff while there. Not only what they teach you in class, but how to deal with the social structure. Even if the classes are slow and boring as they were for me, only the most arrogant or genius of teenagers could claim they know more than ALL their teachers. Besides, for the more intelligent student, homework is quick and easy and this means you have plenty of your own time to look into what interests you. If you find the homework long and hard, then you probably need to spend the time on it. And if it's tedious, well that's an important life lesson actually. Many of the things you just have to do aren't fun and interesting. But they still have to be done.
The run-of-the-mill teenager is too busy trying to impress their peers and be rebellious towards authority to really get as much out of high school as they could. If you didn't put these kids into this "day care", they sure as heck wouldn't be learning anything on their own time. At least this way they get some basic math, reading and writing skills.
It's awfully hard to judge what's important to learn. Usually it's the stuff you didn't learn that you notice, not the stuff that you did. I believe that the current school system is lacking but any system, no matter how good, needs to be complemented with a rich environment outside of school hours.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Don't mod me down as a troll, because I speak from now. Not doing your homework does not show a statement, nor prove a point. Yes, you are doing obscenely simple review papers, but it prepares you for paperwork in life. And, btw, parent nice sig.
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"
The Warden, Cool Hand Luke
This is a golden opportunity to improve your skills in networking and Java Programming. Follow the bouncing ball to freedom. . .
1) First, on your local computer, alter the domain information to query a local names server (or host file for that matter). Then override the URL of this nasty spyware, and route it back to the local box.
2) Set up a nice copy of apache on the local box, make sure it starts autmatically at boot time.
3) Write your own applet to LOOK just like the one at the school, but say lovely things about you.
4) Deploy and enjoy
. . .
5) Almost forgot -- if your connection is always on, you can open up your firewall, and modify your applet to say nice things about other students. You can probably charge them a few bucks to make their parents machines point to your "service". You might also set up a "pay-per-view" counter for additional bonus $. Have fun!!!
First of all, I would like to say that, while my school district does not use Pinnacle, we have looked at it and other similar systems...many of which have much better security features, and we will probably make the move to one of the systems soon. The reason? Parents want to know what is going on. They want to know how little Johnnie is doing in school, or what sporting events are comming up, or when the school play is. Many of these systems are used as community information centers, not just grade and attendance reporting systems. Many of the systems can even be set up to e-mail parents, if they want, about upcomming events. Sure not every parent cares to have all of this info, but they don't have to check the web site or give an e-mail address if they don't want. Let's face it, the generation of parents now are WAY more tech savvy than generations past have been. Teachers like these systems because they don't have to worry about sending home notes to parents, they can just post a message on-line for the parents to read (per student or for the whole class). Now the big question...is this an invasion of privacy? Um...no. Like many others have pointed out, parents have the right to information regarding their minor children. Let's see...grades and attendance...guess what, parents are notified about all that already, just not on a daily (or weekly, or whatever) basis. They receive notice at the end of grade terms or sooner, if there are problem patterns emerging. None of this is information that parents aren't getting already, or are unable to get if they don't want. Homework assignments on-line? OMG!!! The horror!!! Seriously, parents have the right to request this info from teachers already, if they want. Now if you REALLY want to see parents and kids freak out, I could start posting little Johnnie's web-surfing habits on-line.
Break all of their computers.
Distroy all the computers in your house, or give them away.
First, I appologize for the 'anonymous coward'. I just forgot my login info.
Now, people have to look at the big picture. I read a few posts, some for this pinnacle system, some against. and alot of the arguements are valid. You have to give kids privacy. But when its something like school, there really isn't 'privacy' when it comes to grades or homework. you find out about it anyways after a certain length of time. With this system, your just making sure 'if' any problems arise, your on top of them to help fix the if needed.
Also, no matter who you are, your kids are their own person. If they feel they want or need to skip school, not do homework, or extremes like putting a gun in their closet, well, there are kids that do that out of spite, kids that do that simply because they want to, the list goes on. I myself was a very sheltered child in some areas, I never went to parties till my second year of Grade 12, that sorta thing. I look at alot of the people I grew up with, and I KNOW that some would have seriously rebelled in my situation. You can't compare kids, and use one style of parenting to go by when raising kids. If you could, there would be book written on it.
