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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.
Hmm, interesting article. The definition of "prank" isn't just name calling and flaming. We have to re-define the term to include modern equivalent actions that corresponds to the term "prank". What is an acceptable on-line prank and what isn't?
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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.
If the gap between teachers and pupils is as large as the one between parents and children then it is no surprise that todays teachers really don't know what to do with the technology savvy generation that is about to supplant them.
Schools haven't got a clue about the internet, how to use it and what it could bring them. Pupils are running circles around their supposed betters and are showing earlier in life a degree of independence that teachers wished they had had when they were young. Todays youth are so connected using cellphones, the net and social networking that they are as alien from the previous generation as any that has ever been.
MP3 Search Engine
Obviously these students need to be indoctrinated in the latest Internet memes:
There were no rickrolls, and not even a single Longcat reference.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
In the so-called "Teacher Sux" case in Pennsylvania, for example, a high school student put up a website about a teacher with threats and comments such as "she shows off her fat ... legs."
Critics, however, contend that words like "annoy" and "embarrass" are too broad and may infringe upon First Amendment protections of parody.
Honestly, if she had fat legs and someone pointed it out to her in person would they have criminal/civil court documents filed over it? No, they would get detention/short-term suspension and move on with their lives. The recent rise in people being upset that a co-worker won't speak to them and is "threatening" because they dress in all black and wear sunglasses or that someone doesn't like them is created by this trend in secondary education that teaches people to behave like this.
I just can't understand why a grown adult would not be able to leave the house because some little fucking bastard said she had fat legs on the Internet. Both the adult and the student need to grow up -- fast.
With the rate of growth of technology being greater than exponential this gap is just going to increase. We are running into a major revolution in society where the old paradigms simply won't work. The only problem is that those with the authority to make the changes, almost by definition, don't have the understanding.
But then, back in the 60's we thought that we were the misunderstood generation who were going to sweep away all the old farts and bring in the dawning of the age of Aquarius so some things don't change.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
i taught for a couple of years as a volunteer teacher for C++ while with a company that was nice enough to give me time off to do this.
one student disliked me so much he hacked AOL's IM database to disable my IM account.
i had evidence it was him as well as people telling me he was bragging about it. at the end of the day i just tossed it up and said "hey he's still a kid making mistakes he'll learn" maybe not the best choice but presenting my evidence to superiors would have ended in blank stares.
Exactly. What do you think is going to happen when you willingly put yourself in posistion of authority over adolecents. I really don't get why labelling things as "online" makes them new and edgy. Making fun of the teachers is going to happen in middle and high schools. It will/has happen(ed) by whatever means of communication kids use. A teacher claiming she can't work because she got made fun of is like a firefighter complaining he can't work because fires are hot.
If it was something dumb and non-harmful, it was good for a laugh... this is where most teachers fail it.
If it damaged an OS install, I'd make the kid stay after school the entire week and re-load every workstation image in the classroom each day.
If it escaped the local network and damaged something else (fortunately I never saw that happen), then the kid gets to face the consequences full-on, and I would've been stuck with preparing a forensics report to show how it happened and what I would do to prevent it in the future.
The point is to make this clear up-front, and if it isn't harmful, use it as a teaching aid. It also helps to know, as a techer, WTF you're doing around the machinery (unlike one Texas teacher who IIRC had a kid arrested for "hacking" because he used Windows Messenger to pass notes in class... can't remember the specifics, but it was a dumb overreaction to say the least).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Dating.
Putting your high school up for sale is a prank.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Can you imagine the digital trail these kids are unknowingly leaving about their behavior on the net? Even now it's not unheard of to have employers google/myspace their applicants, on top of all the info aggregation services that are running wild out there.
It's going to be a hard lesson to learn (for those that commit serious enough 'offenses') but I strongly suspect that the next generation of kids will know the risks as they get pummeled by their school with "Cyber Bullying awareness" classes and such along with all the other becoming an adult type sex education classes.
I wouldn't call the things in that article pranks. I'd call them nothing more than bullying or teasing. Granted they're using the internet to push that bullying/teasing to a much bigger audience, but that's all it really is.
