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What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have?
An anonymous reader writes "We're a school district in the beginning phases of a laptop program which has the eventual goal of putting a Macbook in the hands of every student from 6th to 12th grade. The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night, and will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation.
Here's the dilemma — how much freedom do you give to students? The state mandates web filtering on all machines. However, there is some flexibility on exactly what should be filtered. Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer? What about games, forums, or blogs, all of which could be educational, distracting or obscene? We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat. How far do we take this?
While on one hand we need to avoid legal problems and irresponsible behavior, there's a danger of going so far to minimize liability that we make the tool nearly useless. Equally concerning is the message sent to the students. Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
don't be a nazi.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat.
No offense or anything, but I wouldn't touch one of those with a 10 foot pole with those restrictions, especially with the "monitor any machine remotely" part.
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
You can't put too many restrictions on them, or else they'll ditch the school-provided laptops for something else.
They should not be allowed to use them during the time that they are supposed to be learning.
What are kids going to to do when they break these things taking them home very night? I wouldn't want my kid carrying around one of the schools computers every day.
How about ....n o n e...?
Given that most students will need little time to work around any restrictions in their way. Use the program as a way to demonstrate trust.
No placing laptops on your lap.
Leads to even more risky behavior down the road.
Why on earth are you choosing macbooks, aren't there better options for your school? Off the top of my head, the asus eee 900 line would be great, the 900A or 901 would both be great and can be loaded with linux easily, or leave the xandros that comes with it on and it'll work fine. I doubt the students will have the know how to hack linux.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Leopard has this capability built in.
Parental Controls
Surely blocking porn is enough? Blocking anything else is a cat and mouse game. You can be sure that they will figure out how to defeat the filtering anyways.
Judging from practically every computer with a body in front of it at my local community college, these are the only 2 reasons to even have a computer.
If you express your goals as "Academic" then restrictions are seen in a different light.
In the scenario you described, "they practically own" the computer yet there need to be so many restrictions for the School to be happy, you have a conflict. You can't have it both ways.
Web filtering is a yes, in my opinion. Any legitimate website with real content does not need to be grouped with trashy websites. Meaning if you block all friendster's you aren't actually blocking anything that's "A useful must have" because if it were it wouldn't be grouped with myspace (which everyone basically views as a portal to idleness).
Block certain protocols as well, p2p, etc. This gives you deniability ("We didn't give students the ability to pirate software/media, they achieved that by bypassing our reasonable protections).
In a nutshell you need to iron out the goal of these computers. They can't be both personal and school only computers at the same time.
That's my opinion.
When I was a lad in Catholic school the nuns would cut out all the "racey" pics from the art books and National Geographics. The SI Swimsuit edition was always a particular let down :-( ... but to answer your question, they won't even care since most probably have their own unfiltered systems at home.
it's a completely unworkable plan. Five minutes after the student gets the Macbook he/she will have jailbroke it and will be posting how-tos on their myspace page. Repeat after me: "Not learning from past mistakes gets me an automatic failing grade. I can't force submission to autocratic standards."
Why are students each getting a laptop? What's the goal? Is it to have a single environment with a single set of software that students can all work on commonly to assure instruction can make use of computers effectively? Is it simply to ensure students have computer literacy and/or access to computers for those who do not? How are you going to use these laptops day to day that is unique to what can be done from a home computer or library computer or computer cluster? These are the questions you have to ask before determining how much you want to limit student use. My initial inclination is that limiting the ability to mess with these computers is a huge mistake. It makes students less likely to learn about the machines they're using and less likely to use these machines. It makes these computers a hassle and something used solely for class assignments that cannot be done any other way and a paper weight the rest of the time. The only limitations should be use of anti-virus software and other protections so that they cannot hurt the network at the school when attached to it. Blocking ports for instant messaging services and internet filtering while in school is appropriate to ensure the integrity of the network, but crippling the computers is not necessary or advantageous. Are students really going to be expected to use a single machine bought in 6th grade through 12th grade? Are you going to be able to remove these restrictions, and be willing to go through the work to do so, when students buy their computers out right when they graduate? That could be a ton of work. Protect the network, block stuff from coming in that can affect other machines, but don't cripple the computers themselves. You'll only assure their limited use/usefulness. But honestly, before spending all that money, there need to be some good answers as to why your curriculum has unique needs that require each student have a laptop.
I think there are several schools of thought on this issue. Do you give the students maximum freedom and test their desire to be educated? Or do you take a more totalitarian approach and "force" the laptops to be used as learning tools?
I don't have any experience in school administration, even at an IT support level. However, understand that not every kid that goes to school goes with the intention to learn. With that being the case, expect that there will be students that will use the computer for their own personal leisure and students that will really use them as they were intended to be used.
Being that I believe that the desire for students to truly learn and excel rest with them, I would probably be really lax about the restrictions on the computer. Really determined slackers will find ways to bypass soft restrictions anyway, which is an extra step that your department will have to prepare for. That is, of course, if you decide to distribute a shiny new Macbook to every new student.
Is there any way that you can distribute computers based on academic performance? It might seem like bribery in a sense, but in this case it just might make sense. Better performing students would obviously make good use of having a laptop and being more productive, so why not save money and let them enjoy the prize?
The geeks in the classes will make a killing doing clean installs for those who can't figure out how to do it themselves. It will also install a very healthy antipathy for authority, what isn't already created by the school officials' other, similarly misguided, actions.
You're really asking the wrong people about this. Most of the replies you're going to get on Slashdot will be no restrictions because I wouldn't want restrictions on my machine. This is true for adults but you're dealing with children, some as young as 11 years old.
The people you really should be talking to are the parents in your district. Ultimately what their children see and how they interact with the world is up to the parents. I imagine that you will probably have a number of views that you will have to synthesize. Perhaps even create a number of different user profiles and allow parents to choose which one their child will fit into. But the first stop is ask the parents. As an upside, some of the parents will have grappled with many of the same problems at work and will probably have some insights.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
See title. Have you been in a high school where students have access to computers that have such filtering? They get around it really quickly, and such information spreads like wildfire. And the fun thing with laptops is, you'll never know since they'll only do it at home.
Filtering just won't work. Trust the students a little. You can't expect them to just use the laptops for schoolwork... it's just unrealistic, and it's unnecessary.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Restrictions are useless no matter what you do the user can get pass thouse restrictions. One very simple way to avoid all restrictions is to use a bootalbe cd or usb flash drive with a live linux distro there's a ton of them now. Best thing you can do is ask the parents to sign a contract by witch *they* hold all the responsibility of the children's actions.
I worked in a school district in British Columbia, Canada long ago. They were the second (?) district in BC to institute this same idea. In the end it was successful. You can find them at http://www.nisgaa.bc.ca/ (note the kids with macbooks on the main page). I'm sure they have a plethora of info on the do's and don'ts on the subject. Sorry Nisga'a school district for all the traffic I could be sending you ;)
When you say the students will "essentially own" the computers, you're obsuscating a point that is VERY important to the discussion.
Who will ACTUALLY own the computers?
There should only be restrictions while the users are at school. There shouldn't be any restrictions outside of school—it's in loco parentis, not semper parentis.
As such, any filtering should be left on your network connection. If you want to block the ports iChat uses at school, go ahead. If you want to filter the web, go ahead. But there's no reason they shouldn't be able to use them at home.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night"
The students should be able to do anything with them. If a student starts disrupting others in the classroom, then restrict that student only.
And any added blocks could be broken when the student has time at home. If you do put in blocks, it will become a game for the students to break them and who can break them the fastest.
Since when do grade 6 students get laptops at school? And what happens when students "lose" the laptops? And what student is possibly going to buy a 6 year old laptop when they graduate? If someone offered to sell you a laptop from 2002 right now, how much do you think you'd pay? So many questions.
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night
We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat
These two statements are contradictory. The sooner you accept this the less expensive the lesson will be for all involved.
You should contact the Denver School of Science and Technology. They give all their students laptops (WinXP last time I checked), and I'm sure they've dealt with issues like this. http://www.scienceandtech.org/
Have a background proccess block certain activities based on the time of day. I know this could lead to the kids trying to move the clock forward but you could probably set it to sync with the ntp equivelent or password protect the clock process. Then send home a sheet alerting the parents to the restrictions and give them the option to unlock the laptop. Therefore your not legally responsible for any activities that may or may not happen on temporary school property. Of course I've never used OSX before so I'm not how you'd implement this. But I believe this would be a way to avoid any conflicts.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Make the kids (or parents) buy and own them, and you won't have to do any of the restriction and monitoring crap.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
Namely:
Honestly, I agree with the other posters who commented that allowing students to take the laptops home is just asking for trouble.
Create a restore point, and a data partition that survives the restore. Ensure the data partition can only store certain types of files. That way, they can never break their software.
Why are Macbooks such a popular option at schools/colleges? I thought Apple still wasn't "mainstream".
I can see those RIAA attorneys cackling and rubbing their hands together. It was hard prying settlements out of those college kids, but if they can drag the university in too they can really collect some money to give to those poor starving artists.
Consider also just how long it'll take the average college student to bypass any and all restrictions you may place on the laptop - it's a virtual certainty that those laptops will be used in ways the university specifically forbids. You can't put controls on these laptops and avoid the liability issue.
when I was in high school, we regularly bypassed the access control measures on the school computers. With the availability of live disks and amount of computer knowledge some students have, all any access controls will do is keep the honest students honest.
Perhaps an orientation on responsible computer use and have the kids sign an acceptable use policy? It really depends on the age of the kids involved. Sounds like high school, 14-18? How do you handle the students who are 18 and can legally access the internet's various restricted content?
You've obviously never heard of KNOPPIX have you?
You cannot lock down hardware which you no longer have physical control of can you.
Maine's been doing this for years, Here's the research and reports on what's being done and why.
Filters simply do not work, there are sites called proxies that allow one to visit filtered sites. Blocking proxy sites is like cutting heads off a hydra, cut one off and another pops up.
...about 300 kids K-12. I'm a little surprised that you're asking this question. Are you a technology coordinator who is now addressing these concerns for a district who has never addressed them until now?
Most districts have access restriction policies that students have to agree to and sign. I'm sure about 95% of the Slashdot crowd's gonna scream to high heaven against restrictions, but it's a no-brainer. In short, four letters: CIPA. From the FCC's webpage:
Schools and libraries subject to CIPA are required to adopt and implement a policy addressing: (a) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet; (b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (c) unauthorized access, including so-called "hacking," and other unlawful activities by minors online; (d) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (e) restricting minors' access to materials harmful to them.
These last two are really the biggest ones to consider when drafting an Acceptable Use policy, particularly the last, since "materials harmful to them" could mean practically anything.
Our district has taken steps to block MySpace, FaceBook, etc., because all these websites allow minors to publish themselves online. If students accessed these sites at school, and the child was kidnapped due to information posted on MySpace, districts may be found liable.
And banning MySpace will certainly not make these laptops useless. I'm surprised by this comment...it sounds quite ignorant. Districts didn't spend millions of dollars on these machines for students to post poorly-made self-portraits of themselves online. They (I hope) spent the money to grant students equal access to a tool that can be used to enhance learning. I would see a school-owned laptop in the hands of a student exactly the same way as any other computer at school. I'd restrict the hell out of it, because until they graduate and buy it for themselves, the district is responsible for what is done with that laptop.
I don't know exactly how restrictive Mac OS X is for "regular" (ie, no sudo access) users, but why not just start them there? That would be simple to set up, everyone would have the same access, and it would reflect on what they would likely encounter in the real world when they eventually have jobs.
As for filtering, that is a whole different matter. Perhaps the PTA should be consulted for guidelines for what web material is appropriate at each grade level? I would suspect many parents would support different controls for a 6th grader than for a high school senior.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You don't stand a chance. The kids have physical access and you need to be able to run mainstream software. That means any knowledgeable kid can get administrative access in a heartbeat . Then 11+ year olds will tell each other how. You are done. As for remote monitor, they are on their home routers. They phone / cable company firewall is not going going to accept a TCP/IP connection you establish which means you can't do it.
The first thing you need to do is get realistic expectations or start constructed a much more secure system, which is not going to be a macbook you are talking encrypted drives, TPM chips, access keys on some pager which need to be plugged in for the system to work.... trusted computing group website.
Schools aren't going to pay for that sort of stuff. What you do is you set expectations reasonably, lock the system down badly, filter the minimum and have an easy way to re-image and that's it.
(I apologize for responding to my own comment, but this whole monitoring thing really gets to me.)
I can see how you'd want to make sure to block bad content for the kids, especially to maybe protect you from lawsuits of some kind (IANAL), but you can have filters and whatnot set up without this remote monitoring stuff.
But lets say that the kids didn't mind people seeing what they did on these machines; how do you think the parents would feel about someone being able to spy on their kid that extensively? I really don't see that going over well at all...
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
# We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely...
You fucking what? Thats it, I hereby resign from society, good luck to you all
Sorry, but the answer to this one is really easy. There's no evidence that giving laptops out to K-12 students has any positive effect on education whatsoever. Since their educational effectiveness is zero, the educational impact of any of these decisions that you make will also be zero. If you want to make absolutely sure you don't get sued by parents who are upset about how their kids were damaged for life by seeing porn, uncable all the hard disks before you hand out the computers.
Find free books.
My mom recently caught my kid sister (age 12) visiting some "inappropriate sites", and immediately went off the deep end, asking about filtering, auditing, locking the system down, the works. So we talked about it, and I let it sit for a few days, then invited my friend over and we had a "big sister" chat. And then I showed her how to delete entries from her browsing history.
Let me tell you right now -- there's no way to lock a system down. There's no way to filter, audit, etc., to a kid. Besides, kids are bored most of the time anyway and all you're giving them is a challenge. So the way I see it, you've got two options -- either you act as the gatekeeper, or you act as the guide. You can't be both.
The gatekeeper is the filters, the auditing, the monitoring -- in short, the parent. Is this a role you want to play as school administrators? Are you prepared for the legal responsibility? I know you're going to be catching flack from people like my mom who are going to throw a knipshit the moment their precious snowflake gets busted reading harry potter slashfic, or realize that google image search for hentai or eucci brings up cartoon-depicted sex acts. They'll be at your school board meetings, on your voice mail, and holding the ears of everyone they can get a hold of. Visualize that for a minute. The state of the art in filtering and monitoring cannot and never will fully succeed in its stated goals, if only because it's a shifting target and defining "appropriate for minors" is about as useful an excercise as re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Your second role is equally perilous. You be the guide -- which means educating those students. This is the computer equivalent of sex ed classes. You need to tell them what's online (and I mean what's really out there), what the risks are, and how they can protect themselves. You need to instill in them the ability to make moral and ethical decisions about their conduct online, with the explicit understanding that you can't stop them from going where they shouldn't -- only that they know what the consequences are (or could be). And here again, the parents are going to throw a knipshit and want your head over religious matters, etc., and flying spaghetti monster we go.
My advice is to offer some limited education to the students about what's out there, how to stay safe, and offer filtering and monitoring software for the parents to use. Ultimately you need to get the responsibility for how the students use these systems off your shoulders, or you will find yourself in a very special kind of hell that will do neither your school district nor your career any good. The key words here is "informed consent." You make a good faith effort to educate, cover your ass with disclaimers, and leave the final decision to the parents. Do not give these people any way to wiggle out of responsibility for their darling little crotch-fruit. It's blunt, but there it is -- you have to look out for yourself here first.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
At school, filter through the schools network. At home, provide a crash tech course for parents and outline risks versus good usage behavior. Make the parents responsible for monitoring their kids out-of-school computer use. If they do not take the course, require them to sign a waiver and indemnity agreement. If they take the course, have them sign a waiver showing that they understand the risks. Offer quarterly course updates, encourage parents to attend the courses with their children.
Overall? Facilitate parent/child and institution/child trust. The fastest way to destroy this trust is to lock things down when one kid violates the rules of appropriate behavior or to pre-lock things in fear that a kid will mess up.
---
Now the sarcastic twit in me: What are you afraid of? The rich parents in your rich school district suing your rich asses? Fuck you and the expensive horse you rode in it, donate that money to a needy school so they can afford better teachers and books.
I would put such a laptop in the trash, or just reformat it.
Don't try to limit what they can do with it, because they can do whatever they want with it. You have no control at all.
Unless you're trying to teach them to circumvent computer security you give them a laptop with no restrictions whatsoever.
