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
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!
...
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.
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
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
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).
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...
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.
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.
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!"
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?"
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.
RRRRRight. The point of homework is to make sure that you understand the material. Now, granted, there are teachers who will excessive/nonsensical/boring homework which will achieve the exact opposite. But for some of my classes, I'm glad I have some homework so I got something to test on before the real test. This might become more of an issue in college though where there is considerably less time and opportunity to cover everything in class.
As to the not getting paid thing, if a teacher puts efforts into giving good homework, he or she will probably also assign grades to how well you did on it. Those grades are what you get paid with in school.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.