This is ultimately a desicion made by the parents, in conjunction with their feelings towards how their kid might react to having his parents know more about his school grades than he wants them to. Truthfully, its their decision alone to make, since no matter what, the outcome, good or bad, will reflect on them.
One more thing. People (especially kids) have to learn on their on, by making their own mistakes. if you let them make a mistake, and then show them why it WAS a mistake, and show them an alternate route, I bet they will learn alot more than if you just shield them from making those mistakes in the first place.
What is your parrent's email address, I want to let them know your /. user ID so they can track your karma too
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Last year, our school started using Pinnacle as a method of keeping track of attendance and grades. It even had a feature that integrated with our school district's student data program, SASIxp (google this yourself if you wish). It also enabled attendance to be done quickly. One plus was being able to check your grade whenever you wanted using a client that was installed on our network (a mix of Novell Netware and an NT server). We were starting to try and set up parent access, but privacy concerns over posting of student data on the internet prevented adoption before the district decided on a new gradebook program, InteGrade Pro and a new attendance program, ClassroomXP. Of course this was facilitated by installing a machine (windows2000, Gateway e1600 and e1800 if you are interested).
As far as security, you have a good point. While the school is obligated to make their system secure, I doubt that anyone in their right minds (i.e., on Slashdot, not in the administration) believes that this system cant' be cracked. I just hope the people who run the school office aren't in charge of online security. I can't imagine they're up to speed on anti-social engineering techniques, let alone anti-script kittie tools.
As for your privacy, where your parents/guardians are concerned, you have none! You're a legal minor getting darn near free room & board. You're also a lot more niave than you can imagine, so stop whining and get over it. You'll get to pay taxes, pay rent, pay utilities, vote, buy groceries, keep a budget, and worry about your own kids' safety soon enough.
"This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
Just as it should be. Of course, if I had my way, students could drop out at age 12, would graduate at 16, and spend the remaining two years of their adolescence in the military or civil service. That would reduce a lot of the BS that schools cram down students' throats. (And before you gripe, remember that Linus Torvalds spent 11 mandated months in the Finnish military. It didn't hurt his career, did it?)
Free software, not Iraq, because Bill Gates is evil & Saddam is just misunderstood.
It seems as if the Slashdot crowd has forgotten what it was like to be a kid in high school. Many comments posted thus far criticize the kid for not liking the system. Heck, if I was in high school, I wouldn't like the system either. I may not speak for everyone, but I know I'm in the majority when I say that I thought homework sucked in high school. Heck, I'm a graduate student and I still don't like homework. A very significant part of high school is developing into an adult and taking on responsibility without parental assistance. If the parents want to know if a kid has homework, then they should ask the kid. If the kid lies to his parents then there are bigger problems to deal with.
Microsoft should hire me. I can write code that doesn't work faster than the guys they have doing it now.
Teacher: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Simone: Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend knows this kid who wrote this script which plugs into this database that links to this client which says that Ferris passed out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
Teacher: Thank you Simone.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
It isn't a _just do it_ issue. Kids need to be able to plan when they are going to do their homework. I don't know when you people went to school, but there's a lot less "do pages 2 through 8 for tomorrow" and a lot more "create a video advertisement for a fictional cola by two weeks from now" these days.
In the real world one sets one's own schedule to adjust for stress levels, social activities, and dozens of other things. Every person works differently, and a huge part of the point of high school is to give a student an opportunity to find his or her own work style. It sounds to me as though this poster feels he or she isn't being given the opportunity to take a rest when deadlines allow it and schedule homework intelligently.
Some parents will insist that their children work at the same pace, in the same way, as the parents, and this can actually hurt performance. You know what? Not all parents are perfect. Some parents will berate a child for earning a 97% instead of a 100%, over and over. If such a parent is getting numbers from every in-class quiz, every day, that parent's child may well snap.
It's also true that not all teachers are perfect. Some teachers really aren't up to the challenge. Maybe they're not experienced enough yet. Maybe they've gotten a little senile. I had a teacher who would come to Chemistry class drunk. It took us all semester to figure out she wasn't just amusingly brain-damaged. Many of us were hauled up to the administration offices for skipping class because she couldn't fill out the damn form properly. If child has a problem teacher and your parents are just sitting at home looking at bad numbers day after day, incorrect absences marked by a senile teacher, where's that child's credibility? How soon will these websites replace parent/teacher conferences in cash-strapped districts? Don't bother supposing that a trustworthy child will be trusted by his or her parents. That isn't good enough. We're talking about the model for a whole society here, not just Ozzie and Harriet.