- If you put ANY restrictions on it, they will immediately start trying to break them. You'll be giving them an early start on a life of cybercrime.
- And if you punish them (the ones that get caught) for doing it, you'll also be giving them an early start on a criminal record.
Here's what I'd do in your place:
- Include a standard load on each laptop.
- Provide a backup facility on the school's network for those files they want to back up.
- Have the standard load preconfigured to automatically back up a particular subfolder. Tell them to store their schoolwork (and anything else they want preserved) there until they learn how to configure it to back up additional folders.
- Provide a facility for reloading the laptop with the standard load and restoring the backed up folder(s). No penalty for the kid to reload it to stock, even repeatedly.
- Explicitly grant permission for the kids to experiment with their laptops, loading what they want, trying other op systems, etc. (Warn them about only loading stuff they have rights to: Purchased software, FOSS software, their own stuff, stuff they have the author's permission to load, etc.)
- Let them try to run with alternate OSes, dual-booted, etc. (Warn them that the school personnel probably can't help them much with other configurations, but if they help each other or find help on the web that's fine.) Let them access the backup tools from alternate OSes if they can figure out how.
- Do any government-mandated censorship on the school's network, not on the kids' laptops.
Then the kids can reconfigure their laptops all they want and experiment all they want. When (not if) they break the configuration they can go to the school's lab and restore it to a known starting point with the latest backup of their important files
THIS way, instead of starting them on a life of cybercrime, you'll start them on a life of computer literacy and skill. You'll quickly find yourself with a herd of little geniuses, with some of them running a computing club and most of them - even those whose primary interests are something other than computers - displaying exceptional computer literacy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The less restrictions you put on them, the less time the students will spend trying to get around them. For every move there's a counter, for every counter there's a move. If you lock it down too tight they'll reinstall OS X or boot from an external drive. If you apply a firmware password they'll quickly learn how to crack them open and find the firmware reset button. Remember, just like pirating movies (arrgh!) all it takes is one person to crack it and post the movie, or in this case the instructions, for everyone to have it.
Another note: while in class, if the work being done doesn't require the laptop, have every teacher make the students close the lids and/or put them away. Always. Period.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
What the fuck is with all the trolls lately?
A good starting point would be what companies and universities are doing with them. Internet filtering is the norm(assume they are going to get around it, have a policy for this). While most companies have a list of allowable programs and then do not place a restriction on install; this may not be right for you. This part would depend on what kind of stuff the help desk will be doing. Monitoring software is up to you(generally not on corporate); personally, I hate it. For me this would severely restrict how i use the laptop(notes transfered to a flash drive to my real computer). it would never see any real use until i bought the thing and reinstalled the OS(even if you already did).
This is what my university is doing now with it's laptop program(I am not a part of it). Personally the monitoring is the crippling part of it. Most profs that i talk to don't use the monitoring part. This may be different with high school, considering most profs don't care what you do with class time as long as you aren't interfering with anybody else. There is one loop hole, and that is that someone can use their own laptop with the monitoring software installed(can someone say vm) (of course i know the prof and will be taking notes in dead tree form).
The main point with a laptop program are basically filtering, software install and monitoring. You find something for those and the rest should be a cake walk. That should give you a starting point, or at least some of what people are doing with laptop programs and my personal opinions on the policies as a student.
..only partially
40% of the replies will be "do not filter anything, you Nazi!"
1/2 of those will be "Do everything in your power to circumvent the existing school board rules."
Another 30% will say "don't bother, because the kids will just go around your blockages."(thinking that all school kids are as adept as the ubergeeks here are)
You may get a very few replies about how you can actually do what your job requires.
so prevent the installation of any software may be going a little far and if they purchase the laptops then no software lock down also web filtering on all machines should be at the school internet link not at home.
They should be able to do some stuff how will you do upadates not all stuff works with apple update system. Flash updates need to done by hand and adobe apps have there own system. Office is the same way.
>>Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer?
Well, I didn't think they were a legitimate thing for a business computer... but now our company is on a "social networking" rampage. We're actually being encouraged to use them, but nobody seems to be able to quantify the business benefit yet, other than "get networking!". Yay.
And yes, I work for a Fortune-500 company (actually, a pretty stuffy historical brand name)
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
This is a terrible waste of money. Students do not need a computer to learn.
really, if you think you know better than kids what is good for them, or doubt their ability to learn on their own, you're better off not giving them anything at all. unfortunately, the way society is set up, what with cipa and all that, kids don't have much rights. the internet is really egalitarian, and blocking it goes against its whole point. in short: teachers are jackasses, school ain't shit, whatever
Panasonic makes a line of notebooks designed for light abuse: tough book
or nasty treatement.
My high school did this with students in 11th and 12th grades, except without the option to buy the machine at graduation. There were no restrictions in place, and I'm not aware of any problems that ever occurred because of it. However, that may become a different story when you put them in the hands of 6th graders. At the same time, the inability to install software or use iChat makes them mostly useless. In my experience, students often found useful software (besides games) to install and iChat became a very useful tool for collaborative work. As for web filtering, I recognize the legal requirement for it on school networks, but making it follow the machine everywhere will last until an enterprising student figures out how to get the filtering software off.
Is it "protecting kids from themselves"? Besides the fact of whether you want to do this or not, many kids will have access to their parents' or friends laptops anyway. Are you trying to cover your ass if they do something dumb? Just trust the damn students. Put the responsibility on them: if they accept the laptop, they accept that they have to decide what is "good, moral, proper" etc. to do on the laptop, with all the consequences of it. If you start policing, you're basically implicitly assuming responsibility for the kids, not allowing them to take responsibility, or for the parents to teach them responsibility. When you do screw up and let the kids download child porn, it'll be all on your head.
If the laptop gets physically damaged, they pay for it. You're going to re-image the whole thing anyways when/if you get it back.
Other than that, I'd leave it alone. Completely. Run some sort of IDS and watch for nasties and 0wn the perpetrator with a (mandatory?) reimage. Include security software but don't make it mandatory - if somebody removes it and gets hurt, too bad.
That being said, remember you'll have untrusted machines on your local network. Keep that in mind.
If you're handing students a machine, they are out of your hands. If they get formatted, you're SOL on your filter software. If they're using their home network without some sort of VPN you have no business filtering their connections for their parents. So don't bother.
Basically, what would you do if somebody gave you a new laptop when you were in high school? You might have wanted to format it and put linux on it, install aircrack, or watch porn. If you try to stop them, they will get around it and be pissed off at you.
Just some thoughts. You're not there to be the tech nazi, you serve their education.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Learning does not require a computer.
Letting the kids take them home all the time seems to be a huge problem here. Occasionally take them home for a project, sure.. but you can't have something that is out of your control most of the time, needs to be consistently usable to the kids all the time, and is still locked down at all.
Every kid who wants to will have any software you install bypassed in no time.
In my experience, the best way to run a public student lab is to allow the kids to do almost whatever they want to the system (with the knowledge that adults can look over their shoulder at any point) and then wipe and restore to an image every night to clear out whatever junk they put on it.
If they're taking it home... I'd honestly go for a bare minimum technical solution and put most of the enforcement at the human level. Let them know that if stuff gets found on the systems violates code they'll get Saturday school and lose laptop privileges. Don't make them administrators, and make a standard procedure for them to come to a teacher who can install software that they need to get things done. Do a spot check of a random person every day in class to make sure they aren't hiding porn or something. All you can ever do is catch the lazy or stupid ones - the trick is to convince people that they're likely enough to be caught that they don't do anything stupid, and that access is a privilege that can be taken away if they abuse it.
It really just depends on what the goals of the program are. I'm assuming that the primary purpose of the program is to implement technology into the curriculum. If so, the computers have to work when the teachers are teaching. Otherwise they will simply remove the technological components from their lesson plans.
Give your teachers an easy way to re-image the laptop. Boot able USB Memory sticks work great for this. Keeping student files on a SD Card will make re-imaging trivial. This allows students to explore and learn without fear of 'breaking' the computer. It also alleviates the IT headache of keeping everything running.
As for Browsing etc. Most filtering software/solutions have remote capabilities. I would filter there internet with exactly the same profile that you use at school on district desktop computers. The one change I would make however would be to block all Internet traffic after a certain time, say 10:30 pm. Look into products like 8e6 remote, or Google's Web Security.
A solid student/parent signed contract is a good way to let your expectations be known. Computer Care (hardware and software), Usage limits, bringing the computer to school with a full battery etc. Consequences should be spelled out in the contract.
that there are web restrictions while the laptops are in the building. This includes web sites like Facebook or MySpace. You can do this centrally with WebSense or some other proxy/web content filtering software. It's not a waste of time thing its more of a liability issue with the school. Teachers must have time for instruction and if Johnny is in class checking out porn and cyber bullying some kid, education is not happening and someone might get hurt. Take a look at NJ education law. A student sued that they had graduated and could not read. They won and it changed the entire state of education for 20 years plus. Personally I would not have a purchase program. Its cost way too much in the long end. Take a look at this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin/ NY Times article from a year ago. Most schools are dropping it because of cost and the fact that standardized test grades have not improved. Place laptops in kid's hands that will use it for class such as a computer science class. Also, get it into the hands of kids with learning disabilities. I have seen it do wonders there. Instead of letting them purchase these machines in four years (obsolete by then) have it leased out for a year. You will have much more control in case something needs to be changed.
There's just no way to appreciate them properly on those tiny laptop LCD screens.
Make the parents sign for the level they want including an opt out or no networking capability.
It is their responsibility (not yours). Whatever level you choose if a kid commits suicide after getting some harassment or commits fraud or...on the laptop you need the legal protection.
I never had a laptop in high school, nor a computer issued to me by the school, but I will try to guess what will happen here, especially if you put monitoring software or filters:
I bought an Ubuntu Dell, the Inspiron 1420n; I take it with me fricking EVERYWHERE. I record full audio of my classes. I type all my notes. There's nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to. The fact of the matter is that there is no way to stop students from doing what they want on them, technically speaking. Give them the laptops ALL THE WAY, and let students report eachother for being distracting during class. Don't block sites, don't block ports, that's all crap too. Kids learn pretty quick what a proxy is.
First of all why would you want to stop children from doing the social activities (myspace etc..) they would enjoy on a computer? Not only are they reading but they are learning to like computers, and socializing. All of these are valuable for children.
Now as for the obscenity/filtering issue things get more complicated. While a bunch of people here will tell you not to filter at all you have no legal choice and if you don't appear to be trying you risk getting shit from parents who stumble on their kids looking at porn.
As far as the filter you need to realize that no matter what you do if the kids want to get around it they will succeed!
I remember dealing with the locked down computers in the school computer lab when I was in school. Not only did I circumvent them but I of course immediately told my friends how do so and word spread to everyone who used the machines frequently. Not to toot my own horn but these weren't trivial hacks but since I didn't care (I had a computer at home) I also let the guy running the computer lab know so he could go tell the software company to patch things (made it more fun). The point is that filters will be circumvented.
Now one approach is to simply make the filters as unobtrusive as possible to minimize the incentive the kids have to circumvent it. The best you can hope for is that it's not worth the bother for anyone but the couple of wanna be computer berds at the school.
Ultimately though I suggest you talk to a lawyer and the political people at the school. This isn't a technical question. Your filters will fail, the question is what do you need to do to be legally and politically protected from any fall out if this occurs
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I agree with giving the students a laptop, but there's a flaw in their logic. They state that "all laptops should have web filtering." Stop right there! That requirement makes no sense! Once the laptops leave the campus and go elsewhere, they have absolutely no control over that laptop. They have no control, and no say, as to what they do with those laptops. What's stopping them from wiping the OS and reinstalling? And as far as surfing the web, the college has no control over what the kids do online if they are not on the campus network, so the college should not be held liable. If I was the person in charge of IT at that college I would push back like crazy. What they need to do is handle it like a company does: install a web filter on the CAMPUS NETWORK! That way they can filter all the internet activity coming from the campus network, and the college's liability is limited only to on-campus activity. Anything going on off campus is not their problem to solve. As for students tampering with their laptops, have the students sign a statement that they will not tamper with it, or they will be charged for the full price of the laptop immediately, will not be issued another one, and for the remainder of their time at the college, their laptop is immediate unsupported by the college's help desk. PROBLEM SOLVED!
Your school district should just focus on giving these students a good education in science and mathematics so that they are able to compete with the rest of the world for meaningful jobs. Free laptops are unnecessary and will only create a distraction.
You have every right to set reasonable and necessary limits at school.
You should be clear as to what categories of sites are restricted and provide the reason why. At home, it's their own and their parents' responsibility; you can offer assistance to non-tech-savvy parents, but it's their responsibility.
I suggest restricting web access through the school using something like Dans Guardian and a transparent proxy. That means that there are no settings on the students' computers and they can't easily by-pass your restrictions while at school.
While at school, you can restrict what programs can be used (they should be expected to voluntarily comply), but you should not restrict what programs are on their computers. Again, it's their own and their parents responsibility.
You should not monitor their machines remotely while they are away from school or place any "big brother" restrictions on them while away from school, unless their parents request it; they have a right to do that with their minor children. It should never be done without the students' knowledge; they have a right to know about it.
I suggest that you generally structure the whole thing to teach the students to moderate their own behavior rather than relying on the school to 'make them behave', because ideally, no restrictions should ever be necessary if they learned to be mature and respectful. Make your rules and restrictions reasonable, explain your reasons and welcome ongoing discussion of them with the students, allowing them meaningful input.
Remote monitoring of your students will run afoul of privacy laws, school furnished equipment or not.
When used during school hours, on school network resources, then you are permitted to monitor them to a point. Monitoring them at the local system level is a bad idea, it would be better to monitor the students at the network level.
While the OP is providing the equipment, if they are permitting the equipment to be taken home, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, it is up to the parents, not the school system to make sure the student is using it for its intended purpose.
There is nothing wrong with chat networks, there is nothing wrong with games, there is nothing wrong with social networks... except during school hours when the students should be working on school related activities.
I could go on, but I think the point is made, and honestly, while I applaud the school systems efforts to provide a laptop for everyone.. I believe its a waste of money that could be better used elsewhere. Computers are also a distraction in my opinion to the students, school should have a technology class, but in general, books should be used in classes, reading and writing are core skills that seem to be getting lost in the US. There is no need to a computer in the classroom at all times...
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
...should use the neighbor's bathroom.
Make usage logs available on a web site. Include across-the-board metrics available to everyone and individual logs stored behind proper authentication (staff and parents). Let the 'system' police itself by telling the kids they're on candid camera, and then by backing that up. Also, make any tampering with such a system an offense punishable by evil, draconian measures.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Given that students can get around the restrictions, why restrict their use of the machines you give them?
State law? Liability?
You need a lawyer, not Slashdot. :)
Seriously, what if I sue the school because the school said the machines would be locked down at night, and I find my kid surfing porn sites at 1 am?
Don't worry about the machines being "useless". Be worried about crippling them so much that the students go out of their way to go around the restrictions.
I wonder why you're getting them the machines in the first place, too. Computers can be wonderful teaching tools, but whiteboard-based lesson plans of the 20th century utterly fail to take advantage of them. Hopefully there's a change in teaching styles as well.
Where are you such that you can afford so many computers--macbooks, no less?! And you're giving them to kids who don't own them! Amazing. I would personally get a deal on $100 laptops in bulk, but hey, that's just me.
By "Sony decision", I mean the one where the VCR was OK if it had a single non-infringing use.
If a computer application or data source has a single educational use, it's in. That lets out all the sites and programs that will get a wide majority agreeing it's unacceptable (porn, extreme violence, etc). But demolition-derby or star-wars fan sites could be the subject of a legitimate paper. Teachers are often desperate to engage kids of that age by allowing subjects they're interested in to be the subject of book reports or social studies.
As a bonus, that cuts YOUR job down to a legally-required minimum, and minimizes the "they don't trust me" backlash, while covering your ass sufficiently.
Come on, bring back the cookie recipes.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I know when my dad installed the old porn filter on our pc it posed a serious challenge. I soon realized that it worked by two methods: checking a list of known porn sites, as well as blocking any url with a porn-ish word in it. Once I found out that, it was a quick ping pornsitehere.com in the command line to resolve the IP and paste that into the address bar.
I think this is how I ended up as a computer scientist. I'm sure budding young geeks at your school will do the same.
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Lately? I think you're new here...