Back when I was in high school (gawd I'm feeling really old all of a sudden) back before Windows 3.0 existed, before most people knew what the internet was, I pulled some real pranks. The school had a demerit system that was managed on the same computer system that they used to teach COBOL programming. (Yeah, that's the language they taught us way back then) So one day I hacked into the demerit system and gave a bunch of teachers and the headmaster demerits. Two days later an updated list was posted in the hallway and the whole school saw that the faculty were now getting demerits as well. Now THAT is a prank. While I was there I also did other things like launch fireworks in the middle of the campus on the headmasters birthday, helped move a VW Beetle into the dining room, and launched a helium-filled farewell sign to all the seniors when I graduated. Those are pranks. This article isn't about pranks.
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.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I just can't understand why a grown adult would not be able to leave the house because some little fucking bastard said she had fat legs on the Internet. Both the adult and the student need to grow up -- fast. You have a point there - but there is a difference. As the amount of SPAM in most people's inboxes shows, the internet provides us with a terrifyingly efficient way of reaching large numbers of people. If you insult somebody face to face, that is between you and that person, and possibly a couple of people nearby, but what you put n the internet is visible to the whole world. This can easily be an overwhelming prospect for the victim of cyber-bullying. You know, even adults in high positions are just humans, and vulnerable.
this article vastly undermines the severity of this situation.
my wife is a teacher, and believe me, it is bad out there. she teaches 6th grade mathematics, and she is dealing with the internet, bullying, and humiliation on a weekly basis because of it. fortunately, the kids at her school aren't really old enough to know how to create proper websites yet, or dont have the money to sneak small webcams into the classroom, but their internet usage definitely affects the school environment.
with the prevalence of myspace, many kids are threatening each other and bullying each other over the internet (i still dont see how cyber-bullying is possible, since you can always just "not go to that site", but whatever...). they get caught up in the "he said, she said" game, and say some very awful things. teachers are all advised not to have myspace pages or facebook pages, for if they post pictures of them at the beach, at the bar, or even at home, children can and will spin them so that the teacher somehow comes across in a bad light. and the kids are so resourceful that they dont even take into account what a teacher says about themselves. one of my wife's coworkers had a friend sign her "wall" or whatever in myspace, and the comment left made a reference to a stripper or stripping (something along the lines of "you looked like a stipper that night"), and the kids in her class saw the comment and started telling people around the school that one of the teachers was a stripper. of course, this made it all the way to the parents, and they began calling the school. the kids spun something that someone else said, not even what the teacher said.
they are threatening each other, and posting inappropriate material about each other, which is creating fodder for the classrooms. 5th and 6th grade girls are posting pictures of themselves wearing little clothing, talking about their sexual experiences and knowledge online, and are basically begging to be preyed upon. what is worse is that the parents don't know and don't care. people can dismiss it as much as they want, and believe that it doesn't happen or that it is just a small percentage of kids. well, believe me, it is not. it is much worse than you think.
it is a parent's responsibility to know what their child is doing on the internet. those who say that it is "too much work" and that their kid is "smarter than i am" are full of it, because we often do meet the parents who put in the work, who monitor their children properly, and who properly look after their children and prevent this kind of behavior. we know that parents can handle it because there is still a small percentage out there who do it right. the rest of them need to look at themselves, and not their children, and certainly not the teachers.
teachers get paid a small amount of money to do a ton of work. my wife works 10 hour days, gets a 15 minute lunch, and is not only expected to be the one to educate them with the material that the school board deems appropriate (which grows larger every year), but yet she is expected to be their moral educator as well; a job she gladly does. most of them take pride in their work, and believe me, they hate giving out bad grades and low test scores because it makes them look bad. the problem with education these days is not the school, nor the teachers, nor the funding (believe it or not). it is the parents. parents have stopped being accountable. they have stopped checking their kids homework, monitoring their activity, and disciplining their children. they make excuses for their children (ADD, ODD, ADHD...), and often laugh at the behavior that their child is displaying. parenting in america has become a dismal affair.
Because things on the Internet have the potential to (a) be seen by a lot more people, and (b) last almost forever. There's a difference between calling someone a fatass in the classroom or schoolyard, and doing it on youtube.
Yes it will happen, but no, it shouldn't happen. There's a difference between descriptive and normative ethics. For example, I have never heard of teachers were the pupils posted posters all over town describing how much they disliked them. And if it happened, I'm sure it would involve a criminal case. Kids need to learn that with greater power (the Internet) comes greater responsibility. If they can't handle that responsibility, they shouldn't use the Internet. Lots of people probably shouldn't (and now I'm talking about posting stuff, not using Internet banking or similar things that everybody needs to do).