So sure, update the parents every two weeks on what's happening. Let them know if too much daily homework is going undone, and maybe then start revealing the daily assignments on the web-site. No matter what, though, the students should still have the opportunity to earn the right to a certain degree of privacy. No matter what, parent/teacher interviews must continue.
How about you post a link to the system on a location frequented by h4x0rz, say slashdot. Let them know what a horribly repressive system it is, along with the format of the userid and password, along with the weak security in place. The system gets 0wn3d, and you have no more problem!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Billy Slackoff, now, is a different story. The kid that doesn't do anything in school (like, say, myself before college) is the one that will get affected. If he got his act together and showed that he can regularly do his stuff, then he might find the trust restored.
See, very few parents will waste their time checking a site like that without cause. It's mainly for the parents who have a hunch they're being lied to but lack proof.
If transparency is good, then lots of transparency is even better! Many states now require teachers to take tests of basic competence in core subjects. Why not make these scores available to parents as well?
And while we're at it, I want webcams of the classrooms and playground, so I can keep an eye on Junior throughout the day. The teacher's lounge would be nice too -- I always did wonder what happened in there.
Ok, we post to slashdot. We're geeks, we're (most likely) smarter than the average person.
A large proportion of people posting say something along the lines, "This is an invasion of my privacy! I don't need to do homework, I've aced all my tests, I can stand up in front of class and make it up as I go along!"
This kind of thing is not for the 5% or so of 'smart' children in school. It's for the other 95% that struggle to grasp the concepts in the limited time that the school has (for whatever reason) to teach it to them.
So, before you type another, "I'm leet! I need no homework!" post,think about the poor dumb schmuck in your class who can't grasp logarithms and is going to struggle to get anywhere near a white-collar job. That's what the homework is for.
(Parent Mode on)
If you're so good at your studies, it'll only take you 5 minutes to whiz through your homework, and god forbid, the little bit of extra practice solving differential equations might actually help you one day.
(Parent Mode off)
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
My school has been doing this for a while now and it doesnt really bother me that much and I really kind of like how easy it is to know how well/poorly i did on a test the same day. Edline
If there is any interest in a product with a much better security system, check out MainBrain:
http://www.mainbrainschool.com.
I wonder what the odds are that within 18 months, the company that makes this thing will come out with a gps collar add on that can tell you your childs exact location. 18 months after that...video camera built into the collar.
My point is that in the hands of good parents, things like this are good. In the hands of bad parents it will produce Akward 18 year old off to college who is drunk with freedom but has no idea how to use it responsibly and be forced to spend the first years of his adult life mourning his lost childhood and learning all of the thing he should have learned back then.
IMHO let the tenth graders learn the value of hard work the hard way. Two good years at a community college can erase 4 years of High School mistakes.
Insert sig here (slashdot) Insert cig here (Lewinsky)
And I'm most likely going to be involved in helping set it up. Barf.
The problem isn't that a way of checking on you is available. The problem is that it's needed.
LOL!
That's cool. I never even thought of that. That really brightens my day.
testing out my trending skills
It sounds like you have good parents. If your parents were like most apathetic parents they would only care about quarterly grades. I used to get down on my mom, because she hassled me about my grades, but now I know how valuable things like math and history are. I use advanced math for computer graphics, and history has taught me a lot about life.
Maybe you should be thanking your parents...
Schools don't do things like online gradebooks to make life easier for teachers or to provide data for parents. Instead, this is part of a larger trend:
- More systems to gather data from the lower levels (teachers being the lowest level)
- Fewer systems to disseminate information to the lower levels.