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Seriously, Apple has these 1:1 things going on in hundreds or thousands of school districts. They have been well publicized. There are resources at Apple who have helped others in your exact situation... and know the tools you can use to lock things down (Managed Preferences or MCX), use proxy servers or other site filtering applications to deal with this, etc.
There are varying degrees of "lockdown" you can put on the machines, depending on where your priorities lie -- liabilities (legally) versus freedom. And the Apple SEs in the education group have seen it before, tens if not hundreds of times.
Really I think that would be a better route to go than asking here on /. Where locking down machines isn't looked upon kindly, but random Linux machines in the classroom with no management is just _not_ productive.
My step-son just graduated from an "all laptop" high school. His father was paying and making decisions; if it were up to me, he wouldn't have lasted a semester before I pulled him.
They gave all the kids Thinkpads (OK, sold them Thinkpads - private school) and then left them unlocked. The step-son and all his friends installed every pirated game you can imagine and sat around in class all day playing. Not a lot of education happening as far as I could tell.
So my advice is this: Lock them down. Forget about "essentially own the computers;" if the laptop is school property, the laptop is school property.
Give them basic office apps, and whatever educational software they need. Don't let them install anything. Unless there's an educational need for it, no iChat. Sounds like a good way to cheat on tests to me.
If I weren't in IT at work, that's what my work laptop would be like. Because I'm in IT, I can get administrator rights, but pretty much nobody else can. Why should school be different?
It isn't your responsibility to provide a fun-time laptop; you don't care if they use it for anything except school work. The laptop is a piece of school property to be used for educational purposes, just like a textbook, or a desk, or a photocopier. It's a tool, not a toy, and once you realize that you'll feel better about the whole thing.
Would you say that students should be allowed unlimited access to the photocopier for personal purposes? Of course not. Same thing.
The network filtering is tougher, but again, I come back to "what's work like?" I have to go to some technical web sites at home that I legitimately need access to, because Websense won't let me get to them. It also won't let me get to porn, gambling (including the state lottery site) hacking or proxy avoidance information.
The same should apply to school - in spades. Maybe you should just have a white list based on lesson plans rather than trying to filter out the garbage.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Why is everyone so convinced that giving students laptops will act as an educational magic bullet? Locking them down will only cause the students to try and work around the restrictions. Whats to prevent them from using a live Linux CD to browse the web as they please?
Laptops wont do shit to improve learning by any means. Teachers along with parents are the most important part in a child's education. And students today from what I have observed really don't value education. And that started at home. Too many students in one class who don't value education causes the teacher to literally give up. I grew up in a house where both my parents hold masters degrees. My mother and father always took me and my brother on educational family outings. Queens hall of science, Libery science center, Edison meuseam, Zoos, other museums etc. I was never a good student but my mother helped me through allot of my problems and made sure I got through school. My father ran the family business which was a machine shop, wood shop and also did entertainment. He would take me to machinery trade shows and all kinds of interesting places. He also let me play at his shop and imposed no real restrictions. He let me be as creative as possible even teaching me how to use some real dangerous machines like band saws, lathes, milling machines, bench grinders and table saws.
Bottom line is my parents created an environment that encouraged education and learning. They knew its value and made sure both me and my brother will be successful in life (This is a big part of Jewish culture, and no I am not Jewish). No computer will ever provide that. If you want to give them computers make them available for students to use in school computer labs or library's. They can do all the research they need and you wont have to worry about laptops being stolen, destroyed or hacked. Giving kids laptops will only distract them more. There is no magic bullet, if the parents don't give a shit then neither will the kids. And it seems to be a growing epidemic.
That you leave root access on, or at least install the developer tools.
What the real tragedy is, is that when school's lock machine's down, they usually do it in a way that prevents the main goal of giving the kids access to computers in the first place: learning.
If the machine doesn't come with apple's developer tools, and the kids don't have root access so they can install additional *unix* software to /usr/bin, you have already totally failed in giving them the computer. Yet, this is usually the sort of things school's do.
What's the point of giving kids computers if they can't learn about them by tinkering with them?
As far as the protections you are talking about, I have to agree with everyone else when I say they are insanely draconian and kind of pointless.
No matter what you do, I can guarantee you within a month every kid is going to know how to get around them to look at porn on those things, and realistically that's the main thing parents would like to stop. I mean, do you really think that thousands of high school kids are going to be too dumb to figure out how to use a proxy? That not one guy is going to figure this out and tell everyone else? How dumb are your kids exactly?
This is part of the reason why public schooling in the united states is so utterly worthless. It's not because american kids are magically just dumber than kids in other countries, and it's not for lack of funding. The culture of the "educators" is the problem. I'm 24 now and have graduated from both high school and college, but I still remember high school well, and it's the patronizing and incompetent teachers that made it so worthless of a learning experience.
If you start off assuming that your kids are too dumb to learn anything, to want to play with technology, the be able to get around the trivial restrictions you are talking about, then how do you expect to ever teach them *anything*? You won't, and so far testing indicates you *haven't*.
Alternatively one option you might want to explore is alternative financing arrangements for these computers. I mean I suspect the reason that filters are required is that these would be state owned computers.
I encourage you to think about finding a private company that would lease these computers to the students with the understanding that at the end of the lease the student or failing that the state would have the option to purchase at a specified price. This might let you make an end run around the legal requirement for filtering.
Regardless of your stance on filtering content for students this is wise for several reasons.
If you put filters on these computers then you or the school will be blamed when kids access inappropriate content. I mean after all you put the filters there to stop the kids from accessing such content so it's your failure when they do. Someone will manage to access inappropriate content (either b/c of bad filters or clever hacks) and then the program gets blamed.
On the other hand if the parents view these as simply computers provided to them as a school supply they will be more likely to assume responsibility for policing their children's behavior themselves.
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Finally, I would point out that people tend to act the way they are expected to act. If you put up a bunch of filters against looking at inappropriate content you communicate the expectation that this is what they would do without the filters and they will proceed to act in accordance with that expectation and circumvent filters.
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I'm not sure whether or not you read all of these posts, however, I am actually a 12th grader in high school.
My school has a program called the "Satellite Center"
Basically, it allows students across the parish (normally a county, but I live in Louisiana) at 2 high schools to join together to work on large scale business oriented projects.
Anyway, what's related to you is that only 11th and 12th graders can participate unless under special circumstance. Also, the parish provides laptops.
This involves an extreme IT dept run not only parishwide, but schoolwide.
These laptops last pretty well, however, MANY are broken.
YOUR PART
These laptops, while at school MUST connect through a proxy. However, at home, you can use the laptop as it is YOURS.
Which means, with all technicality, you could go home and install any file sharing program you want.
You can't use it at school simply because the school's proxy blocks it.
I think that if you want the students to reach their full potential, set guidelines.
Such as: "No pornography is to be stored on the hard drive at any time, include cache and temporary data or bookmarks."
This means, If you look at porn, and we see it stored on your hard drive at school, BAM, trouble.
But as long as they aren't sharing their otherwise choice activities with other students, I don't know, seems like a pretty liberal and fair way of doing it.
Goodluck.
There is the question of what you should do, and what you can do.
Apple tries very hard to keep their iphone locked - it was designed for that. They failed. And continue to fail. The mac book was never designed to withstand the incredible hacking power of a team of grade 11 students. What makes you think you can lock them?
Given they are going to get unlocked, you might consider the most cost effective thing to do is just do the minimal thing to CYA and don't spend a lot of time trying to go beyond that. These students already have access to facebook, trying to stop them from using facebook is just going to make it worth doing.
Please ban facebook and myspace and any other "EVIL" sites but for goodness sake dont cripple their machines
Don't be ridiculous. When one person breaks the law, that person is wrong. When everybody breaks a law, the law is wrong.
Having a rule that you know many, many people will break (and get away with?) is a good way to make those people lose respect for any other (more important?) rules you have.
Instead of taxing 5$ for his lunch, the 12th grader will ask the 6th grader for his laptop. Seriously, isn't there a security issue with a 6th grader carrying a 1000$ machine with him at all time that anyone can resell on ebay? Just asking...
Because no matter what happens you will be blamed. You are getting contradictory direction so no matter what you do, it will be wrong.
My bias? Lock them down. I've been there. The fun and games never ends. No one takes responsibility and so it will land on you. CYA.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I'm not sure how it works on Macs, but PC wise- Norton Ghost will be your most hated application within weeks if you leave the systems with free roam. In contrast, Deep Freeze will be your favorite application if you choose to keep them restricted. There will always be circumventions to your techniques- but I highly recommend forcing them to bring their systems at the end of every semester- so you can update your software sets, and toast any personalization they have on them. This way after a year or two of kids having to reinstall their games, they'll start realizing that the machines are for work not for play. It also adds some privacy concerns having a student use a laptop for all their every day stuff considering that a social life is now half digital, blocking myspace and facebook isn't a great idea. But then when they return the laptop members of staff *could* have access to some seriously private info... Social networking passwords, browser cache, all the anti-trust concerns... I just hope the contract you get the parents to sign is read over by a lawyer and that it protects the school board for reasonable liabilities.
Why does each kid need a laptop in the first place? How about improving the quality of teaching instead? This seems like a misguided quick fix for a bad education system...
Approach A:
Teachers give students unrestricted laptop, Student surfs porn, ends up getting groomed by a kiddie fiddler
Approach B:
teachers give students restricted laptop using approved filters etc (ie takes reasonable steps to secure and filter the content), student bypasses restrictions, surfs porn and ends up getting groomed by a kiddie fiddler.
The outcome is the same in both cases, I don't think anyone disagrees. But which approach avoids a lawsuit?
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No, I be new here!
I got some bad grammar
Is it "protecting kids from themselves"? Besides the fact of whether you want to do this or not, many kids will have access to their parents' or friends laptops anyway. Are you trying to cover your ass if they do something dumb? Just trust the damn students. Put the responsibility on them: if they accept the laptop, they accept that they have to decide what is "good, moral, proper" etc. to do on the laptop, with all the consequences of it. If you start policing, you're basically implicitly assuming responsibility for the kids, not allowing them to take responsibility, or for the parents to teach them responsibility. When you do screw up and let the kids download child porn, it'll be all on your head.
wrong, wrong, wrong. under the age of 18, children are considered incompetent. Adults often assume responsibility for them, e.g cosigning contracts or paying criminal fines. The responsibility lands first on parents then on teachers and schools. If the parents pint the finger at the school the the school finger the teacher and/or the admin. The poster is right to CYA. The kids assume little or no responsibility.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
>With that being the case, expect that there will be students that will use
>the computer for their own personal leisure and students that will really
>use them as they were intended to be used.
I think it's fair to say that *every* student will use a computer for entertainment and for social communication. This is the 21st century, that's what people *do*.
Since when are kids not allowed to have fun anyway? This is why schools fail at everything. People who come up with educational policy are so disconnected from reality that they think "oh, we can't give these students something they might have fun with! OMG!"
Along the same lines, teachers are more concerned with preventing kids from seeing porn than they are concerned with actually educating them. Which is funny because we know from tests that schools fail at both tasks.
My oldest had a school laptop for two years, and my middle daughter is on her second year with hers.
The middle schools provides them with low end macbooks. If you pay a $50 fee for the year to cover "insurance" the kids can bring them home, otherwise they stay at school. These have the same kinds of potential restrictions you mention.
They can be put onto home wireless networks, and can print to home machines. The kids do not have the ability to add software, and are prohibited by their signed agreement from doing all the things you'd expect middle school kids to try doing. Mostly, they don't -- or they do it carefully enough not to get caught. That is a valuable skill set itself, and the kids become comfortable with the machines.
More important -- the kids work with these machines in a fairly realistic way. They use Garage Band as part of their music class. They use keynote to do oral reports, and they use the word processor to prepare their reports -- and are expected to produce quality work with them.
The point is, the machines are well integrated into the teaching plan. If not, they're a distraction.
When my oldest moved on to high school, I wanted to get her a laptop of her own. She'd had a PC in her room for years, and had the school laptop from middle school before that -- A mac. I asked her what she liked better, a Mac or a PC. She just looked at me, and asked why she should care. To her, they're just tools. They both work, and she just didn't care much. Since I could get a pretty good PC laptop for about 300 dollars cheaper than a cheap Mac laptop, I offered to split the difference with her from her savings if she wanted the Mac. She thought that was a stupid waste of money.
My point is there, is that by 15 she's comfortable enough with the technology to be unimpressed by it, and to see it as just another tool. As to p0rn surfing? At school its reasonably blocked (I can get by, she can't) and at home she's on my network. She knows I have firewall logs, and reserve the right to forensically review her machine. I don't though. I really really really don't want to know her taste in p0rn -- and even my 9 year old knows better than to give out personal information on-line.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I taught in a laptop school several years ago. The technology was JUST maturing then, but most of my problems were person-driven rather than technology-driven.
Here are my tips
1) Firmly establish who actually owns what, because that determines the scope of your reach. If the computers are still school property, you have a lot more reach than if the kids buy them up front or buy on an installment plan.
2) Either way, you're going to have to amend your Acceptable Use Policy to address issues brought up by the laptops. I would do some research into other laptop schools and download their AUP. In fact, contacting other laptop schools is probably a good idea in general. It's always better to make your first mistakes vicariously through someone else.
3) Partition the laptops so that user data is stored on a separate partition, and invest in a good disk-imaging system. You're going to be imaging a lot of laptops after a few weeks. No matter how hard you lock them down, someone is going to screw something up so royally that you can spend 6 hours fixing it or 10 minutes imaging the disk, and it will happen frequently (how frequently depends on school size). In fact, you may want to get clever and make 3 partitions. 1 main, 1 user data, and 1 unmounted that holds a local copy of your image file. Image your main partition only, copy it to your "hidden" partition, and image the whole thing for deployment.
4) Figure out a theft-protection mechanism. This will eventually become an issue. Laptop insurance/warranties will also be an issue. If 15% of the laptops begin malfunctioning near the end of a 4-year-run, that will be enough to make it difficult for teachers to rely on those machines for classroom exercises. Nothing it more frustrating than having a whole lesson plan come to a stand-still because 4 kids' computers won't work. I've had it happen to me plenty of times. These also tend to be the kids who don't need any additional distractions.
5) If these are school-owned laptops, then you have a great deal of latitude in locking them down. Remote monitoring is another issue, and I would consult your district's attorney. As far as locking them down, the guiding question should be "what level of security supports the curriculum." Most slashdot users will think of these laptops as computers, with all of the implied potential. Thus any lockdowns curb that potential, and in turn the student's freedoms and opportunity. While this is a valid mode of thinking for personal machines intended for personal purposes, it is the wrong mindset to have in an educational environment. For starters, most students will never come close to tapping that potential (they want to surf the web and IM).
These laptops are being purchased to augment your curriculum, and should be configured in a way that makes it a platform for your curriculum. This may involve lots of restrictions, or just enough to keep a kid from accidentally breaking something. While you'll probably learn as you go, you should already have some idea of where that line is. If you don't, I'd recommend more research and consultation/training your teachers before writing that big check.
With totally unlocked computers, it is likely that a significant portion of the machines will begin malfunctioning due to user-abuse: "I'm going to install every piece of crap software I find! Isn't it great?" While it won't be a majority, it will be enough to make it difficult for teachers to rely on the machines to function properly during an activity (see above).
As many have stated already, it has some problems. First off: filtering will prevent most people from accessing most bad things, yes. But the small percentage who do want to access that content, will find ways to get around it. Filtering is sort of like DRM. It really only winds up hampering those it was designed to "protect." You need change attitudes, not implement draconian measures. Remote access? Filtering? Etc? All easily breakable - there are no firmware utilities for Macs that I'm aware of that prevent someone from simply reinstalling the OS - which they can do if they have a Mac at home, or if they know anything about piracy. Not sure what else to offer you, except that what you need is network based filtering, and perhaps a basic set of parental controls (though expect that to be circumvented if people really want to). The problem is, no system that people have physical access to for cracking is terribly secure.
If you are worried about kids using the internet to do bad things, then filter the internet. Use something like SurfControl which runs essentially between the internet and your network and looks out for things you don't want your network users to be looking at. Since it's your internet, you should be able to dictate how it is used. However, you said in your post that the laptops are basically theirs, so they should be the ones who decide how the laptops are used. Let them do what they want with them when they are at home. Using a filter that runs externally to the PCs is a great compromise. It gives them flexibility at home and the structure you need at school.
