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School Kids Get Virtual Web Lockers
Lucas123 writes "Seventh and eighth graders in Tulsa, Oklahoma not only get tablet PCs at the beginning of the school year, but they are now issued 100MB of storage through a hosted school 'Web Locker' system. The Web lockers also include chat, calendaring, and collaboration capabilities, but school administrators can also monitor and track all files uploaded to the system, and lock out individuals for misuse."
Any eight-grader who's worth his salt will have an accessory gmail account to keep the important stuff.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
And what's the incentive for the kids to use this solution, as opposed to the numerous free one provided, which won't have the big brother sees you problem?
And, of course, a steady supply of advertising and "product placement".
That's quite the story write-up, almost as if done by a PR writer...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You've discovered file sharing. Now you're pretty much on par with anybody who has used computers in the last couple decades.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
When I was in middle school, some seven or eight years ago, we had "home" drives and email accounts in the school system. I'm sure this is a slicker interface, but the principle is the same: there's no new technology involved at all!
They are also using AJAX so students can serialize themselves for compression and centralized storage of themselves by school bullies.
and the people will want the controls placed on them.
because it seemed easier
because it seemed faster
because it seemed safer
because I was afraid
because I thought I had to
because it was more expensive if I didn't let them do it
becuase it wasn't worth fighting any more for freedom
because if I refused, the terrorists would win
because everyone else was doing it
a system like this- services for kids in school seems simple, seems good - but it is a wolf in sheeps clothing. These students are being taught to use a system that is ultimately not in their own interests.
But in the end it won't matter how they get you to give up your humanity and your freedom, you will not be able to get it back once you are chipped, tracked, and recorded. Other people will "manage" your finances, your access rights, and your permissions -- all electronically and under one central system. It will make 1984 look appealing: at least they could hide from the telescreen in some corners of their world. The idea of dissent will fade from the collective understanding.
If you have not seen it yet, the Zeitgeist movie http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ covers this pretty well. Like sheep herded in the yard, dumb people who just can't seem to stop the TV long enough to figure out that centralized control of their life makes them no longer free.
In case anyone was wondering, Lucas123 (the submitter) is a ComputerWorld shill. Interesting how many "stories" at Slashdot come from such obvious shills.
if you cannot be shoved in it? I mean come on, those traumatic memories are the basis for our geekdom, or am I alone on this?
Monstar L
What do they get on gmail?
The school should try to give the students something better than they have at home anyway.
How do we know students won't just abuse this system?
What kind of monitoring is there for inappropriate content?
Does it run Linux?!?!
another way to distract kids from learning in school because some technology zealots want to fill their wallets
it's a space to put their homework in? I see no other practical use for that. Reading e-books? COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! Music? Ditto. Games? Not appropriate for school.
Now, if the lockers were encrypted with TRUECRYPT (and YOU had the key in USB or something), now THAT'd be something.
We did this in 1999. We even called it the "Locker."
No news here.
Move along.
Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number...and make that a little louder?
Isn't evolution just some theory? What makes it more than just some theory? It is a reasonably scientific theory given the evidence. It hasn't been proven. It hasn't been disproved. Sounds like every other theory they teach in school.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
My school had this when I was a freshman, and it got ditched after the first year because it sucked so much. It's really not a new system, nor is it very worthwhile.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to give the kids a file share on the network to store their digital stuff (like classwork, etc.) now they are all using computers these days, and this way they wouldn't have to carry USB memory sticks around (which 8th graders are bound to lose/break/set fire to/swallow - and forget to backup).
THE SCUMBAGS.
In the past, she said, students were only allotted 10MB of server space on the school's network. "We knew this year [students] would be creating movies and doing other things, [so] they needed a lot more space," she said.
School admin here. This quote is just laughable. Granted, up until last year, I had my students set at 100 MB apiece. Looking at the quota log, most students could get along just fine with 25 MB, although those who have more usually just have too many pictures saved up.
But, as soon as we started up doing a multimedia class last year using PhotoShop and Movie Maker, 100 MB was laughable. Some PS projects alone were 60-70 MB, and editing raw video requires ~200 MB per minute of video data. I upped these kids to 300 MB, and when they worked on videos, it was in a separate lab that let students save their data to the hard drives.
I can understand the desire to have portability for students and staff, but that's what thumb drives are for. Besides, there are a number of families who still do not have online access yet.
Oh how we struggled with the few books we had to carry home while we left unneeded ones in our lockers.
The frustration of never a moments peace because we could read the books on the bus or train and be briefed ready to start our homework sooner, leaving more spare time that had to be filled with 'leisure activities - or - worse yet - the hassle of arranging to meet your friends and actually see them in person - heck sometimes we even shared a meal or some sodas in a local park - OUTDOORS - whole we worked together on projects!
At the moment it's a real pain when I have to visit my 7-year-old son's school to have him show me through his project books and explain what he has been working on. Soon I may be able to login to his folder, have a quick browse and tick a box.