The benefit of these programs for administrations and school boards is that if teachers don't update their electronic gradebooks regularly enough, they're the bad guys. New and old teachers at my school keep detailed paper records but shun the Pinnacle gradebook because it's so unfriendly and frankly a little weird. When you ask someone to take on an extra responsibility, you have a tacit obligation to make it easy for them. Pinnacle doesn't do that, and also makes it very simple for the higher-ups to put new requirements on teachers. For example, this year we went to quarter-finals instead of end-of-year finals. Each time teachers give a quarter final, they must enter raw scores, scale the scores by hand, enter scaled scores, and add a comment to each student interpreting their score on the test. And get this: none of this data entry means anything because those numbers are not used for any computation. It's just record keeping for someone else.Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Yup, this thing is evil, invasive of privacy, and likely to fuel the megalomania of the particular flavour of parent that lives vicariously through their children.
On the other hand, if my school had used this system I would've developed a work ethic ten years earlier and wouldn't still be trying to finish that elusive Bachelor's degree.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
I've seen a lot of posts saying that the kid should just do his homework. As a highschooler i don't see the need for most of my homework and never do work before the morning of the day its due. Granted, i don't have much HW (since most of my teachrs seem to agree it's not that great), but there is a lot of busywork out there that doesn't need to get done. Especially in schools without qualified teachers. So lay off. That being said, i'd tell the kid to ask his parents to lay off as long as hios grades stayed good.
:).
I hope i didn't make any spelling/grammer errors in that since it'll hurt my argument
Pulling off the original scam would be a piece of cake, so long as one ran their own DNS and HTTP server. The real problem, however, would be keeping the scam running. One would constantly have to update the page and keep thier parents from accessing the real one. Here's a thought: How about actually taking the time to do your homework? It would probably be less work in the long-run, and you wouldn't ever have to worry about your parents figuring you out.
Although I am not sure about the other schools in my school district, my particular high school does use Pinnacle. I find it to be a very useful tool, personally, because I am able to verify that my teachers have my grades entered correctly and so on and so forth.
Until recently, there was a very large hole in its security, at least from inside our school's intranet. Usernames for our Pinnacle system are the student ID numbers, and passwords correspond to abbreviated birthdays. A Word document containing all of this information (for teacher use) was available on a server on the school's intranet, visible to anyone logged in (presumably district-wide). The server was recently password-protected, but a careless teacher could leave this page open, allowing an observant student to obtain the necessary information to examine a classmate's grades. I am also aware of one student-created mirror of these intranet pages, although the student responsible is not distributing the information.
I think it's almost definitely insecure. The Pinnacle web frontend ties into the grades database inside the intranet. As best I can tell, at my school, both the backend database and the website live on the same server. Very insecure, in my eyes.
The system has its upsides and downsides... But I don't believe my district has safely and securely implemented its Pinnacle installation, so that does definitely raise concerns for me.
"Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon!" -- Montgomery Scott, ST:III
Oh man. My mother would have loved to have THAT program :(
Instead she decided to "home school" my sister and I so she had constant control ALL day.
Now here I am at 21, trying to get my GED because I don't even have a High School diploma even though I still did 12 years of "schooling".
All I see, is just another way for parents to tighten chains on kids they obviously have a poor relationship with to begin with. After all, if the realtionship with your kid is good, you won't have to wonder how he acts at school because he'll trust you enough to let you know.
So instead of "spying" on your kids people should take the time to build some kind of quality relationship with them. Not saying the parent shouldn't be in charge, they should, but they also need to find a balance that allows the kid to feel trusted and not just living with a dictator who they feel doesn't even actually care about THEM just there own power (as the child sees it).
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
First person to spell "Responsible" right in the entire thread!
Way to go!
The point of homework is to make sure that you understand the material.
:)
Is it really? If that is the case, then shouldn't a student who can score 100% on tests and quizes be excused from homework?
I ask, because I am not really sure myself. I used to believe that the point of homework was to make sure you understood the material, and I was one of those persons who rarely did homework in high school or undergad. (Grad school was a different story.) I scored well. Did great at standardized testing.
Math was one of my stronger areas. All the way through 4 quarters of calculus and even in a college senior level number theory class, I could read and/or listen to a professor explain a concept and just 'get it.' And get A's or A-'s in the class without doing any of the homework. I might need to do one or two problems to reinforce or or clarify my understanding, but that was it. I was in the 700s on my math SATs and higher than that on my math section of the GRE.