"Mom, will you please, please, please, buy me another laptop. I can't do a thing with the Mac they gave me at school."
Mom is thinking is "What did I do to deserve this?" What she is saying is "I'm sorry, kiddo. But we just don't have that kind of money right now."
I'm a senior in high school right now, and having all those restrictions on my computer that I basically am purchasing would merit a complete reinstall of the OS that I would do myself. I think its rather crazy to even attempt to put blocks on a computer the students are purchasing. If it was a school laptop, I would understand, but being that it isn't, well, I would be free to do as a wish with said machine.
Man, I thought regular trolls were bad enough, but now we seem to have clone trolls! I swear you're like the flood off of halo - you're a disembodied version of the original that is more annoying and harder to kill, in your case the horrendous grammar and beating that same meme to death.
The original New Here may be gone, but we don't need a ghost in his place, OK? I thought it was funny, and don't consider the original New Here a troll (meme-enforcers walk a thin line from being trolls), and even your post was funny to a degree, but give it a rest - this is like the 5th or 6th troll post in this article alone.
Like everything in life other than alcohol, do it in moderation, ok?
and I wonder what you think a restriction policy does, other than fly out the window the first time a kid figures out how to proxy? What you really should do is install these computers with a base Debian install (which is free btw), and then help them get from there to where they need to be. This would teach marketable skills and also protect the computer from viruses.
These are more general points than some of the comments posted so far. Take them for whatever they're worth.
1) Go for the least restrictive options possible. If you treat kids like criminals, they're going to act like criminals. Public middle/high schools are enough like jails as it is already.
2) Some kids are going to figure out how to work around almost every restrictive measure you put in place, regardless of what you do. Expect that and when it happens, set the example and deal with it in a mature non-kneejerk way.
3) Related to #2, the kids are going to use the laptops for non-academic purposes. This should be encouraged because to do otherwise is running contradictory to the whole message of telling them to have this laptop and take it home. If you don't want them to use a general-purpose computer for general-purpose activities (communication, music, art, programming) then don't give them a computer.
4) Realize that 99.9% of the "problems" related to the use of the laptops are best resolved with non-technical solutions. If instant messaging in classes is an issue, have the teacher tell them to knock it off and pay attention to class. Don't just take away the chat program and leave it at that, because the underlying problem still remains. Cure the ailments, not the symptoms.
5) Above all, EDUCATE them on what's considered acceptable use of the computer and what's not. For the love of all that is holy, do not just give them the computer and then punish them for using it wrong. Kids have a natural tendency to explore their world and the things in it, don't help the school system destroy that inclination any further.
I wouldn't filter students' web browsing because that would only cause them to find ways around it. In fact, I would allow them free access to sites because if they have a computer for themselves, shouldn't they be able to use it how they wish?
> Have you been in a high school where students have access to computers that have such filtering? They get around it really quickly, and such information spreads like wildfire.
Actually, that's why I would suggest that the laptops have lots of arbitrary and ridiculous restrictions that range from easy to hack to hard to hack.
That way, you'll teach the students a lot about computer security when they hack them to do all the things they think you don't want them to do.
All of the computers should have their "R" keys removed to prevent any unscrupulous behavior that can be described or implied by a word containing the letter "R" or "r".
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
As far as filtering websites and content, why not? You probably have filters in the library or any other PC that the kids have access to don't you? Set them up the same way.
Worried about them installing software, then don't give them permissions on the device to do so. Lock that down. Don't let them install anything. That means you don't have to worry about them getting trojans. You don't ahve to worry about unlicensed software that you may be liable for since the school owns the laptop. Again, IANAL so I don't know what can happen there, but the RIAA is sue happy so who knows.
Xaotik Designs
Get some filtering box for the school network, from Barracuda or somebody, and don't worry too much about the home situation.
For worried parents, aim them at OpenDNS with the porn filtering option. Tell them to reconfigure their home broadband router to use OpenDNS, and lock down the router.
For overly worried parents, suggest TrueVine, the filtered Christian dial-up ISP. "We block offensive material BEFORE it enters your home." Nobody actually buys that service for themselves, but it gives you an answer for the fanatics.
With on-motherboard hardware security chips, you can lock the computer down pretty well. That's part of how LoJack for Laptops works in its most-secure mode.
With these modes, if you replace the HD and reinstall an OS the security system knows about, typically Windows, it will reload its drivers and re-lockdown the system. It may even phone home the next time it's online. Sure, you could install an oddball OS but in theory the BIOS could block that entirely.
I'm not saying student-grade laptops will have these features, only that they could, in theory.
Of course, managing a unique BIOS security password for every machine will be a chore.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How are you going to do that when they start booting from USB sticks? In 10th grade I had the chops to make them, and it's a hell of a lot easier now.
Block USB boot at the bios-level? Suddenly a market springs up for anyone who can use a screwdriver to reset bios to default.
Stop this by required routine check to make sure the machine isn't modified? Then what's the point of assigning them to a student? Spend the money on better computer equipment for labs, or have laptops available for checkout.
Judging from practically every computer with a 14-year-old male body in front of it at my local library, these are the only 2 reasons to even have a computer.
There, fixed that for you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The "buy it when you're done" thing is going to put in some interesting issues...
How about you think of a pretty pragmatic restriction saying you only get to own the computer if you've lived in the district and attended the school for more than a set period of time. Otherwise you should get ready for an influx of transfer students in the last semester. Free computer for college in exchange for switching schools for a semester? Sign me up.
Or what about people who move into the district in 12th Grade? Do they get a newer computer than everyone else?
And what about people who are in 12th Grade for the first year of the program? Why do the younger kids have to graduate with an older PC?
I'm assuming you're a public school district in a reasonably well-off community, so you have to worry about rich parents who are lawyers. If you're in a low-income community, never mind, carry on...
The school has no business giving kids laptops. First, there's no credible evidence it accelerates learning any more than, say, a really engaged teacher, or well produced educational videos, or just sticking with locked-down desktop computers in a classroom (bolted down, behind a firewall, reimaged every night). The idea of vulnerable kids walking around with $1200 shiny macbooks just so they can type their essay - that's just not a good idea.
But has anyone yet asked why these kids need individual laptops, especially as supplied by the school system? I hope said district has solved any problems related to its students not learning the basic material or dropping out, because otherwise I think the money spent on laptops would be put to much better use buying quality textbooks with solid, appropriately-rigorous coverage of the material.
If your kids can't read, do simple math, or understand basic science, giving them a computer won't solve anything.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
All this program is going to do is churn out more ignorant and lazy children. All that's required for education is paper, pencils, and after a certain point perhaps a simple calculator (the add, subtract, multiply, divide type). Well I suppose it will also waste alot of money too if that's one of the goals.
These 1:1 initiatives have got to be one of the stupidest fucking ideas that some administrator has come up with in years.
Why aren't we teaching these children, instead of training them?
School used to be about learning how to learn. Get the basics - reading, writing, arithmetic. Science. History. Computers were an *elective* - not a core curriculum course.
You don't give laptops to students. I realize the 1:1 thing has everyone's pussies all damp, but it's complete bullshit. You're creating a nightmare for IT staff, impossible hardware maintenance, software bullshit, and OH YES - you're using Mac OS X, the "bestest ever!" You can't control shit with OS X. Don't talk to me about Workgroup Manager. It's shit. OS X is for home users and solo professionals.
On top of this, you're giving laptops to retarded high school kids, who will beat the shit out of these things. They don't care - they know they won't buy them if they break them. They'll cry and stink and the district eats the cost. As a result, my property taxes (which fund these stupid-ass programs) will jump up next year to replace Billy's fucked up laptop.
Tech coordinators (which are by and large totally unqualified, by the way - they're the PE coach who kinda knows Excel) will run willy nilly fixing stupid shit on these things.
After 4 years, they can buy them for 'a nominal fee'? Yeah, right. Please, can I purchase a 4-year old laptop, or will I just find a college that's also trying to woo me with "Free iPods, Laptops, and hookers"?
The point is, you fucking idiots are turning out office workers. You're obsessed with 'empowering children by giving them access to technology', when all they're doing is twittering and fucking around on myspace during class, instead of actually LEARNING.
So yeah, I'd be against the 1:1 shit.
If you school accepts or applies for Federal E-rate monies then you must comply with CIPA (Child's Internet Protection Act). Minimally you need filtering software installed on all the laptops since they are school computers. Filtering "offensive material" means, no chats, no blogs, no Myspace, no gaming chat sites, etc... Also, teenage girls (7-8th grade) are incredibly adept at getting themselves in trouble online and then confessing to their parents when it spins way out of control. Typically they teenage girls pose online as a 24-year old playboy bunnies and it all hits the fan when the child predator shows up at their house for sex. Never underestimate the trouble that teenage girls can get themselves into online. It happens everyday and you don't want it happening on your computers, since this sort of trouble creates really bad press for the school district not to mention resistance to any further adoption of technology.
What restrictions should pencil and paper have?
There are already plenty of laws in place to address antisocial and otherwise illegal behavior. Universities can put penalties on damage done to university property.
Placing technological "restrictions" on student laptops will only increase the temptation.
Is it a lack of imagination that causes authorities to believe new laws have to be created to address what are basically old problems?
Here in Chicago, for example, it is impossible to buy a can of spray paint. Instead of just addressing the behavior, there is an attempt to limit the potential for everyone.
Laptops are not guns. They do have uses beyond the destructive, you know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When everybody breaks a law, the law is wrong.
This isn't true. For example, the majority of the population has driven while (very) tired. This is a crime, (impaired driving), for a very good reason - it increases the risk of accidents, almost as much as drinking. So, here's a law, that the majority of the population breaks, but isn't "wrong" as it punishes dangerous behavior.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Stock plenty of replacement screens, keyboards, hinges, and a few optical drives.
You will need them. Ask any of the State of Maine MLTI vendors or schools. And they generally DON'T let students take 'their' Macbooks home.
Just the way it is.
Oh,and make them put a deposit on them against physical damage. You can be forgiving later.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Why not have the parents buy a laptop for the student. Then you don't need to worry about filtering or monitoring anything. You also don't need an expensive support department (that taxpayers get to fund). Laptops are available for $400 or less. If you think that's not affordable, look around at all the students in your school that have cell phones.
The high school in my town just got a slew of Macbooks from some private grant, so every high schooler in Mooresville has a shiny new Macbook. They honestly provide no educational advantage. Most of the kids already had computers at home, and those who didn't go to the town library where they all just Facebook anyway. No high school can really appreciate the usefulness of having a computer in school except in computer classes (which usually are either typing or Office). This is just a clever ploy by Apple to get their stuff in the hands of kids before they get stuck on MS based computers.
First to gain trust you must be very transparent about what you are doing. This includes stating explicitly what is and is not allowed and most importantly what abilities to monitor you will use and when. If possible include everyone in these decisions and use the whole system as a way to teach the children. If everyone has a way to give feedback (even anonymously) you will be much more aware of the general opinion.
Second I think restrictions during school hours may be acceptable but they should be at the ultimate minimum required by law out of school. Else the machines will be wasted.
The kids who really want to break through your restrictions will and you end up just punishing the wrong people.
The lawyers will be drooling over this and be ready to sue on contact for any student who sees something inappropriate on myspace. Free money!!
Unfortunately this means you get the shaft as your in charge of settings. A single lawsuit could kill the whole program and your career.
Play it safe ban all search engines and most blogging and social websites. Google especially as students can google myspace proxy and get around filtering.
http://saveie6.com/
I think we need more details from the subby. We can't offer much more insight unless he answers at least a few of the above thoughts.
My curiosity is if the laptops will replace textbooks, workbooks, etc. Having texts loaded on board would be an excellent alternative to lugging 40lbs of books. On the other hand, when your machine poops out your entire supply is gone.
What kind of arrangement will the school have for allowing printing? If there is only one or two printers for each school there could be massive bottlenecks when students are printing their reports/homework/etc unless everything is done electronically.
As for using the computer after it's been heavily used and 6yrs old, I wouldn't cough up too much for it, but for those with geeky fingers there might be uses found for them. A fun and useful project (perhaps an end of 12th grade exercise?) is to break the machine apart as needed and mount it onto a frame, thus building yourself a digital picture frame.
Web filtering? They will just find a free unrestricted access point and install their own unrestricted browser. There are lots of them out there.
I am not long out of college, and they tried to restrict the school computers there, too. Savvy students could get around the restrictions pretty much at will. It was so easy that the only ones who did not do so were the ones who simply had no reason to. But believe me, there are plenty of reasons -- legitimate reasons and otherwise -- for wanting to get around the restrictions. And if they want to, they will.
Without installing a rootkit, there is no way to install remote monitoring software that can't be disabled. A rootkit leaves behind traces and can usually be rooted out (pardon the pun), and any other sort of remote monitoring, unless it is hardware-based, can be removed. And if it can be, it will be.
It is the school system -- the teachers and administration -- who need to learn the lessons here. Don't spend taxpayer money on stupid, futile measures that simply will not accomplish the purpose they would be put in place for. It is more than a waste of everybody's time, it is a travesty. A tragedy.
Parents are looking for the "silver bullet" when it comes to making their kids successful in school.
Buy books/pencils and supplies? Nah.
Fund more reading or math specialists? Nope.
Enable each school to have its' own Gym, Art or Music teachers? Nope.
Figure that since "buying computers for every student" is full of buzzwords like "Academic Networking" or "Collaborative Teaching Methods"; parents and the board will give computers to every student but will not:
a) put in any plan in place of how the students will use them productively
b) train all the teachers so they can know how to use them
c) enable the teachers to develop lesson plans that actually leverage them, besides "Write a paper on it" or "go research XYZ" (btw this is what Libraries are for).
d) Realize that developing an effective lesson plan can take multiple school years; so giving the teacher a summer to plan isn't going to fly.
e) If a student gets a used laptop will their be a perception of them being at a disadvantage?
You can pwn all the boxes some of the time, and you can pwn some of the boxes all the time, but you can't pwn all the boxes all the time.
Anything you can do [on your budget] can be easily circumvented by anyone with technical expertise. Those students will tell their friends how to do it.
So stop worrying about the students. Just implement controls that your bosses cannot circumvent. Install a reporting mechanism that will randomly pick one of the cracked machines on average twice per year and out its primary user for an administrative example-making. Your job is impossible--the best you can do is set up good security theater to cover your own ass.
You've already said you're getting them a Mac - damm, how much more restrictive can you get?
They can't use them for Facebook or MySpace - why? They still belong to the district. Any student who mouths off online using equipment that technically belongs to the district or is under the district's control is likely subject to disciplinary action, just as if they were using a school computer lab to do it. Don't even put them in that position - tell them that up front, even if you don't block it. Because the second one of them starts a "my school sucks" blog using that computer, you're going to have a problem. And you'd better hope none of them get caught swapping porn online using those machines. Your local media will do a number on you.
And what happens if they do a ton of stupid crap and make the computer unusable? Are the kids still responsible for whatever assignments need to be done while its getting it fixed? They should be. Make it clear.
What happens if parents or siblings not attending the school use the computer and cause problems? This all has to be spelled out ahead of time. Do you have open public records laws you have to follow? Are the web logs for those computers public records or student information? I wouldn't be surprised if they don't identify the student individually.
Good luck. It can be hard supporting a standardized notebook in a higher education environment. I don't envy you trying to do it K-12. I haven't seen it outside a private school environment at that level. My wife's a middle school teacher in a public school - if her students use the computers in her room when a substitute teacher is there, they can't be trusted not to screw things up or do things they aren't supposed to. And the substitute teacher won't know how to keep an eye on things. So if she's out, they do book work and alternate assignments.
Do your best (your question is irrelevant) and they can always run a live-CD or a USB-live Linux distro or install Linux and get around your neanderthal filters. You are obsolete. If you want to do the right thing remove all Windows and pre-install Linux. At least that way they won't be spreading viruses, worms, malware, botnets, or DoS attacks. Now shut up and start handing out unsecured laptops to people who don't know any better like a good civil servant. E
I'm a tech coordinator at a district that has implemented a 1:1 laptop program. We are using MacBooks managed by OS X Server, with additional content filtering hardware and software. Despite all the comments to the contrary, there's no choice but to control, monitor and filter. It's also not an option to open them up when they take them home. You have to address the issue of inappropriate content being downloaded at home, then brought into the school. It is, in fact, possible to both control and filter reasonably effectively while at the same time providing a good range of software and capabilities to the student. And our students are not, in fact, either bypassing our controls or destroying the laptops left and right. Three things are vital: 1) Communicate with all stakeholders well in advance, discuss all the pros and cons, plan for the inevitable problems, 2) Provide good tech support to the students; show them that you are there to help them, not just to control them; explain to them that some control is a necessary evil, but that it won't stop them from having a great time with these machines and learning a lot in the process, and 3) Provide good training to your teachers to change the way they teach, and to accept the inevitable changes in classroom environment that must result.