Yay progress!
AT&ROFLMAO
I've used Class Fronter since around 2004. Thats...uhm...*counts on fingers*..for three years.
Class Fronter (or fronter in shorthand) has file uploading space. It got hand-in folders which blocks uploads after a specific date. It got chat. It got games. It got integrated multiple-choice tests. In short; it's a locker with some damn nice features. So why the heck is this on slashdot? I mean, Learning Management Systems, or a "Locker" is nothing new at all. It is at least 10 years old I guess.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
Tablet PCs start around a grand, 100MB of storage is pennies
Tablet PCs allow students to use computers productively (and more easily) in all classes, 100 MB of storage provides ???
Tablet PCs have (most likely) at least 40,000 MB of storage, 100 MB of storage has 100 MB of storage...
I for one think that if teachers are taught to use the tablets effectively, they can be a boon for education, as opposed to laptops, which I find to be virtually useless in most classroom environments in current usage scenarios. I don't that online storage has any discernible benefit to any population's education either.
This brings us one step further to losing your right to read. All they need to do is fill it with non free textbooks and tell you not to share them. If there's something everyone needs, you don't need to put it in a locker. A private space for students and computer access would be nice, but not if it's just another tool of control. Requiring the use of non free software is just the first part of that control and it's funny that one of the reasons given was the lack of reliability of the old non free software. The web already offers ways to share calendars, movies and the rest outside the control of the school.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"The Web lockers also include chat, calendaring, and collaboration capabilities, but school administrators can also monitor and track all files uploaded to the system, and lock out individuals for misuse.""
So they finally learn what it means to be a responsible adult.
Buy stock in tinfoil now!
Funny, at my high school we get two gigabytes of space, inside which we can keep any program we need to (mIRC, sunbird, Pidgin, etc.). In addition, we get a VPN connection. Although I sure wish we got Tablet PCs, as my laptop just stopped working. :(
http://pinopsida.com
This fucking "feature" is a standard in any network environment. Its called a network drive you losers. Every school and college give spaces for files. Slashdot has been trolled. Its storys like this why nerds get beaten up and why linux is not ready for the desktop. Goatse and friends is the only real reason why people visit slashdot
So if the same story got submitted by somebody other than Lucas123, then it would be OK? But because Lucas123 works for the publication that published it, it's bad and evil.
So if Taco Bell is giving away free tacos, and your mom drives down there and gets you some, that's OK. But if the guy from Taco Bell drives right up to your house and hands them to you, that's an evil marketing ploy because he's just a shill.
Breakfast served all day!
I have something almost like thyat at my high school, only not idiot accessable and more mature; ftp. And you have to know what it is and how it works to get a folder on the server.
Over here in the UK, I'm a professional geek for a secondary school. We've had this stuff available for a few months now (We run an internal myspace/facebook clone, for example).
:)
Not that we can get the little wretches to make good use of it, but we have it
fortune -o
Porn, music/movie sharing, copies of the anarchist cookbook, test cheat sheets, and other people's essays. It'll all be cleverly stored in compressed, encrypted, password protected zip files (or current equivalent) so snooping admins can't get at it. And if that's not enough, they'll hack the server or other student's accounts and store their stuff in places that will get someone else busted if they're caught.
At least, that's pretty much what I did with my 200k of high school provided server storage back in 1987.
The Tablet PC is just plain awesome. If they can get the money to do such a thing, so be it.
But the "Locker" thing... I've seen plenty of solutions like this. All have either received negative or lukewarm reviews by students (including me). WebCT and Blackboard are the only two I can think of off-hand.
Really, what it comes down to is that whatever content is posted on these portals (calling a spade a spade) is owned by the school district. If teachers and students post their work on the portal, the school owns it. I don't suppose people plan on putting any personal work on there.
The game.
Problem: once they provide virtual lockers, they will likely remove access to USB ports to plug in thumb drives. Can't do that now because the kids actually need access to them. And even with access to a USB port, rebooting to peanut linux probably isn't a good solution either—talk about attracting attention. In my grade/jr high/high school, when we had access to a computer, rebooting was not allowed (nor was opening applications other than the one we were supposed to be using).
I think the proper approach would be to teach kids about security and protecting themselves online. This would be a great way to teach kids to implement their own little security program to encrypt their data (Caesar cipher to start) and then move them up to real encryption.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
So, basically user's account now include a home directory onto which the user may save his files. Isn't it actually rare /not/ giving the users a home directory? So, in the end they have only built some new interface for something that was earlier done with the normal file browser interface. The only difference to the old is that the it's yet another interface that the users will have to get used to.
To other news... The scientist in Oxford University have just invented a device they call "wheel". "It's a point-symmetrical polygon with 100 sides, so it has an almost smooth surface on which the device can roll on a platform. No more need to move big objects by letting slaves pull them on ropes. Future designs will include a bigger amount of sides, resulting with even less friction."
