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Online Colleges Could Spy On Students – By Law
skeazer writes "Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph — part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act — is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it."
Will they watch that too?
I thought school was for learning things rather than getting a fancy piece of paper.
I haven't read TFA, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that by "spy cameras in their homes" they mean a camera attached to the computer while school work (or at least tests) is being done in an effort to make sure the degree goes to the person doing the work?
As long as it isn't required to be on except while the student is doing work that would take place under the eyes of a professor or TA in a "real" college and as long as enrollment is voluntary I can't imagine it's really that objectionable.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
They can't stop the cheating in person...what makes them think they can stop it over the internet?
Basically, this is talking about requiring webcams or biometric devices when you take an online exam. Whether or not that's a good idea, it hardly qualifies as "Orwellian". Timothy and skeazer seem to think this is going to involve 24/7 cameras in your bedroom or something like that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This article is setting off my FUDDAR. Summary written to make the new law sound worse than it likely will be, and ommiting the reasons behind it.
First of all, I don't see a problem with an online school implementing this on their own, exclusively for exams, as long as the device can be disconnected and software removed afterwards. Don't like that? Try another school. Capitalism wins.
The real issue, I believe, is that the government seems to think it has the right to require that these devices be used. This will keep the price of these devices high and the slope nice and slippery.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Spy camera? Not quite. They're basically just posing a "Hold up a picture of yourself with today's local newspaper so we know you are where you say you are." type challenge to prove that when you sit down for a high-stakes college exam, you are who you say you are.
It's not like they're requiring your iSight camera be on 24/7. So this sensational headline doesn't match the story. Nothing to see here. Move along.
That's all, it doesn't require cameras, just that they can prove who is doing the work. It could be as simple as still requiring the student to go to a proctor to take an exam. There's nothing like trying to make something seem worse than it is. This poster is just like the media. Here's the answer. If you are going to take a class where they require you have a camera on you in the house and you don't like that, take the class somewhere else.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
TFA is saying that distance-colleges have to have some way to verify that the person on the computer is the person who signed up for the course. This could be a camera, or a fingerprint scanner, a typing analysis program, a photo, or a combo of the above. It's not spying 24/7 or anything like that, just using the devices during some assignments.
Called Securexam Remote Proctor, it's about the size of a large paperweight and plugs into a standard port on a home computer. The pedestal includes a groove for scanning fingerprints, a tiny microphone, and a camera. The sphere reflects a 360-degree view around the test taker, which the camera picks up.
Nevermind proctoring, how about using this for round-table podcasts? Instead of a multi-camera shoot, put this on the table in front of everyone and do your cuts to who is talking all in post.
Students pay $150 for the device.
Losing the fingerprint scanner would drop the price a bit, and audio for each panelist could still be recorded using a multi-track recorder. But you may need HD resolution for capture in order to get SD-quality shots for editing, which you don't need for simple monitoring.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
School is for learning things...and that is the problem.
The increasing availability of higher education (through convenient and affordable online colleges, as just one example) is resulting in an increasingly high percentage of highly educated people in the work force.
Unfortunately, the number of jobs that actually require that kind of education is not increasing at the same rate.
What happens when supply increases faster than demand? The price drops.
That means that more employers are requiring higher education for jobs that don't really need it, and are paying less and less for the jobs that actually do need it. Thus, all the workers lose out, because now one MUST have a higher education just to do a mundane job that won't use any of those skills and won't pay you enough to dig yourself out of the debt you incurred from all the student loans.
Don't believe me? Look at the economy in India.
Start attending online class in your birthday suit, and they'll quickly do away with this restriction.
Why does this need to be a law? Can't employers simply choose to reject someone who graduates from an institution that makes no effort to verify who is taking their students' tests?
So how will all that bandwidth hurt my p2p downloads?
Extra points if your ethics exam is what's killing your download rate.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They won't.
Students with dialup will either have to upgrade the connection or come to the college to do the exam if better connection is unavailable in their area.
That is one of the reasons my college is still against implementing some kind of a video link during a test.
It is not connection heavy just on the student - imagine maintaining couple of thousands of simultaneous video links with resolution high enough to spot possible cheat sheets?
Like... 4pt text printed cheat sheets stickers on your monitor.
There is a MUCH simpler solution that they implement.
Online tests that can be done from home constitute only a part of the grade. For those to be valid - you have to pass the final exam AT the college.
Many exams require you to write a seminary work and later "defend it" in person in front of the professor.
Here - students are the ones demanding something like that since some of us (like me) have to travel for 6 hours to get to an exam.
Which can be quite ironic when some of your tests take around 20-30 minutes.
Get up at 3 to catch a 5 AM bus, 6 hours one way, do a test, wait for the next bus home, 6 hours back.
Roads here suck. No highway. We might get one in about 10 years or so...
There is also a simple solution to that problem too.
Since most of the tests are done by logging into the college's system with your ID and password - it could be also done over the internet.
Like I said... we do it for the "lesser" tests. Only reason we are not allowed to do that for the final tests is cheating.
Now... my town has a university as well... A good one... only not with such a study program.
Why my college can't or won't contact the faculty of the university here and arrange for us to take the exam from the facilities of the university here (despite students suggesting and demanding that for years now), under the supervision of the local staff - well... I'd rather think its the old incompetence again instead of malice and money.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
1. Be under 18 years old
2. Perform a sex act on the camera.
3. Compel discovery against the university for possession of child pornography.
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>Everyone and his uncle demands to know my mother's maiden name.
This is culturally insensitive also. It is quite common for one's name and one's mother's maiden name to be the same name.
It's taken for granted as an assumption in the question, that you had married parents, and that your mother changed her name to your father's name, and that your parents gave you your father's name.
Not everybody does that.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Before "internet" colleges, there were correspondence colleges. Still "distance learning", and still (in some cases) accredited.
The Internet doesn't change anything there at all. So where were their Orwellian rules before?
This nonsense is just another example of blaming the internet for something that has always existed, and using that as an excuse to further intrude.
What a crock.