So you're going to spend millions on laptop computers when the only thing your computer teacher has is A+ Certification? Seriously? The OP is a troll. Why is this garbage on Slashdot?
I would filter the school's internet connection to block myspace, porn etc. since the kids shouldn't be goofing off at school. Off campus I would allow myspace etc. and try to block porn not because they shouldn't be looking at porn but because you don't want them to bring porn to school. It won't be successful but at least you tried.
After 6 years...any laptop given to a 6th grader (or 3 years after giving it to a 9th grader) is going to get replaced anyway with better newer technology or because it's broke. Why bother selling it to the student upon graduation? This should only be considered for "high school" students and should come with an automatic expectation of being repaired or replaced 5 times before graduation. A lot can happen in 6 years.
It's not your decision. Since they're minors, their parents or guardians have the responsibility of caring for them. You don't have the right nor responsibility to police what they are doing. When they're in school, you can use ARD to monitor usage and abuse of the network but as soon as they leave the premises your authority ceases.
What you have to do is
a) talk to your bosses and school administrators to see what you legally HAVE to do to protect the students, yourself and your school from legal action
b) Inform the parents on how to enable the Parental Controls (Go to System Preferences -> Accounts -> Parental Controls on 10.4; System Preferences -> Parental Controls on 10.5 or offer them to do it for them on a case-by-case basis. You can even do it using Open Directory: create several student groups (eg: liberal, concerned, restrictive, roman-catholic) and apply the preferences through the groups.
c) Let the parents sign waivers/legal forms so that if the student gets around the parental controls, the controls don't work (they can be circumvented at several levels) or the parents botch it up, that you and your school is free from any blame or legal action
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
But the lawyers will go after the kid and not the school. The school did their part and the student broke the DMCA so the school is off the hook for any lawsuits.
http://saveie6.com/
They should have NONE, NONE WHATSOEVER.
It is the parent's job to regulate what children do and don't do... it's as simple as that.
Period... enough said.. no justification beyond that should be needed. YOU are responsible for YOUR children's actions. P.E.R.I.O.D.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Better start a budget now for the dead batteries you'll need to replace. One of my main problems with Laptops in schools is the battery issue... It may sound great on paper, have them take home or a cart full of laptops. But 30 Laptops X $75 batteries = $$$$ (30 is just what we usually used on Carts.) We are currently comeing full circle around from those decisions years ago. Buy/Build laptop carts instead of labs because of space needs. Wheel a cart in, hand out laptops. Sounds great if only a few classes need them, and they can recharge between uses after dead. But when you have back to back users, they don't last through the day. Put 2 batteries in, and you MIGHT get it to last... But eventually the constant plug/unplug of the batteries & extended discharge over 3 month summer break = bad batteries. Now the users hate the laptops because the batteries won't last. *(Typical LIOns...)* Even the IBM recommended procedure was to COMPLETELY DISCHARGE the batteries before plugging them in to charge. So, if YOUR class is the class that they died in, SOL, they now have to charge for so many hours to reach full state again.
Now they are trying to shoe-horn labs into retrofitted rooms because they need more computers.
Funny how the number of computers keep increasing in the school, but the tech to take care of them seems to be stagnent or declining.
I think that the piss-poor battery technology that hasn't really advanced much in 20 years, may be one of the down side to hybrid & electric cars. Hopefully someone figures it out soon.
So students who were issued a macbook in 6th grade will have the option of purchase? No thanks! It'll be little more than a paper weight by that point. Seriously, have you even thought about the need to replace a laptop after the useful life is over?
Don't forget the maintenance needs. I'll bet that 6th graders will put a lot of wear on them, and apple products aren't exactly known for their ability to take damage.
This is a really bad idea.
for wasting tax money. there is no educational value of a laptop at these ages. it's known, stop trying to act like you somehow know better.
what kind of hardware you use for "additional content filtering" that can't be removed.
I am amazed at your claims. If things are actually as you describe, then you are using software/equipment that I have never heard of before. On the other hand, it is possible that it just SEEMS that way to you, and you are fooling yourselves.
I would be curious to find out which it is.
Any restriction that is circumventable by using a virtual machine is an honour system; likewise, physical modification. SATA laptop hard drives can be found that would only cost a couple hours of labour at a shitty, minimum-wage, after-school job. How would you go about stopping them from swapping hard drives yet keep the computers serviceable?
Giving laptops out to 6th-to-12th graders is a lose-lose situation: you take on liability; they have to worry about returning a broken laptop which, in all likelihood, will not add all that much to learning "Macbeth" or geometry. However, they might learn a thing or two about the group policy editor.
Tell your tech man/woman that a netbook ($200-$300 regular retail, should be cheaper for mass purchase) would be more than adequate for everything that a student needs to do...macbook's are dam expensive and dont offer a whole lot educatioanlly that a netbook cant do. Why have your tax payers pay for an operating system??? ubuntu (or one of the various builds)/fedora/even open solaris, has everything a student could need and if they need more then they should just get their own. Open office is good enough for almost anything a student would need in an office suite for middle and high school. Also, why bother to lock it down more than your district or whoever requires. I am a sophomore in college and while in highschool we had a laptop set for many classes and with some know-how any site is available. But we couldn't take them home...like someone said previously, wiping a drive is pretty simple...live cd, usb stick. I hope that your techy has a clue...
If you have the money, you should look into some Network Access Control(NAC), or enterprise firewall solutions. Something by companies like Mirage, ForeScout, or Fortinet(among others). This way, you can force any laptop on the network to authenticate, either AD, 802.1x, or captive portal. You can then run a host check to check for up to day Virus scanning software, as well as many other things.
While they are at school, the laptop has certain policies. You can push firewall, etc to the host. As well they can have Single Sign on for network resources.
At home the user has a client to connect into school resources through IPSec or SSL VPN. Policies can be put in place for home use, or can be allowed full access, as long as when you reconnect to the network you meet your policy.
Look into these companies and find a distributor to help you install it. Each devices servers different needs.
My company has deployed a similar solution for a School board in Ontario in the last year, and so far they like it.
-EL
Easily the BEST answer so far. There is NO advantage to having a laptop in school. Practically everyone has a PC of some sort at home and the curriculum at your school and any other high school is too easy and of a simplistic nature to even begin needing a laptop.
Hell, I didn't really NEED a laptop for my COMPUTER ENGINEERING degree until I started taking senior-level design classes. You think some little kids who would rather be at home on myspace or watching tv would need one more than a 28-year old adult working on a computer-specific professional degree?
Sounds like a HUGE waste of taxpayer money. I'd invest in newer computers for an in-school classroom, more and better teachers, and a better class selection/curriculum before wasting it on some overpriced, incompatible MacBooks
All it takes is one IT student to hand off an Ubuntu LiveCD to their younger sibling, and every laptop will be highjacked. As someone else here noted: put the restrictions on the network, not the laptops; why overpriced Macbooks when cheap-as-dirt netbooks will do just fine; and most important MAKE THE PARENTS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FILTERING/MONITORING. You'll save a metric shitload of money, protect your district from lawsuits, and actually achieve most of your objectives.
I too have experience, both as an administrator and as a tech manager for a large high school. The previous poster "Past Experience" had some good things to say. All the posters who think you should leave things unlocked and use this as a way to teach trust are idiots with no experience managing computers with young adults. Sadly you can't act as if all your students are angels. If you gave the computers away you would be absolved of most/all responsibility but since you will still own them you are responsible to some degree regarding what they can facilitate. You may not be able to stop a student from installing a program that does damage to others but you can take reasonable steps to prevent it. You can reasonably assume some student may well abuse My Space and if it has no place in the Curriculum why would it be allowed to be installed? If the goal of the use of these computers includes something that MySpace and other social networking web sites help facilitate then there may be a rationale for allowing them. What is allowed and what is not allowed should come forth from the learning objectives and rationale for the purchase and use of these machines and those guidelines should be developed by teachers, parents and board members. With a consensus on these questions there is a much greater level of protection for the district and a much better chance the students will be best served by a balanced approach.
Lock it down as tight as you can, and here are the 3 benefits:
1) You will have 0 legal obligations.
2) You'll challenge the smart ones who _will_ break whatever you lock it down with and become tomorrow's greatest hackers.
3) The other (not so smart OR not interested in computers) kids will learn how the smart ones did it and hopefully become more tech savvy.
I'm old school and I've been behind filtering proxies before that I had to overcome, but looking back at it I think it was a great learning experience.
Just my 2 cents :)
If you can't mod them join them.
There are university resources on it. take for example university of miami's library has a face book presence. The caveat being if you allow it inform your student body what will be expected with regards to conduct. In form the students that they will be watched.
I'll probably be labelled a troll, but I don't understand why you would spend money on something that has dubious educational value, and has the potential to be a nightmare to administer. A laptop for everyone sounds very nice but in the cases I have been involved it has been rather less successful. What about : breakages, theft, "left it on the bus", playing games in the classroom, suitable software, training for teachers, administering a suitable network, filtering content, students who know how to and are willing to get around any security methods, students being a target for for muggings ....... boy oh boy I could go on. IMHO a waste of money without very careful thought and a clear pathway as to how and when they will be used.
why dont u give them freedom to chose their OS atlest OS.......
It's one way for geeks to get cozier with girls...
1. Burn a livecd with Firefox and OpenOffice ...over dinner
2. Laugh at administration attempts at censorship
3. Offer to do it for her...
4.
Any attempts to censor hardware that is capable of booting alternatives will fail. You are on Slashdot, so I expect you to know this.
That being said, Macbooks are expensive. The end goal is probably a computer capable of being an Internet gateway and of running an office suite. This can be done for much less. LTSP could be used to provide students with a consistent desktop for school work.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Really tech-savvy students will just uninstall whatever operating system and dopey restrictions you put on the machine and install their own. Extremely tech-savvy students will back up the original configuration, so when they turn the machine back in you'll never know.
Other students who know how to operate Google will look up and figure out how to disable your dopey application locks before the end of the first day.
Non tech-savvy students will file their laptops in the backs of their closets and never touch them until graduation, turning them back in with a layer of dust and all the idiot stickers still on.
Your plan will fail. Spend that money on hiring some more competent teachers and updated textbooks instead.
there is perhaps a more important reason to not lock down the computers. The easiest way to keep students from destroying their laptops is to let them do whatever they want on them. If students are allowed to use them for their personal lives they will then have a stake in the computer and will actually care if they break it. Not being able to listen to their music and get on myspace is damn good motivation to take care of their computer. Students won't care at all if they can't [insert boring educational use here].
First step should be not wasting money on mac hardware
I'm sure others have said this already, but I dont feel like reading all the comments to see.
Why in the world are you getting them macbooks? Even without getting into the obvious war of what is "better", it is obviously the wrong choice to supply a bunch of students just on the issue of cost. Thats looking at well over a grand each! And then put it under lockdown so they cant even use the full capacity? Simply moronic. If you want to give a "school" laptop to everyone so they can do homework on, then get some flavor of netbook. If you go with a linux distro then you also solve most of the questions of lockdown. Many kids arent going to even try to learn more of linux than they need for school (ie OpenOffice) and internet browsing. Put on a simple content filter so kids arent browsing porn at school and your set. A small, small minority of nerds are going to learn linux and start hacking it, but those guys area already the kind that are going to buy their own computers anyway.
and disable all the distracting webpages during lesson hours.
...is always the best. Filter only at the local network level- via your own proxy filter. Facebook is fine - in fact, it can be used to improve and extend elements of educational curricullum. Of course filter all the 'undesirable content' - but as the first poster said, dont become obsessed with stopping the students accessing anything - because, at the end of the day, they can still access it at home. Youtube and other streaming sites could cause issues for bandwidth; apart from that, just use common sense: games sites, P2P...etc. are all unnecessary. My advice (from personal experience) - get the staff to provide lists of websites they use regularly as resources, and then block out 90% of the rest of the crap. There will be some adjusting and movement in the first 6 - 12 months, but once everyones gotten comfortable with what they can and cant see / do, they'll relax into it.
you cannot give students laptops to use full time and lock them down. I am not sure it is legal to monitor computer usage at home especially if there is no consent. Since these some of the kids are high school age, they will be able to bypass whatever security you install. It is very likely that the students will be more knowledgeable than the staff at school - when they realize that a ubuntu livecd or a virtual machine is not restricted or monitored they will use it (or they will reformat the machines at home). You should not allow the students to bring the machines home or you should have the students actually own all of the machines. Any restrictions should be in the network hardware at the school and not in the machines or else it will not work.
The state is giving children access to level 0 control of hardware. If the hardware can access the unfiltered adult world (the internet and the WWW) the state is responsible for whatever dark alley these minors wander into.
Control the hardware. Children should not have root access to their state provided systems. Attempted intrusions into root access should be detectable, monitored, and enforced. The Internet should be available only on a whitelist. The children's userland should be scrutinized for inappropriate material on a regular basis. Make no illusion of privacy on these state provided systems.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
No Microsoft software allowed. Extra score for those who fully move to open source.
Make the kids sign a contract to use the computers. It is their privilege, not their right to have a computer. If they are seen doing anything against their contract, you have the power to take their computer away. You only monitor them during school hours, and they are free to use their computer for personal use at home, where it is their parent's responsibility to monitor them.
I know when I was in high school I knew how to circumvent the proxy blocking myspace and flash games. If I was on a contract though, even if I knew how to technically break the restrictions, I would be very considerate about when I did it. The last thing some 14 year old kid needs is to be the only one without a computer.
The state mandates web filtering on all machines.
So you can use a basic proxy on your school network to filter out websites you deem unworthy while they are on the school network. Smart children can circumvent it if they want, but they know what they are risking. Even if you never actually take a computer from a child you can lord it over them and keep them away from whatever content you think is necessary to block during school. This way the children get the laptops for their use, and the district is covered by providing the mandated web filtering, and revoking the rights of any student who circumvents it. Even if you don't actually take the computers from the children who misuse their computers, IMNAL, but you should be covered legally.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
Now git off my lorn
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
if you set up a web filter, all they need do is use a search engine to find a way around it. You cannot block search engines as they can be used for educational purposes and some like Google have adult content words in them as well as a cache of the web page so students can get around the filter by using Google's cache.
The only thing you can do is teach the student to be responsible and use good judgment via critical thinking or love and logic and give them consequences for viewing material that is mature in nature, like taking away Internet privileges for a week or detention or whatever your school code of conduct says is a consequence for breaking the rules. Somehow they must learn to keep it educational.
When they graduate and work a job, if they don't learn that in high school, they will get fired at work for goofing off on the Internet and looking up non-work materials. You need to teach them responsibility as soon as you can, the sooner the better. Because you cannot control them, only they can control themselves by making good decisions instead of bad decisions.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
No kidding! I think I just might bookmark this, and every time someone claims that schools are underfunded, just post a link to this question. This just shows, that schools have plenty of money.
I want to take money which could be used on legitimate educational purposes and use it to empower teenagers (who will undoubtedly find some way to bypass any filtering I happen to be required to place on there) to waste their time on Youtube and view lots of pornography. Are there any limitations on the total amazingness of my wonderful plan? Will you please give me lots of sympathetic support messages about how putting any kind of limitations on the laptops involved would lead to"a perceived lack of trust crippling the effectiveness of the program" so I don't have to feel guilty about the imprudence of letting them run rampant?
So what happens when a 7th grade girl goes to a party, gets drunk, gets date raped by 6 guys and Mom and Dad's lawyer is saying it's because of the people she met using her school laptop and the local DA is saying you're not just responsible, you're criminally negligent and only jail time will send the right message (it's for the children, you know.) . . . you get the idea, it won't be the "information wants to be free" folks on Slashdot judging you. You're facing a liability nightmare unless you're filtering social networking sites and blocking chat, irc, muds, and on and on . . .
As 87 people have already said, once one kid running linux at home figures out how to run a proxy and he makes accounts for half the school, your filtering becomes pretty pointless. Have you all asked a lawyer what liability the district would still retain?