However, I hit a brick wall hard when I took differential equations. That wonderful capacity to 'just get it' wasn't there for dif EQ. I took the class twice. The first time, I intentionally blew the final so that I would get a D. (Doing so allowed me to retake the class and wipe out the D. Had it been a C, retaking the class would have meant that the C was averaged in with the second grade.) So, I was able to use much simpler math skills to calculate exactly which questions I had to get correct to get the D instead of the F
I retook it and squeaked by with a B. Now, that B probably represented a better understanding than the bulk of the students in the class, but it was nothing like my understanding of any other math classes I had taken up to that point. I didn't have any intuitive conception of anything more than simple problems. I couldn't look at a problem and have a sense of what the correct answer might be or an ability to look at an answer and make a quick judgement as to whether it seemed a likely answer like I could for really nasty integration problems.
I suspect that had I developed the skills to slog through homework while in high school, that I might have had the ability to work harder at differential equations and gotten to the point where I understood them in the way that I had understood most other mathematical concepts that I had been presented with up to that point. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I would really trade the hours of free time I racked up not doing homework for many, many years just to assuage my wounded pride in this area.
Be that as it may, I think that there is an element of homework that represents more than just certifying that you have mastered the material. I think it can be seen as skills training for learning how to master more difficult material in the future. I also think that it can be seen as innoculation for much of the mindnumbing work that many people will end up doing in their professional lives. (Luckily, I have been able to avoid a profession filled with mind-numbing work, but I know many for which that is not the case.)
It's a castrated Ram (male sheep).
Wethers are often sent from Australia, in large numbers, alive on big ships, to be killed facing Mecca in various Middle Eastern countries.
Please don't ask how mass castration of male lambs are done, you wouldn't like the answer (but I bet those NY token suckers could get a job doing it).
"whether" and "weather" are also words.
Also, since it seems relevant:
"ewes" are female sheep (pronounced same as Use)
"use" is what you do with a tool or utility
"yews" are a kind of tree
"yous" is what you write or say when you have been avoiding school too long
Sorry, but I couldn't resist the temptation to be an anonymous pedant. There must be some sort of pedant's law that means that every post that points out an error in another post must contain a misteak ore too off tits own. "Planks law" perhaps: Ie the parable where Jesus suggested removing the plank from one's own eye before trying to remove a splinter from the eye of another?
My school would never have found such a system more cost effective than checking the rolls and making phone calls and they didn't get their first computer until my penultimate year at school and I was one of only three who knew how to work it, and it wasn't connected to the phone lines.
When I wanted a day off, I used to tell my mum, then I'd ring the school and tell them I was sick. The receptionist used to say "sick of school?" and I'd say "yes, but don't tell anyone".
I also used to sign my own homework book. Teachers really didn't have a clue whose signature was what anyway. Homework was something to be done in the gap time between when I got to the classroom, and the teacher showed up. Five minutes = sufficient for three page essay, and the text was usually more coherent than when I had time to think about it and edit the life out of it.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
you should do your homework if the benefit is greater than the cost. you shouldn't do it if you could be doing something else that would yield higher benefits. if teachers are good, they will give you relevant homework that reaps high benefits. if your teacher gives you homework that is not useful, try solving the math problems that have million dollar rewards....
No! They don't! The purpose of a course grade is to provide a measure to others of how well a person comprehends the course material, NOT how well they comprehend a teacher's homework warning.
Eat at Joe's.
Of course if you don't know java, spend your obviously wasted time in high school reading up on it ;)
Why didn't they personalize it in some way so smart-ass kids like you ;) couldn't mess with it?
Because they didn't know he was messing with it. The school thought it was just "broken".
What happens to the data after a kid leaves school? Call me FUDer, but what exactly guards the kid from being refused a job 10 years later because poor class attendance record -- the one that was kept since the school days -- indicates potential responsibility in recruiter's eyes?
I believe the parents permission to actually start the attendance/homework/grades database wasn't required legally; might such a requirement be needed before passing the data further?
Andrius
This is about the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Most people that were born in a certain state or area have the same first 3 ssn digits...given that, everyone in a similar area should have the same next 2 digits...or simply permute 00-99..the 6th digit will just be 0-1 and that digit can be considered random. Given that you know the first 3, probably know someone in your area and certainly their last name...it doesn't take a genius to permute 0-1 for that 6th digit and get someone else's grades...let alone the simple privacy issues...use the last 6 morons.