Internet Pranks in Schools

Ferante125 writes "An interesting article about online pranks by students and teachers' responses to them. There are some interesting stats that sounded a little hard to believe. My immature side finds it funny and my more mature side is interested in the legal aspects." For the most part it seems like this article thinks pranks are basically just name calling and flaming on websites.

Comments

I guess I dodged a bullet

[spyrochaete]

In grade 8 mid-last-decade a friend and I wrote a little BASIC program on our class's standalone Apple IIe something like this:

10 ? "Bwahahaha! I am the Michaelangelo virus!";
20 GOTO 10

This caused a bit of a stir in our class for half a day before we fessed up. I suppose I'm fortunate to have escaped without prosecution.

Re: I guess I dodged a bullet

[spyrochaete]

It's always the low-tech pranks that take people the longest to fix.

I unintentionally freaked out my poor mom when I got smarmy and edited the Win98 logoff screen in mspaint. I changted a W to a T so that it said "It is not safe to turn off your computer." She left it like that for 3 days until I let her in on the joke. Oopsie.

Re:I guess I dodged a bullet

[Otto95]

In my day we pulled a prank where we changed the number of beads on the Math teachers abacus. Oh man, I'm old!

Re:I guess I dodged a bullet

[greeze]

When I was in university, I worked in the campus computer lab. One night after hours, a friend of mine and I recorded 35 distinct and separate fart sounds. They were all very small toots: a squeak here, a poot there... they all sounded like the farts you try to sneak out when you're in a public space, but they come out a little louder than you'd hoped. We then set each of them as the hourly chime on all 35 of the Mac 8500's in the Mac lab. Since the clocks on all the Macs were off by anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, the farts didn't all sound at the same time.

It would start a few minutes before the hour: over there in the corner of the room you'd hear a little "squeee." The poor CS student working on his midterm would look around, embarrassed. A few seconds later, another student's machine would respond with, "brrrt." As the hour approached, the farts got closer to each other until the entire lab was abuzz with flatus. And as the hour receded into the past, the farts would peter out slowly.

It took several days before the staff finally caught on to what was happening.

Lame

[Stanistani]

Obviously these students need to be indoctrinated in the latest Internet memes:
There were no rickrolls, and not even a single Longcat reference.

Re:Unlikely Statistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Dating.

Those aren't pranks...

[Thelasko]

Putting your high school up for sale is a prank.

Re:Yet another case made for homeschooling...

[VisceralLogic]

Homeschooling just segregates them even more and inhibits their socialization. The fact that you want to choose with whom they socialize is kind of disturbing. They aren't some sort of pet that you get to train. You should allow children to grow and develop with guidance, rather than follow some sort of path that you want to vicariously travel. In my opinion it's homeschooling that will hinder your potential child's socialization, rather than public schools.

I was going to point out that I was home-schooled through high school, and am perfectly well socialized... but then I remembered where I was posting this. :)

Pranks from the chalk face for fun and profit

[vorlich]

I have said many times on slashdot that school is in fact a prison. The inmates generally despise the jailers and unless you wish to spiral off into an alcohol induced early retirement a sustained level of pranking is all that will keep you going.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I always used to dress completely in black for the first day of term - suit, tie, shirt the lot - Gothed up to the max. I wore those pinz-nez glasses on a chord around my neck so that when I addressed a student, I had to peer over the top of them. Scared the living daylights out of the little darlings.

There were five IMacs in my tutorial room and each one had the clock set 3 minutes ahead of its neighbour. The macs pipped, pinged and giggled on the hour, on the half hour and on the quarter hour. Drove some students mad but drove my boss madder. Students of course cannot work Imacs and were unable to retaliate even when I sent them (for stats practical) to determine the total consumption of potatoes and KFC (popular foods in that part of Scotland!) amongst their fellow students.

I told them that the air conditioning system on the roof was a penthouse apartment, that another male lecturer, who dyed his hair and moustache(?) a charming shade of mahogany, had an unusual genetic condition and that was his natural colour.

When students asked me where I had acquired all my computing skills I told them I learned them in Bar-L (The Scottish High Security Prison). When they asked me for an idea for the cover of the college magazine I suggested a crop circle in the shape of the college logo set in a potato field. When they were stumped for a design for the same magazine, I had them lay it out like one of those airline mags, although, rather disturbingly, this was regarded as award winning work.

When my departmental head suggested the college have a top 100 books online poll, I had my students rig it so that Larry Niven's Ringworld was number one and Jane Eyre (her choice) was last! They also added 80 other hilarious titles. My head of department avoided contact with students at all costs and conducted most of her business via email. This was in the days before account verification so I regularly signed her up for every newsletter that had even the slightest connection with our faculty subjects. She was under the delusion that these internet sites had sought her out because she was so important a figure in the world of education...

My college circulated a monthly staff suggestions form (probably to comply with some iso 9001 crap). I regularly suggested painting our corridors light pink to calm down difficult students. When I missed my flu jab I jokingly suggested that they implement a college wide vaccination program. Not only did they take up the idea, they awarded me 100 pounds for making such a practical suggestion.

All of this pales into insignificance when I think that I could have sold the damn place on Ebay!