Another thought: if a student checks out something expensive for an elective class and he breaks it, loses it, whatever, you can make him pay for it. If the school makes laptops a required part of the curriculum, on the other hand, you'll have a lot less leverage trying to collect money for damaged and lost equipment.
Your teachers are going into this transition with eyes open and know that getting students to pay more attention to a teacher than a laptop is essentially impossible, ya?
Seriously, you'll be facing a quagmire of liability issues, repair costs, and pedagogical problems.
If doesn't follow that it has to behave in any other way like one. It should really be a targetted learning tool.
Yes - it really is appropriate to make a laptop that just suits the immediate needs of learning for that particular week or month in question. It does not need to be a programming tool or an exploratory box of wonders.
Whatever we feel here about the prejudices of current school administrators, we're not likely to make them go away. School boards want assurances that they are not arming kids with porn gateways and cyber-bullying kits.
It seems to me that there's money to be made in coming up with a laptop that truly is aimed at this market.
I'm thinking something robust and simple with dedicated hardware to support restrictions. Perhaps...
1) will only boot an image that has been digitally signed by the school
2) Will only load executables that have been digitally signed by the school
3) It can't access the internet at all. Instead, the server in the school constantly multicasts a stream of grade-appropriate content that is cached on the disk and "syncs" the PC when it is on school grounds.
I think that a scheme could be thought-up that was genuinely hard to work around. And when the laptop reached the end of its school life it could be "unlocked".
Geeks may be up in arms, but no-one complains when a textbook fails to run linux or a foreign-language audio cassette won't surf the web.
Nullius in verba
This isn't true. For example, the majority of the population has driven while (very) tired. This is a crime, (impaired driving), for a very good reason - it increases the risk of accidents, almost as much as drinking. So, here's a law, that the majority of the population breaks, but isn't "wrong" as it punishes dangerous behavior.
I disagree. That law is wrong for many reasons, including the vague definition of "very tired" that means no one can be reasonably expected to tell if they are or aren't breaking said law. More importantly, however, is that just because a law increases the safety of the citizenry does not mean it is a good law. Cars are dangerous and if we keep driving them people will keep getting accidents even if they follow the laws. Is a law banning driving cars then justified? Freedom is the lack of laws. We need to balance the rights of individuals to act with the likely consequences of those actions on others. It is up to each of us to decide when we're too tired to drive and the law cannot make that decision for us no matter how hard it tries because it does not have the faculties to assess said state of being, regardless of if it punishes "dangerous" behavior. All driving is dangerous, but that doesn't make a law banning it just or driving "wrong".
I post anonymously because I hardly post on these forums, but this type of misguided use of technology just cries for an answer. I work IT and believe me I have heard all the stories about how laptop get broken, misused, mishandled etc. Did it ever occur to you that students may purposely break their machines? Who is going to pay for the repair or replacement of a Macbook? Also, if you really want to create a great environment with flexible security then you better check out Asus' Eeepc line up as a Linux OS will provide a more secure experience with a low price, heh, believe me these students will have a field day with a Mac or a Windows PC, both are so easy to format its almost a joke, but Linux is a little more difficult for several reasons that you may not understand unless you use it. Furthermore, Macbooks are so overpriced that it makes me laugh. If this was a school of graphic design I could see the Macbooks, but its middle and high school. All that they need are programs to type, make power points, maybe do some simple photo and video editing, which Linux has great programs for too. Overall I think that whoever decided on Macbooks is look at them as secure against viruses and status symbols, which is what they are, however, Linux is just as secure if not more so against viruses and surpasses both Windows and Mac in preventing hacking. With Linux you would be able to impose more specific restrictions with greater ease than if you used the two big names in the computing world. I would try Linux.
Is this school system asking for trouble? For what everyone else has mentioned about laptops being broken, stolen, used as frisbees or whatever, and then the other thought that this will pursue students to go and spend their time to get above the restrictions and show their friends what they can do with their school bought computers.
How about this. Buy every student a $15 2 gb thumb drive. The students can save their work to the thumb drive. When their at school then it is able to be monitored as to what they do on the computers, but when they go home and use the computers at home then it is the parents responsibility to monitor what the child does.
This way the school cannot be held liable for the student so easily getting past the restrictions, also then it is also ONLY purchasing a $15 thumb drive vs a $1000+ laptop. You can drop a thumb drive MANY times and it will be fine, but a laptop's first drop can be the end of it and an angry student who lost his hard work that the flooded IT department has to fix.
That is so ridiculous that a school system would consider giving this type of responsibility to a 6th grader. But a thumb drive can fit into a small pocket without worries of it being so easily broken or stolen with data loss.
Smarten up, dont put responsibility on yourself with what the child does at home, leave it to the parents. Otherwise I can see lawsuits coming up everywhere because some child looked up porn on his new school bought computer. Almost every household has a computer, if not the local library does, or the student can choose to stay late after school if needed.
$15 vs $1,000+ per student.
And if the student NEEDS personalization, there are thing like U3 and MojoPac that can fulfill those needs of the student. Do a lot more research before blowing tax payer dollars on something that will inevitably have higher costs and lawsuits in the end.
What traumatic things, may I ask? I've been on the internet with no restrictions since I was fairly young and most people first heard of the internet -- and the only "traumatic" thing I can think of that I've seen is tubgirl, and all that does is make you go "wow, that's nasty" and then you close the window and forget about it.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
...to pour millions of taxpayer dollars into Apple!
The reasoning for this was simple:
-It has been scientifically proven that having a laptop at school results in a lebenty-jillion percentfold increase in student learning at productivity
-Macs are _kewl_ and _hip_ according to the commercial, so maybe the kiddies will be more interested
-The price is a goddamn STEAL compared to other offerings
-It's VITAL that we introduce students to this new "computer" thing that's catching on! It's highly unlikely that any of them have a personal or family machine at home, so we _must_ allow it off campus
-Students and parents are far far too stupid to pick their own model, brand, and OS. Computers are super confusing!
This is amazingly fucking stupid.
I'd suggest blocking 4chan. _
There are better uses for money in education than buying overpriced high-tech garbage:
1.) Breakfast and lunch programs for children who cannot afford to eat meals regularly.
2.) Bring back electives like music, woodshop, metalwork, art, pottery, dance. Students who are truant tend to come to class knowing they have at least one class they enjoy, and those are almost always electives.
3.) Pay for school supplies. Teachers should NEVER have to buy books, calculators, paper, pens, pencils for entire classes. That has always been the district's responsibility.
4.) Maintain the campus. No, don't put in a new gym or a mural. Fix the toilets, the lockers. Clean the graffiti. Hire more security.
5.) Fund after-school and extracurricular activities.
These are all things that are not available in many schools, that kids NEED. Do NOT put HDTVs, laptops, projectors, and 5.1 surround sound equipment in classrooms. It will never get used. Do NOT put new computers in classrooms because the district WILL NOT pay to keep them running.
Cover the basics before you decide to splurge on superfluous crap that nobody really needs. Twenty years ago it was laserdiscs in every science classroom and nobody used those. Then it was DVD players but all the instructors had libraries of VHS cassettes. God knows what is next - BluRay players?
> Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
Yes. Next obvious question?
The program you describe is highly unethical and you should have nothing to do with it. If you were ever to apply to me for a job and you told me about this program, I would treat you like you're radioactive.
The program you describe will succeed only in setting up an adversarial relationship between the students and the school, and teach them that adults are not to be trusted. Further, you're trying to extend the school's ability to censor and monitor into the home, where it doesn't belong. You are planning to MANDATE that students use a CENSORED, SPIED UPON computer IN THEIR HOMES. THE SCHOOL IS A BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT. WHEN A GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION IS SPYING AND CENSORING IN THE HOME, THIS COUNTRY AND EVERYTHING IT WAS FOUNDED ON HAVE GONE TO HELL.
How do you think you're going to teach kids about freedom of speech and the right to privacy when you're carefully violating both?
If I were a parent, I would forbid the computer from entering my home, and if you tried to enforce it, I'd sue the school.
I feel having a fairly restrictive option is not all that bad. It will meet the needs the learning needs of the kids while ensuring you are acting responsibly.
I really don't see the big deal if a kid cannot access one website but can access similar information from another website.
I can understand that this might be an issue with adults, I think it is better to err on the side of caution when it comes to kids.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
And you will not be able to do anything about it.
So why do you want to try?
Get a real IT manager. I mean a take no shit, corporate or higher education experienced manager who makes parents, teachers and principals too scared to talk to him because he out qualifies, out experiences and out argues all of them. He will be your only protection from any complications. In my experience, anything less was ineffectual.
All too true. I was exposed to goatse for the first time in a high school computer programming class when some students got around the proxy and loaded the site on my computer while I was in the bathroom. Bleh.
Also, we finished our programming assignments in 10 minutes and used the rest of the time to play games over the school's "blocked" LAN network.
And I'm by no means a computer nerd, the nerds in the class set it up for everyone.
At one point some of the kids figured out how to change the network login screen to some obscene picture of the Linux Penguin. The county wasn't too happy about that.
Here's the dilemma â" how much freedom do you give to students?
This statement belies an unfortunate bias: that you *give* freedoms rather than have them innately. Freedom being the fundamental starting point, it is better to ask "in order to implement school policy, what minimum, lawful set of restrictions are needed?"
Anybody want a peanut?
Until they own the machines, they need to be kept according to company standards. To make it easy on yourself, use the same list of blocked or allowed traffic that you currently use for other computer in the school system. The student agreement should note and acknowledge that there will be some personal use of the machines, but that they are intended for educational purposes only for as long as they are school-owned (i.e., any time prior to the buyout).
You can't leave the machines too open, or you will end up with a potential support nightmare on your hands. Of course, you can get around that by requiring that the first step for troubleshooting/fixing any student PC is to rebuild the machine's OS install. It might even serve as a deterrent.
If you were in a private company, you would never be so concerned about this issue. They are school owned machines and need to be treated as such. Once the students own them, they may do as they please. If some oppose your seemingly draconian ways, just let them know that you are preparing the students for service under their Corporate Overlords, and that your PC use agreement is comparable to what would be expected of them in any business.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I found - from doing exactly what you're doing - that if you choose the route of locking *anything* down, then that will very quickly become the majority focus of your day. However, you do have a responsibility as each one of those laptops is a lawsuit waiting to happen. That being said, the suggestions that you "don't lock anything down" is ludicrous. You wouldn't tell kids they can take the school bus for a drive would you? That's reckless, and while ownership is something that everyone wants to encourage, it's not realistic to expect 100% participation. The best way to encourage respect for the laptops is to set up a very straightforward policy that requires two things: 1) parental involvement 2) real financial damages in the case that gross negligence is involved with the loss / damage of a laptop. We had parents sign a binding contract and every student had to pay a nominal laptop fee. We also had a MANDATORY assembly in order to take the laptops home each year. During the assembly, we covered care instructions and the school's acceptable use policy for both the computers and laptops In the case of damages, we had a committee of students, teachers, and parents that evaluated and meted out what punishment or damages should be assessed. It wasn't perfect, by any means, however having a system in place for handling the disaster that will happen is essential for success. Sticking to that system is even a greater challenge. Technically, if you want to lock everything down, let me make some recommendations: 1) set a firmware password that is significantly different from the admin password. 2) set an admin account with a password that can't be easily guessed and hide it from view 3) invest in Lightspeed Systems. It's a little app that tracks where students go and what they do on the internet. Just confronting kids with that info is helpful in controlling illicit behavior. Make sure your guidance counselor is on board and has some resources to deal with internet addiction and porn addiction. 4) Set up a lo-jack system for recovery. This can be as simple as a startup script that submits the machines IP, current user, and any other relevant info to a server. There are more expensive systems out there that allow. Here's a free one: 5) RADMIND! Use it! 6) Let kids know that the policy for broken machines is reimaging them. Reimage remotely using DeployStudio: http://www.deploystudio.com/ 7) Move all the apps that students never need into a folder and hide it and change the permissions so they can't run the programs unless they're in the admin group 8) Join the apple sysadmin's group. It's worth the read.
Im assuming there is a network for the kids at school.
Dont lock down the laptops, lock down what can be used at school, like no bittorrent, no porn, no games. Be specific about what goes in and out of the network at school, since the kids will effectively own it, they will do what they want.
Giving every student a laptop is an incredibly stupid idea.
What happens when someone gets a virus on theirs and all their work is gone?
What happens when someone's computer isn't working during a class activity due to some failure (software or hardware)?
What happens when a student damages their laptop, intentionally or otherwise?
What about someone stealing the laptop (not another student, but some random thief)?
What happens when (not if) someone reformat their machine?
What happens when (not if) someone bypasses the restrictions on their laptop?
Have the teachers been taught how to use a computer (a lot of teachers are idiots when it comes to this)?
Have the students been trained how to use these computers (there are some idiot students too)?
Why can't the students install other software? Do you seriously expect students to use these things if they can't customize them to their own personal tastes?
How much money is this going to cost the school district every year in terms of support staff and replacement hardware?
I'm going to go on a rant here:
School districts like yours have way too much money and unfortunately no one seems to have any idea how to spend it responsibly. The decision to give students laptops has already been made, without any type of plan for managing them (as evidenced by you asking slashdot what you should do).
It's stuff like this that pisses off taxpayers. "I agreed to increase my taxes and they spent it on a bunch of worthless computers?!?!?!?"
Don't be surprised if you get your budget slashed in the coming years if this program goes tits-up.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Over the last couple years I have noticed the huge trend towards the notebook/laptop as the exclusive computer to buy, especially for students. The appeal obviously comes from the portability, but I find that the limitations of the laptop hurts the long term investment required by schools. As previously mentioned on this forum, laptops have rather poor lifespans, due to both damage and obsolescence.
Even if you have REALLY cautious kids, you are looking at having most of these laptops out of commission within 1 to 2 years, and I can almost guarentee a dropped laptop the first week. Second is obsolescence. I bought a Powerbook 4.5 years ago, and I've gone through 2 batteries, and that's with being extremely careful to treat the battery correctly. Batteries in most laptops will be dead (not able to hold a charge) within less than a year. For most schools and universities, 4 years is the minimum you can expect a machine to be in circulation. My local high school has machines in some labs that are nearly 10 years old. Laptops generally have expensive, miniturized components design with little hope of on-site replacement or upgrade, and are often slower to limit power use.
I would suggest buying a large number of desktop computers. They will be less expensive, easier to maintain, easier to make small upgrades, and easier to control. Have every student be given a central networked disk space where they store their files, and have the machines boot off a network image or be used as thin clients. Centralized file storage means easy backups and access from any computer in the school. Imaged machines mean you can reinstall the operating system every night if you have to, and allows easy upgrades and maintanence. Buying a computer for every student would be just about the same cost as buying every classroom a set of computers, if not more, and I think having several "labs" that teachers could use when needed works just as well. Students just have to move to a different machine to get the exact experience. Your students networked files could even be accessed remotely through WebDAV or some other protocol to allow them access at home.
10 years ago, it would have been unheard of for more than half your students to have a computer at home. Nowadays, you have to search hard for someone who doesn't. Use the parent's computer at home, and the school computer at work.
The expression goes "it only takes one cow to open the gate." Once one student figures something out, everybody knows it. In my high school, 75% of the students knew the administrator passwords to bypass the web filter and access administrative priviledges on the network. The passwords were easily guessable or weak, if not written down someplace obvious. Some teacher's email accounts had weak passwords that several students knew. Even basic things like going to ebay.co.uk because ebay.com was blocked was simple enough for the most computer illeterate student to get. And you would have absolute hell fighting people who really knew our way around a computer. Treat the computers as you would a power tool like a table saw. Sure, it's really easy to cut your hand off if you don't know what you are doing, but it's so much better than cutting the board with a handsaw. Adding a little sign that says "WARNING! SHARP!" and a little cover that slides over when a board is in place helps, but the most dedicated idiot could still cut themselves even with one of these new fancy auto-stopping blades. And to further extrapolate the analogy, some of these kids could figure out how to turn that table saw into a go-kart and drive circle around you before you could even say anything. Guidance and a sense of responsibility does far more than rules and hand-holding.
