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Smart Kindergarten
A UCLA professor is working on set of sensors and data-capture applications to record a school classroom in intimate detail. The project webpage has more information; see also an older story. The professor apparently envisions actually deploying these sensors in a classroom next spring, but doesn't mention what school is willing to participate.
Wait this is America... it's for the children.
People think if they let fear run their lives willingly it will work out better compared to when governments used to do that forcibly.
Morons.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"I learned that someone named Big Brother is watching my every move, and that it's okay."
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
"We see, Mr. Smith, that your students are fairly unruly in class, and that they often speak to each other in languages that your resume doesn't indicate that you know. Also, for the 14.6 minutes per hour (average, of course) that your back is to the students, a full 26% of your class cheats on exams and other work. We don't feel that you have effective control of your classrooms, and therefore are choosing to terminate your contract."
Thbbttttt....
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Well, there is one possible positive effect of this system.
Currently when students do badly on exams or assignments, they might miss some of the opportunities other children may have, due to being placed in 'lower' classes. This could be one way of watching how a student works - if they are able to come up with good things in a low pressure environment, perhaps this will allow some of the students who have been previously overlooked to have an opportunity to show what they can too can perform, but only in a less pressure intense situation.
Some of our most promising scientists could be becoming bricklayers because they can't focus properly when they're stressed out, and get bad marks...
Teachers watch over kids.
What does that make them?
Uh, it doesn't say anywhere in the article that this got a signoff from any human studies committee. Shouldn't it have? It seems to me that this study presents an ethical issue or two
Precisely why is it more valuable scientifically to track kids' classroom interactions than it would be to track the interactions of, say, executives working in a corporation?
My cynical answer: it isn't. They're studying kids because no adult would ever be likely to give permission to be studied in that way.
This is uncomfortably reminiscent of the "Fernald Science Club" of the fifties in which MIT scientists fed mentally retarded kids radioactive tracers in nutritional experiments. It wasn't supposed to harm the kids,and it probably didn't, but it was highly unethical anyway--even by the standards of the time.
In That Hideous Strength, one of C. S. Lewis's characters remarks on the fact that performing experiments on children is considered wrong, yet it's perfectly all right to put the children in an "experimental school."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Thats the biggest problem with the whole thing -- if people don't care much about privacy issues at the momment, imagine what future generations could be like after going through this sort of training.
Anything will pass in America as long as it's slapped with a "...it's for the children" sticker on it. I don't see how this is anything new.
Life is not for the lazy.
while singing Bingo: "inserted extra clap. clearly not college material"
Remember the monitor Ender had to wear? A little more advanced, but similar idea.
In a society where education runs on a bare-bones budget to come up with a brilliant idea to spend more money spying on children in classrooms. I mean what sort of complete fucking moron comes up with this idea?
Next they will probably promote racial segregation [again... oddly enough] as a means towards a more unified society or something.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
And before you start screaming "INVASION OF PRIVACY!", please consider what it is that many geeks (i.e. many of the readers of this very story) go through in school. I was one of the two 'most picked on' kids in my school throughout my entire childhood (the fat girl was the other one). Teachers will almost never care when a student complains about another student harassing them. It's considered a "normal" (and, by implication, healthy!?) part of growing up. I once got beaten up by an older girl in the hallway, and no one did anything about it. Peppering Elementary and Middle schools with cameras, and enforcing strict penalties against the students who perpetrate violence against other students (and their parents, for raising such despicable brats in the first place), would do a lot more good than sensors and other "non-invasive" measures.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
But they're only doing it for our safety, so what's the problem? If giving up 225 years of constitutionally protected rights stops just one terrorist, isn't it worth it?
What worries me is that this professor would probably never even consider using this technology in working areas like offices and such because of the privacy implications. However, many people seem to consider kids as as sort of sub-humans that do not need privacy. When I was in school I would sometimes go to the bathroom just to be out of class for a while. With this technology even that kind of privacy is taken away from the kids.
-- Cheers!