Where have your banknotes been?!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Can we please stop-stop-stop talking about computers are educational devices? I think this is a ploy initiated by Compaq/HP/etc in order to sell more and more computers. I have come to the opinion that while a computer is only necessary for word processing and spreadsheeting. All these schools are really doing is shifting the blame for poor performance back a few years - any parents continuously believe that well equipped computer labs actually indicate a better education.
More in-depth reporting on this amazing and lightning-paced story, as it develops!
Wow, somebody got paid for this, as an innovative product. People's tax money was spent on a "technology" for storing files on a remote server. Does anyone else feel a feint impulse to just give up, turn evil, and start fleecing suckers like this? They're out there, and they're waving their money around, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do me! Do meeeeee!!"
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Its just like this one time, when I went to school, we also got our own storage space on an old NT server. I think we had about 5 megabytes each. We were not allowed to put porn (or hacking tools, I learned the hard way) on this share.
/. frontpage - surveillance is nothing new either. I was not allowed to store neither 'una_bomber.exe' (mailbomber) or 'aggressor.exe' (malicious packet generator) on my share, and the sysadmin let me know about this, so I renamed the programs to 'school_project_may.doc' and such which defeated the surveillance scheme. But regardless, how can this be /. frontpage material?
So wtf is new about giving students access to such share, except for that they will make accessible over the internet, not just the LAN?
If its the fact that it will be surveyed that put it on the
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
"Teacher I swear. I had my homework stored in the locker and a virus ate it!"
I wrote a web storage module for the (international) college group I used to work at years ago. IIRC it automatically assigned 5MB of storage per subject (configurable). It was built to replace the "H: Drive" that was only available within our computing labs and reduce the need for (unreliable) removable storage, ie; Floppy and Zip disks.
We also had a messaging module, installations of phpBB and MediaWiki, electronic assignment submission, on-line marks entry for the lecturers and a raft of other features all built just to keep our heads above the workload. We can't have been the only ones in the world doing this stuff.
Finally, a virtual place that kids can keep their virtual weed when they're at school.
Just saying :D
Calling it a "virtual" anything is just a buzzword for the subcents.
It's a collaboration suite.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So somebody came up with a cute metaphor for something that's been going on for a decade or so?
yes, lets have everyone make their own version of this and see what kind of trouble script kiddies can make
Who keeps dreaming this crap up?
Nobody wants a LAN network drive or idiot friendly online FTP. The closest "network personal space" has come is use specific non-general registration required sites, or custom search engine home pages.
Why would anyone bother locking their files up on a network drive or FTP that you need propritetary software to access? If you can't get to it with a web browser, it's not going to get embraced. Period.
If it's a general use, solution looking for a problem: It's not going to be embraced! Period!
My school gives me about 100 MB storage and a 'Virtual Learning Enviroment' (which is basically a calendar and chat based on Moodle) What's the big deal?
? Such as Unix's ~./* ? This feature has been a part of EVERY shared computer system I've ever worked on, and I started programming in 1976. It was considered old hat, even then.
I saw nothing in TFA that distinguishes this from normal home dir usage. Did I miss something?
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I'm going to file for a patent on polygonal wheels. By making the polygon's sides nonlinearly bulge outward, following the formula (pi)*r**2, a smoother rolling experience may be enjoyed.
This enhancement may be done to polygonal wheels that have any number of sides.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
A lot of UK schools offer a similar service as part of a virtual learning environment. It gives the school a reliable method of communicating with students outside of school, without insisting that they buy a laptop. Important calendar info (lesson times, exam times, school trips?) can be communicated and looked up at home on the family PC, or in school on a classroom PC. It allows access to coursework, online marking, and school educational material from home.
I'm sure they're not just providing it for the kids to play with in a way entirely unrelated to education.
Is this a public school or private? I can tell you if this was coming out of my tax dollars I'd be pretty PO'd. But then again, I can also tell you that I lived in Tulsa for a while, and they LOVE taxes there. Pretty much any tax that goes to the polls will get passed.
When I started elementary school here in Sweden around the year 2000, we had a system like that (first class/open text) which was shared by all elementary schools in the municipality. Perhaps we didn't have as much as 100 megabytes at the time, but still...
They will be doing what my kids say....
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
I think the concern is that Slashdot has become a fraud. Four out of the last five stories that I've submitted were rejected. Some of those showed up as approved when submitted by others many hours later. In some cases the approved versions had over hyped and inaccurate article summaries pointing to secondary sources. I try to take care to get a link to a source as close to an original article as reasonable (say, an article in a magazine which was presumably fact checked, rather than an original research paper which may be too tedious or a breathless adver-blog. Watching my own low rate of success, and hearing the complaints of many others, I've basically stopped my little experiment and no longer waste my time submitting articles. Lots of other people are doing that, too. That makes Slashdot less interesting. Collapse is inevitable. It will become just another digg clone.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.