Actually, firefighters do that all the time. Going into a burning building is a very high-risk operation, and you need to carefully examine many factors, including temperature, before you decide to enter. Similarly, school-teachers are, like most people, emotional beings, and if the abuse is to large, they can't continue teaching.
Hell, teachers today have little authority on anything that happens on school grounds. My wife teaches elementary music, and even at that age it's a little less than Lord of the Flies because the teachers can do little about behavior and the kids know it.
What is there to do when the kids keep upping the ante and there's no recourse on the school ground? Hit 'em were it hurts. Maybe if parents have to pay for a lawyer for mommy's little bastard's behavior, some parents will start, you know, parenting...
Yeah, there's tons of 'socialization' skills that home-schooled kids don't learn. There was a girl when I went to high school (over a decade ago) who started public school in grade 10 (hard to get into university otherwise). There was TONS of stuff she didn't know!
For example, she had never learned that girls aren't supposed to be good at math. She didn't realize that when you're in class, and you don't understand something, you're supposed to keep quiet instead of raising your had to ask for clarification!
And worst of all, she didn't know you're supposed to pick on kids who are smaller/weaker/different! I guess they had to work out some remedial classes for her or something...
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
On what grounds, littering? It's legal to dislike someone. It's legal to say you dislike someone.
It's legal to make posters describing how much you dislike someone.
The socialization argument is bunk - that's the teachers' unions talking. Kids don't need to learn how to deal with people from other kids, they need to learn how from adults. I don't want my kids learning about drugs, sex, rock and roll from their peers - they need to learn it from me. I don't want them in environments where they get crappy self-esteem lessons from teachers and kids with idiot parents. I don't want them sitting in a classroom going over and over again on stuff they could have learned in 10 minutes and moved on to something else and more productive.
No thanks. Home and private education worked fine for hundreds of years before the late 1800s when public schools were invented to turn kids into wage slaves at factories.
And simply because a kid is home-schooled doesnt mean they don't have friends and get out more. We have churches and civic programs that kids need to be involved in as well.
I was a minor victim when I was about 7-8-9 and it wasn't ignored. Times have changed though, I remember when I was the victim the bully would be told to sit inside alone at playtime for a few days (or just to stand still next to the teacher outside), he didn't like it but he did it, and it helped. Would an eight year old do that now? I don't know, but it probably depends on the parents a lot. Also, the headteacher of my primary school (age 5-11) was really scary, no one wanted to be sent to see her. It was even scary to be sent to see her for an award. They probably don't make women like that any more.
Since we're all sharing...
When all we had was Dec printer terminals, I wrote a program that waited until I was long out of the computer room (about 30 minutes) and then sent a stream of form-feeds to all of the printers. Form feed shot a page of fan-fold paper out of the printer at high speed. The room filled up with curling paper and looked like someone dumped a box of detergent in all the washing machines at a laundrymat.
After we upgraded to new-fangled CRTs (keyboard and monitors to you young'ens) I wrote a program that randomly drew an asci-art horse galloping across the screen from one edge to the other in the middle of whatever the user was doing. They never did find out where it was coming from or how to stop it. I quietly disabled it when the word "expelled" started being thrown around.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
As a parent who recently bought a home deliberately OUTSIDE the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system, let me assure you, these people don't have any idea what they're doing. This school district has been in the crapper for years and years. No small part of my wife's and my decision to move OUT of Charlotte was the schools. You can check CMS's test results or you can find lots of interesting facts, not to mention things like this or this. The list goes on and on.
We homeschool our 2 kids (currently 4th & 7th grade). We live a bit out of the way, and we just don't care for the wasted time and resources public education drains on everyone (us, the kids, etc.). We're in the middle of a family debate on whether to re-introduce them back. They want more social interaction, but that just means they want daily contact w/ kids their own age, not that they have any trouble socializing.
Our kids lack a bit of "street smarts", but they're pretty sharp. The are not finely tuned to pass standardized tests, but they have the ability to figure stuff out. Combined with the fact that we haven't had TV in 7 or so years, they are also a bit lacking in current pop culture references and almost totally lack the branded, consumerist mindset most kids (and adults) have today. Sure, I doubt my kids will be National Honor Society material, but I think that's a good thing.
