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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.
In case anyone was wondering, Lucas123 (the submitter) is a ComputerWorld shill. Interesting how many "stories" at Slashdot come from such obvious shills.
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
Grow up. Not everything is Big Brother.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
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 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.
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
Finally, a virtual place that kids can keep their virtual weed when they're at school.
Calling it a "virtual" anything is just a buzzword for the subcents.
It's a collaboration suite.
They're using their grammar skills there.