Finally, my experience as a college student in the last few years has shown me the futility of having a laptop in the classroom. You can't expect 12-18 year olds to pay attention in class with a computer in front of them. In all my college classes, I have rarely seen a student who used a laptop in class for ta
First off, you should read Why I ban laptops in my classroom and the professor vs laptop article that recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and then Paul Graham's Disconnecting Distraction and then Is Google Making Us Stupid? in The Atlantic. If Paul Graham finds the Internet ceaselessly distracting, what hope do ninth graders have?
Secondly, I've read some of the pro-laptop comments, and while I sympathize with their points, paternalism is not *always* a bad thing. Sometimes it's a necessary component of developing discipline and other positive traits. Banning laptops might be one, as it could help one develop the ability to focus for a sustained period of time and not get lost in class, particularly during discussions about complex material.
I went to law school for a year by accident, where virtually everyone had laptops in every classroom. They were used for taking notes, yes. But they were also used for Facebook, and checking out bar happy hours, and IM, and IMing about the incompetence of the person speaking, and checking the score, and a variety of other things. I know, the jokes are coming: you must've been a dumb law student, gone to a bad school, had bad professor, etc. Maybe: but I think the bigger problem is that letting one's attention temporarily wander is made so much easier by having a laptop and Internet connection is almost overwhelming. Sure, you can stay on a diet with a chocolate cake sitting on the counter in your living room. Sure, you'd never lie on that mortgage application about your income--but, you know, you really want that McMansion, and no one is going to check it, and you just have to inflate it a little... The problem is that laptops made distraction so easy. They make continuous partial attention more likely than deep engagement.
Students in universities succumb to the Beer and Circus mentality, and if they do, what luck will middle- and high-school students have? I teach freshmen English now at the University of Arizona and ban laptops because they're likely to be used for Facebook, and IM, and everything else but taking notes. I know: if you're not a compelling enough teacher to keep their attention, they deserve to use laptops to get around you. But what if you can't get their attention in the first place? What if you're trying to impart something important but that doesn't have the immediacy of Perez Hilton? Then give them the Cs they deserve when they write bad papers. And then they whine to you about the grades they got. You, the Slashdot commenter, would be such a strong writer or coder or mathematician that you could get by: congratulations. But the other 24 people in the classroom probably can't.
All this is to say that laptops can very easily and quickly become more a burden than benefit. But they aren't necessarily a burden: I could see wanting them for programming classes, for math classes that could use advanced visualizations, for blogging, for exchanging immediate responses among a group, for editing papers on the fly, the moment you get feedback on them. But not every lesson will call for them and not every teacher will want to use them. "Here's the dilemma -- how much freedom do you give to students?" you ask. The answer depends too much on the instructor to give a firm answer, but I give the answer above in part because so many of the initial responses tend towards "let them do whatever they want." Sure: and throw someone into an ocean a mile from shore and see what happens. If the teacher wants them to conduct a textual analysis of a Facebook profile, let them.
None. And I don't say that lightly.
The risk is that kids will get into places we'd rather them not. Honestly, there's a lot of total trash on the 'net that adults would probably be better off seeing.
The risk, though, is that we train kids to be subservient to authority, which is bad for them and bad for a free society. As we've seen so much recently, many, many people and groups are quick to claim authority illegitimately. I'd really rather have kids grow up believing it's NOT ok for big brother to monitor what they're doing 24x7.
There's always at least two morons who dropped out of law school just before they got around to discussing the Fourteenth Amendment.
Indeed, I'm looking forward to the proposed filter in Australia. I foresee a glorious future when every child in this country knows how to hack, and we become an unstoppable IT juggernaut.
The only real dilemma here is deciding who owns the machine, and what it exists for.
If it belongs to the student for their purposes, then maximum freedom consistent with minimal school discipline and control on uses is the way to go. If it is a school computer that is just another tool for the student, then maximum control and consistent with the school's purposes is the rule.
You can't go both ways. You can't have "all the freedom we decide you deserve". That is a con the students will resent and will make you pay for.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Some idiot school administrator pushed this. What school district has that much money, even with an educational discount or partial donation? Is this a private school? I'm guessing that it is. I doubt that Apple would donate all those laptops. Apple or someone else sold them some overpriced toys. The money should be better spent elsewhere. I'd fight my school district on wasting time with this. I'd certainly pull my kid out if I had to spend more on tuition. I bet half the teachers still aren't prepared to teach with technology. Unless someone has developed a working curriculum, those laptops are just going to be a distraction .
There's going to be broken laptops, so I hope the school carries insurance. In college, I managed 50 laptops for a class that got to take them home. Students damaged 2-5 screens each semester. Even with insurance, it was expensive. I kept telling them at the start of the semester, that they need to be careful, but the results were the same. I'm glad I no longer have to manage those laptops. Students have their own laptops now. When I see them in lectures, half are just playing video games. Laptops are just tools and they aren't useful to everyone.
As a teacher, I generally find that filtering and other restrictions is a constant headache. Perfectly legitimate websites that I want my students to use, or that I want to use at work, end up blocked. Anyone who follows the rules is terribly inconvenienced, but most students just find ways around the filters and "protection" software.
Make sure you follow whatever legal requirements there are, but beyond that--always make sure that any restriction you put on the machine is done to solve a specific, verifiable, serious problem. Not "just in case," not because of a rumor, and not because someone might be able to misuse it somehow maybe.
If it doesn't solve a specific, tangible problem--don't do it.
DJ
Install Net Nanny type package to filter out the porn. But leave everything else unblocked at the LAPTOP level. When the kids are at school, have the schools network filter out everything that is non-educational (ichat, games, myspace, etc...) When the kids get home they should have as unrestricted accesses to the computers as they would with their own PC. As for games, its a Mac, most kids will not have Mac compatible games laying around.
As a student who has previously been in a program similar to the one you are describing. I think that although you should have some things be locked off at school, like facebook, myspace etc, and other profanity, I don't think that you should block all games and other frowned upon online activites. My experience has showed that the kids are just going to find ways around your blocks. What you should do is tell them what they can and can't do and punish them for doing things wrong.
... I realize that it's gauche to reply to your own post, but I will note that I hadn't realized that the original poster might be referring to time outside of school. If that's the case, I'd recommend that you leave the computer essentially unmolested. Outside of class time, it's not your responsibility to oversee the students' activities. That would be an example of paternalism gone too far; inside schools, however, you should allow laptop usage to be restricted to the extent instructors think it wise.
I don't ever want to hear about school districts not having enough money again... ever. This makes me sick. Our federal budget for social programs is $600 billion per year, everyone bitches and moans about people not having enough money to eat, and yet this is what our tax money is paying for? Overpriced laptops for a bunch of whiny brat kids?
If a kid wants a laptop, tell them to get a freaking job and earn it.
Even with filtering they can go and wank themselves off. And that's pretty normal. What exactly is the problem you want to resolve with all those restrictions?
So in grade twelve, you will let the student pay for an obsolete laptop? How nice.
lock them down like crazy. then let the students figure out that they can boot from a linux live cd and have free reign of there state provided porn boxes.
-- silly governments computers cant be controlled
If the school district retained ownership, only then can you mandate what can and cannot be put on them.
What you really need to do is lock down networks. I really doubt that kids need access to the internet in the classroom from their laptops all the time. By all means have a wireless network for each classroom, but don't directly connect it to the internet (give the teacher the tools to allow limited access for a limited time if internet access is needed). Even then you should filter traffic and restrict sites.
Some people have commented that locking down access breeds resentment, and you should just trust the students not abuse the system. I agree that locking it down will breed some resentment, but only if they have been given full access in the first place only to have it taken away later. If you lock it down to start with, and then progressively give more access you will actually build trust on both sides.
As a side note, I don't see why you would go with MacBooks. As I pointed out before, there will be many many breakages - broken screens in particular (yes, I speak from experience). The end of year repair bill from Apple will be staggering. Your district really should go for something cheaper, like Eee PCs.
I just hope that your district isn't pouring money into this project in the hopes of improving literacy, numeracy and the performance of the district in standardised tests, becuse it really won't. Laptops are a nice tool, and it is good to get the students using them, but they are not a replacement for good teachers and core education programmes. The students will be eager to start with, but the novelty of having a laptop will wear off very quickly.
I'm sixteen. There is not a single block our school has that me and my friends can't get around. Almost any web filter can be bypass by using some ssh port forwarding.
Make it minimal and easy to disable. There is no need to spend time and money just for kids to get around the blocks. Make it cheap and non-time-consuming.
I know you want blocks but seriously none of them are effective. If you blocked iChat. I would just boot into single user mode and create a new root account. Problem solved. By locking down the computer you are just distracting kids from working and making them focus on getting around the blocks you put in place to get work down.
P.S. I wish our school got us mac books. That would be amazing.
I'm worried that this program may unintentionally handicap your potential computer professionals. My concern is that with your supplying a laptop which the kids take home, it's going to be hard for a kid to justify to his parents to buy a second laptop. But with this one locked down, they won't actually be able to learn to do things like program and administer the computer. That may not be an issue for 6th graders, but by 12th grade you will have students who realy would benefit by a computer that they can do something with.
If you really want to do this, I have specific suggestions
Even so, I'm worried about the impact on budding computer scientists. Are you going to let them install Linux? If not, how many will be able to convince their parents to buy them another machine? I predict that this program is going to significantly reduce your output of kids who do interesting things with computers, unless you adopt an informal policy of ignoring violations by kids that seem to be sophisticated enough to take care of themselves.
The school nerd will set up an http proxy with squid and show everyone how to configure their browsers to proxy through it. Or perhaps he will show them how to tunnel out with ssh. If he's an entrepreneur he will charge them money for this. Instant porn.
HTH HAND
I have little direct experience with a school laptop program, but my little sisters middle school and my good friend's high school both have laptop programs. My sister's school has taken the route of more restriction, and honestly it is mostly a rather annoying inconvenience and seems pretty arbitrary. They aren't allowed to install any software on their computers or even update the programs they have. This has led to fun things like my sister using her ipod with my computer and using my dad's computer to run programs that her music teacher gave her. I'm guessing this restriction was put in place to keep them from downloading bit torrent and what not, but the kids have to ask the school if they want to install anything, and even then the school usually refuses, EVEN WHEN THE PROGRAM IS EDUCATIONAL. I'm not sure what their web access is like at school, but it if it's restricted, it's done so through the school's network, not the actual computers which is one of the few good things I can say about the program. All in all, I really don't see why this laptop program exists in the first place, they don't really use the computers enough for school to be justified, and it hasn't replaced any traditional school materials (books, binders, etc) so all it's really doing is making the kid's bags heavier.
The laptop program at my friend's high school is a lot less restricted and a lot more effective. Unlike the middle school they actually use their laptops for things like taking notes and classroom activities. I think they also do a fair amount of their reading on their computers. I don't now how good this is for their eyes, but I would gladly trade the back problems my text books have given me for a bit of eye strain. I don't think their laptops are restricted at all, but they are expected not to have anything illegal on them. However, no one really listens to this and kids are always making up excuses to get their laptops back when ever they break something so they can delete limewire before anyone finds it.
My advice would be to limit the laptops as little as possible (block porn at school), but make sure there are consequences for misuse. Kids will find ways to get around any restrictions, but as an educator you have to make sure that the students know that there are some limits. Also, block ichat at school. This is apparently a big problem at my friend's high school. ichat isn't blocked for them and everyone is always iming during class.
And don't use websense, my school tried it for a while and it was horrible. It was impossible to do research because almost everything was blocked, not just porn and facebook. It took about a week for the entire school to figure out how to get around it and about three months for the tech department to give up and get rid of it.
In fact, it's so easy, all that you need to do is flip it over, open the battery latch, and pop out the drive. That's it.
Once a new drive is installed, the user has complete control with zero restrictions.
That said, you cannot hope to successfully restrict any laptop. The question then becomes whether the cost--both financially and socially--of giving children and adolescents unfettered access to (some very nice) laptops is really worth any potential academic benefit. From what I can tell, the answer is clearly NO. You'll find lowered productivity and increased social/behavioral problems both in and out of school.
Schools are not appropriate entities to be giving computer hardware to children who have not yet fully developed their frontal lobes. Doing so inevitably opens up the school to legal liability. It simply isn't worth the trouble.
The best program I've seen started with the teachers - you can't get teachers to build tech-savviness into their lessons overnight. Without that part, the kids will just mess around with the computers mostly and text each other all day like they are already doing on their phones. With some actual tech purpose to the computers, the kids will be a lot more likely to head in an educational direction with the hardware you give them. So the school got teachers up and running first, and provided lots of PD for them, and supported the coalmine-canaries who went out front with the technology in their classrooms. After a little while, there was a decent-sized tail that wagged the dog pretty well. The Luddite teachers eventually had to come around too because they got a whole culture going. They way you are talking about doing it is not as good, the way I've described does take a while to come to fruition. -j
How hard can it be to remove the hard drive and put it in an external USB housing, then make a backup image, and then reset the root password?
We're not talking about something requiring really expensive equipment, here.
Filtering site such as porn sites might be important from a legal point of view but you'd be surprised at what will be the most important issue from a pedagogic perspective. It will definitely be game playing. There will be students who will fail strictly because now they can play games both at home and at school. Within a year there will be a lot of teachers that regret the day you went laptop. Laptop programs have been launched in many institutions; I think they paper over the real problems and present it as a win-win. If you are 40 or older, try to imagine what the result would have been if there was a gaming arcade at the back of every lecture hall in your university.
If you must filter internet at all, do it at the lan level, not on the computer.
If you restrict the computer the computer savvy students will break it in 5 minutes, the non computer savvy students won't use it unless forced.
Isn't giving them an Apple product restrictive enough in itself already?
Yet another weapon that can be used to beat kids over the head.
If I were one of these kids I'd refuse the laptop. I wouldn't want anything to do with a tool intended to limit what I had access to and punish me for being more intelligent than my state-employed babysitters.
I'm 36 years old by the way and I'm not living in my parent's basement either. Just because I'm not a kid anymore doesn't mean I subscribe to the school of thought that says kids need to be "protected" from most things. That is a cowardly cop-out from parents who cannot be bothered to raise their children. If parents set a good example for their children and work to teach them what is right, then what those kids might find online or see in a movie or hear in a song will be all but irrelevant.
Kids need parents, not arbitrary proscriptions on what they can look at.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Reading all this crap about filtering and restrictions makes me aggressive. Why bother giving a general computing device to students if its so severely castrated as to be unusable? Maybe everyone should just get their own private laptop, then officials can stop worrying about how to censor access to information most restrictively.
Come on, we all know filtering doesn't work. All it does is cripple everybody's access with "false positives", which miraculously not only stop access to porn sites but strangely also happen to censor politically inconvenient content, like for example sex education info or things deemed "liberal propaganda".
The other reason why restrictions don't work is that the kids who really want to access porn will always find a way around the DRM. So that leaves only normal users out in the cold with a castrated system.
Maybe we'd all be better off if we teach responsibility and common sense instead of trying in vain to police stuff we can't do anything about anyway.
You know, when we were kids, we had access to porn. At the time, it came in the form of magazines and the occasional late-night TV show. I remember being very interested what that stuff looks like. Well, that lasted until I actually saw that fake crap, realized it's nothing to get excited about, and moved on. That was when I was in fifth grade. Compare that to all the repressed kids who, when confronted with naked pictures, either start praying compulsively or begin panting with their tongues hanging out. A little openness, trust and personal responsibility comes a long way when you're growing up.
"Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
For me it would. I'd rather just use my Asus Eee for whatever you guys do and "forget" your locked down piece of carp home/hall/locker/whatever.
Of course, for the ones who don't know jack about computers it wouldn't pose a problem. Ignorance is bliss and all that.
iChat? Last year I used IM to discuss homework all the time. It wasn't distracting, it was a homework tool!
(This article convinced me to stop reading Slashdot as a guest and to get an account. I'll do that in the morning.
knoppix cd. So no CD/DVD drive.
And no USB, because DSL, Belenix, other.
So basically you'll have one geek at the high school burn a stack of knoppix cds, and he and all his buddies will be surfing porn and chatting online and doing all that bad evil stuff.
Can't be done.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Take your macbook and hold command-s during boot. Tell me how secure the system feels now.
For windows/Linux users: that is the "reboot to single user mode command".
Just restrict the use on campus through the network. Smart ones will break the PW and own the machine. dumb ones will lose it. I have done 2k ibook roll outs for 9-12. Oh and don't make felons of PW crackers. Learn ARD! Look for that scripting theft call back tool very cool.