Personally, my wife and I feel that for the vast majority of occupations, college is more of a liability than anything these days. Education has become such a boogeyman for gullible parents that it has become commoditized and commercialized to the point of loosing any meaning it once had. The cost (and potential debt) is outrageous, and it seems so few actually ever use their degree (for example, I once had a manager when I was waiting tables that had a chemistry degree -- WTF?!?). If my kids *want* to go down a career path that requires tons of education (academia, law, medicine, etc.), then they'll be motivated to find a way to get there. If not, then they'll start off in a slightly lower caste, but with substantially less baggage than their college-educated, debt-laden, Prozac-popping peers.
Sure, home-schooled kids *may* be slightly less equipped to handle the "real, big bad world" than their hardened, systemically-programmed public education counterparts. However, we believe that it will be far easier for our kids to catch up on any good things they missed out on in school once they are adults than it will be for them to shed the stupid habits and conformity they would have gained there.
Method of processing duck feet
It's not legal to claim someone is a criminal with no evidence, then post posters describing that with falsified evidence around the town.
That is libel. And some of these kids have done essentially that.
Not a sentence!
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. :)
Stop! Dremel time!
Those aren't pranks. Pranks are netsending your teacher in the middle of class to report to the office. These are just idiots with internet. It's cyber-name-calling
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
>> The prime rule of pranking is don't do anything you wouldn't be able to fix or pay for yourself.
I thought the prime rule of pranking was to only execute them on days who's number of the month can only be divided by itself and one.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
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!
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
And? Why do you think the fact that someone gives a teacher money entitles students to be disrespectful toward them? I can't think of a single situation where being an asshole toward someone is justified because the other person is getting paid.
And part of being a good person is not intentionally making other people's lives more difficult. Also, your reply doesn't address the point, which is, if you don't like how your class is taught, why aren't you doing more than just disrupting it?
Ultimately, your argument boils down to "we're paying you so put up with it" to which I would reply, no. No one should have to forgo their dignity to teach.
You are making the same arguments so many other students tried in school, the difference being the rest of us grew up and learned why they were ridiculous.
Can't speak for david, but the stories I have are in this vein: parent comes with child to teacher-parent conference upset at the teacher that child did not get a good grade. Teacher looks at child and says "did you do the assignments?" Child answers "no". Teacher tells parent "that's why he got a bad grade."
So, the question is, how much bull do you think this kid can get past his parents if one single question from the teacher can shed light on why he got a bad grade ? How much credibility does the teacher have in that household ?
Or the student who called a teacher a bitch in class. When the parent was called for a conference, her response was "do you have audio-tape proof ?"
I'm certainly not saying all parents are like this. Not even 15%. But if three or four students in a classroom disrupt, the whole class is in trouble. Computers start to crash. Equipment disappears. All sorts of stuff like that.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
I applaud your penchant for mischief and your anecdotal prose. To hear such a juvenile prank story told with such eloquence borders on a work of art. In particular the "squee" had me laughing embarassingly loudly at my desk. Well done, sir.
As a foster parent, I've had some really badly behaved kids come to stay with us. Do I blame their birth parents for teaching/allowing such behavior? Yes. Do I use that as an excuse to allow them to continue behaving badly under my care? No. This increasingly popular notion that we should wait for other people to fix our problems annoys me to no end.
If it's a problem for the teacher, the teacher should deal with it. I don't buy the idea that there's nothing the teacher can do because it is constitutionally protected speech. That may limit the options, but it doesn't eliminate all of them.
My personal child discipline method consists of two steps: find the underlying cause of the behavior, and find the right incentive to match. In this type of case, the underlying cause is probably covering for their own poor academic performance, or trying to boost their popularity among other poor performers.
In the first case, I would offer a way to help them catch up, such as a redo of a dismal homework assignment. In the second case, I would threaten to embarrass them in class. That embarrassment would probably take the form of informing the class that people tease those they love, so I'm hanging this printout of a myspace page with a heart around it, because the student must really love me to tease me this much. I say the best way to fight bad free speech is with some more free speech.
I'd feel compelled to inform the parents in any case, but I would offer to make that easier if they were cooperative, and would give the kid a chance to fix it first.
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