I suggest implementing most technological restrictions on the network itself. Myspace blocking should primarily be implemented by a device on the network, not by software on the laptop.
Any filtering mechanism on the Mac itself should be considered a 'backup' in-case they had otherwise found means to circumvent the firewall.
Similarly, while iChat may be allowed to be installed on the Mac.. access should be blocked from Macs in classrooms.
There might be some cases or times where iChat was appropriate, in that case, there should either be a designated room or ethernet jack to plug into for iChat to work, or a time exception arranged and implemented on the firewall in advance.
The laptop lockdown should be as follows: the student can login as a regular user, no admin access.
Set a secure openfirmware password on the laptops to prevent the student from resetting the admin password (to be removed by staff if the student purchases on graduation).
Provide a process for a student to request to install additional software, or to request to have their user temporarily or permanently given admin access to their personal computer.
But the individual student has to ask for it and give a good reason.
If they abuse said admin access to their laptop, they lose it, and are subject to disciplinary action.
Free games and legal software of the students choice can be run by the student (from their personal folders). Provided they do not distract from the educational point of having a laptop at school.
BUT, such unrelated applications must not be run in class. Tighter lockdown should be administered on a per-student basis if a student is detected to be abusing the privilege.
Monitoring (during class times) seems reasonable.
Stopping them from surfing porn sites at school won't prevent students from surfing using a PC at home and uploading bad pics to their laptop.
There is no perfect lockdown, so to some extent, you need to trust the students, or penalize them accordingly (suspension/expulsion) if they circumnavigate the protections and defy the rules/do bad things afterwards.
Make it mandatory that students back up their homework on a thumb drive.
No excuses for missing assignments & you can reimage a computer at a drop of the hat.
Webfilter hard core porn & leave it at that. Any other behavior needs to be addressed as a issue with that behavior. Not make it a special "computer crime".
Why don't you keep the students busy in some kind of creative assignments which require laptops? Something which don't load them with too much work but certainly keep them busy most times.
The more time they've idling with a laptop, the more likely they would be doing unwanted stuff.
Also, information sharing between students is like wildfire. So, if you stop one kind of unwanted activity, they can flood you with ten more.. too much policing can backfire.
Do not block any form of content, especially obscene.
I would put no restriction on the laptops, and hard restrictions on the school wireless (i.e. whitelist), if there is one.
From my logic, what the students do with their laptops out of the school is the parents responsability, what they do at school is yours.
Well, I'm pretty sure that the laptops should not smoke or drink before the age of 21. Sex before defrag must include a backup first. Co-mingling of OS's will only be allowed with an Amiga chaperone (no, I can't spell). No unregulated WiFi parties allowed. DRM-less media is only for the "bad" side of the tracks. 10 or 11 PM curfew. No dating a graduate laptop in the same major. No major allowed in the liberal arts (they can use crayons and chalk [don't take it personally, it was an easy joke] ). All frats pledged must be a prime number. Any sororities pledged must contain all cheerleaders or flamingos. Spellchecker must replace the phase "federal government" with "useless piece of brie cheese".
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
as a computer technology instructor I really think that students do not need computers in school unless their assignment requires it.
Freedom of thought and pre-college education do not go together. Giving students access to intellectual freedom is just stupid if you want to not go to prison or lose your house as an educator or school administrator.
The law is so restrictive for teachers and students, that using a school computer for anything else is impossible and probably illegal. Even using it for legitimate purposes is a pain in the ass because they always restrict way too much.
They not only have to police the student computers but the teacher computers too. The kids do everything they can to break any security measures. I once had my password stolen by a keylogger device and almost lost my job when half the student body was using my account to get onto myspace. Instead of blaming the kids, they just assumed I gave out my password. The bitch in charge of IT didn't even know there was such a thing as a hardware keylogger and reported to my principal that I had given out my password.
I use my own laptop and network connection now because even as a teacher I was too restricted. I could not even get on slashdot.
You can actually lose your teachers license for just having a myspace of facebook account in some states. If you ever let students be your friends on those sites, you might as well just check yourself into prison.
You allow the students to take the laptop home, yet expect to be able to lock down the machines? Good luck with that!
I'd rather spent the money on more and/or better teachers.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Back in my dad, the only laptops students had was a small rectanglar slab of thin slate with a wooden periphery and the input method used a small piece of chalk. Cheap and effective! No viruses as in modern computers, unless of course you coughed or spit on it, then shared it with your classmates. Ah.... Those were days.
It's an electric pencil, restrict the hell out off it. Block the intire web minus the schools websites, and require students to applie for permision to open up other pages on an individual basis.
Install what software is needed, and don't allow anything else.
But that'll criple the computer you say? Well this isn't a computer in the traditional sense, it's a schooling tool, it should be able to do only what's needed. The children can do their Facebooking on other computers.
It doesn't take a horde of ubergeeks to get around your measures. Just one kid who's a teensy bit more versed in computers than his peers will get around your system.
Point in case: My 7th grade school had a filtering system in place that used a -proxy- for filtering. Turn off proxy settings in IE (this was back in the Mac os 9 days)
????
Protit
Today, it's just as simple. Bootable disks are abound in many flavours and formats, which make the circumvention of any protection on the OS even easier.
State owned laptops should not be used for religious purposes.
More complicated answer.
You want to give a load of kids laptops that cost upwards of a grand and you are worried about what they do when they are switched on!!!
Make sure that you get full insurance against any type of accidental damage and any type of loss of these things. They will destroy them in ways we haven't even thought of yet. And they will be stolen from or left almost anywhere a kid goes between school and home and cannot or does not keep their bag in their hands. e.g. swimming pool. or just left on the bus. Watch out for bus drivers with thriving mac reselling ebay businesses ;)
If the point of taking them home is so that they can 'research' then why not just provide them with a cheap desktop and pony up the tenner a month for a cheap 1meg adsl connection for those who dont have internet access already. Getting internet access at all is going to be more beneficial for the poorer students than giving them an expensive laptop.
If the point is to avoid having to purchase and maintain a PC suite at school then I think you should really explore the costings of both options very carefully. My gut instinct says this is going to cost more than you expect (see point 1).
thats NOT Freedom thats anarchy ,mahem,chaos.
" It is up to each of us to decide when we're too tired to drive and the law cannot make that decision for us no matter how hard it tries"
Law works on approximations . if there is a parameter value which is OK with majority of ppl it will be valid law . irrespective of your opinion . thats the cost of living in society and enjoying its benefits. if you don't like it . go live in woods .
somethings are best left unsaid , I am one of those things
Why do we have teachers again? What I'm confused by the whole concept... I mean couldn't we just write expert systems to replace teachers and put them on the kids notebooks...?!!
I would encourage the students to be as economical as possible with their systems. Sure, they WILL use Facebook and Myspace et al, and you should not restrict the social networks that form. But the challenge is to do this in a way that costs less - without breaking the law and without giving in to lobbies.
Consider withstanding the onslaught of "exclusive student offers" and "lower prices" vs free software where you can contribute yourself a good training against the large amount of Viagra and "make money now" offers on the Internet. The only difference between the two appears that one set has legalised themselves..
I'm opposed to the idea of "technology needs to be given to our kids" as if it were some kind of Recommended Daily Value -- it's a tool, it's a field in and of itself, but it's not something you can just throw at a classroom to make things "better" or kids more "technologically literate".
That was how braindead my highschool was.
But that's just my take on laptops in class in general. Assuming that you'll be doing it anyway...
I've read a lot of good points in the comments here (filter on the router side, not the laptop side being vital) but I figured I'd tell a parable in what happened to me.
In middle school, the computer lab had Foolproof to lock down the machines (a terrible security package, I might add -- really braindead) but there was a very open culture. If you hung out in the computer lab at lunch, and showed actual interest in computers, before long you'd know the magic keystroke to temporarily disable the lockdown (essentially, sudo privileges). And in this way we'd have files and games on the fileserver and play them at lunch; they trusted us, we returned the favor by not causing trouble.
High school was a different beast. They didn't trust us with anything -- and that we were being treated as more incompetent and less trustworthy than our younger selves was a major point of frustration. So what did we do? Circumvent the security in every way we could. Any door they left open, any trick we could pull, we pulled it.
Detente only came when, finally, they improved the network policy with a round of new computers that had Windows 2000 (as opposed to 98) and used proper ACLs -- that were clearly less restrictive in the general case. We could bring in USB keys, run software, but the machines were essentially reimaged every night. This was fair enough to us, so we went with it.
Why break the restrictions? Because they're there. The more restrictive, the more the desire. The more permissive, the less the desire.
But moreover, only a small fraction of kids will ever seriously butt heads against it. In the general case you can lock down the system to the bare minumum. But the kids who do hit the restrictions -- these are the kids you want to know. Trust them. Give them the keys. Help them play. Talk about your "teachable moments" -- treat them with respect and they'll do the same. They're not stupid -- it's not like we suddenly wisen up at 18. You might even change their lives.
The magic key in middle school was Cmd-]
That's a lot of money, introducing a lot of heartache - and for what? Is the goal educating the kids, or do you just get warm and fuzzy at the thought of a utopian macbook wielding society.
Laptops are not an end to education, they are a means. I would feel a lot more positive about the idea if there was some mention of what you plan to use computers for, rather than "computers are a part of out society, lets give our kids laptops". That's just irresponsible spending. Is your existing education system so good that this has become the best investment of such a large amount of time and money?
Personally, I am very anti restrictions. They're generally easy to bypass (I'd be very tempted to reinstall the OS - or Linux). Even when restrictions aren't bypassed, they're generally ineffective - they block that which shouldn't be, and fail to block that which "should" be blocked. Government rules requiring such controls are ridiculous. Just remember: The Chinese can't censor the internet properly, so why do you think you can?
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
You are claiming that "The students will essentially own the computers", and yet talk about more restrictions that the computers we had back in school had. We couldn't take them home at all, but that's a small restriction compared to what you suggest. We weren't supposed to run games on them, and the games were routinely deleted if we did anyway, but that's about it.
Nowadays, I don't "essentially own" my work laptop. And yet it has none of the restrictions mentioned. I have even used it to download pr0n. Of course said pr0n was moved to my own PC as soon as I got home, but not because of any restrictions.
(And if my boss found out? It would be what he expected, just as I expect he has used his laptop for the same thing).
First, a general premise: kids of this age deserve respect, but are not yet given all the privileges of society granted to adults, because they have not yet learned enough to use those privileges responsibly. This especially applies to privacy. If you disagree with me on that, you might as well stop reading now.
--
Anyway, my solution: let's just use the same principles we used for schoolchildren *before* everyone had computers. No more, no less.
Dial the clock back to 1985. Did we search every student's book bag for pornographic magazines as they entered the school? No, but if a teacher caught 'em with it, they'd be frogmarched to the principle's office. Besides, kids are really creative about hiding contraband, you're not going to stop them if they're determined to bring a Playboy to school. But if a teacher heard giggling in the boys' room, he'd investigate. In 1985, did we hand out pieces of paper on a strict quota system to prevent them from passing notess in class? No, but the teacher would stop note-passing when she spotted it.
In an Internet world, this translates into not locking the laptops down at all -- let them access any sites they wish -- but monitor their Internet usage at school aggressively and proactively. And tell them exactly what you're doing.
Teachers should have a packet sniffer app running on their own machines that shows the destination and type of Net traffic occurring in their classroom in realtime. Distracting activities like online games, IM chat, e-mail, etc. should be red-flagged for the teacher to deal with as she sees fit. On a broader level, the principal's computer should have a packet-sniffing app that permits her to monitor for issues of significant disciplinary concern -- not simply iChatting in class, but say, reading up on bomb and drugmaking information.
Of course, all this network monitoring only works on the school grounds, but that's the limit of the school's jurisdiction. What the kids do in their homes is up to their *parents* to monitor -- and hopefully, the school gives the parents a similar application to use at home.
The laptops could also have software to search for and report highly suspicious stored files which make their way onto the computers without passing through the school's network. It's easy to do with Spotlight. You'd have to verify the integrity of the searching application to make sure it hasn't been tampered with, of course. This is more draconian than network sniffing, though, so I'd call it optional.
The nice thing about a monitoring but not disabling policy is that it allows you to handle edge cases well. Twelve-year-old girl reading the Wikipedia page on preteen lesbianism (assuming there is one)? The school can choose to ignore it, or maybe give some guidance. Eighteen-year-old boy reading the same website? Possibly a different action.
With aggressive monitoring, just like in 1985, teachers can choose to take action on what they see or not... the important thing is to give them the tools to observe what's happening in their classrooms.
My first thought is "What are you thinking?" This idea of handing kids laptops seems, to me, to have so many potential down sides that it is going to give some group of people 365x4 or more days of headaches.
1. First are the technical issues. I've seldom known a kid who didn't like to fiddle with things like this - using the basic functionality of the system to try all sorts of 'neat' things. Like the time my 3 decided to record a series of neat sound effects for our MacOS 6 system. You know, custom sounds for windows opening, etc. They had so much fun. Every thing that could have a sound got one. At the end of the day, they were so happy as they shut down the system and went to bed. Then, the next morning, imagine their (and my) disappointment when the system no longer booted up. Apparently, the large amounts of sound files somehow screwed with the system and it no longer was functional.
Changing options, adding custom screensavers, etc. is a normal reaction to a system. So is screwing things up. So, expect tech staff to be busy messing with this sort of stuff. That's why this sort of thing was turned off at our company - not to be "nazis" but to cut the amount of tech support needed significantly.
2. Then there's the problem with trojan, etc. software. If the kids have administration ability, then the ability of the kids to clobber the system (and thus lose homework, etc.) is something to account. Please don't respond "they will only do that once" - that's a rather short sighted view of kids. Most kids I know don't bother to think too far in advance, and most don't have the background to think about the real consequences of downloading the latest drivers, even if they are incompatible with the version of the OS, etc.
3. Then there are the problems of content. Lots of people argue for no limits on any content. Maybe it is a "humans are basically good" vs "humans are basically bad" world view. But in my experience, even kids who have no desire to look at porn or other areas that are objectionable have a desire to prevent accidental browsing to sites that offend them. As a parent, I know that if someone provided my child with a device on which I could not establish limits - whether of content, or availability, etc. then I would be upset.
Maybe what you could do is have a session with each parent, showing them the computer's capabilities and having the parent sit down and, with advice, set up the limits they wish the computer to have. You could still face lawsuits where the parent claims not to have understood the situation well enough to know the risks, but at least you would be showing that you made an attempt to educate the parents.
But, the first time one of the students is kidnapped, or harmed in some way, or the kid uses the computer to harass a classmate, or to commit some crime, and the event is traced back to those computers, expect a lawsuit, or worse, charges filed. I don't know there is anything that you can really do to mitigate that risk.
4. Then you have to figure out what you are going to do about use of the machines during the school day. Chatting during class, sharing test answers or looking up answers on the internet, etc. are going to be things that are the bane of every teacher.
Perhaps it would be smart to start this effort small. Work with one class, work out a lot of the technical issues, support issues, etc. Then slowly ramp up the number of classes, making certain that your solutions scale. Dealing with the problems of 30 kids and a handful of teachers seems, to me, to be so preferable to dealing with the problems of 300, or 3000, kids and dozens of teachers for the beginning of the situation. And as you scale up, you can gradually add to the administrators and technical support people you need.
DonÂt block theyr access to the machine. If your starting to block things, theyll find a way around it!
...and buying some more books?
Someone's decided to hand out Macbooks to everyone. Presumably to get the funding to do this, they had to make out a business case for it, stating the cost, and giving an idea of the benefits. Was this reviewed by monkeys?
Jesus, if you have to hand out kit like this, what's wrong with a cheap netbook?
The obvious answer is you ensure that a client computer can't hurt the network. Filtering etc is done at the proxy, not the client. People can do what the hell they like with the laptop at home so long as a) they know if they bring it to school with pr0n on it they're hosed, and b) if they break it by installing stuff and tinkering that there's a cost or a time penalty in getting it fixed - i.e. you go to the back of the IT support queue.
Block porn. Most parents won't like the idea of a government-issued laptop giving their testosterone-filled teenaged boys access to Internet porn. Games won't be as big of an issue (except for emulators), especially if you include some games with the laptop.
Talk to school board officials in Henrico County, VA if you haven't already. We were one of the first to start issuing laptops to students. Whatever you do, don't ever switch over to Windows if you value being able to teach the kids. No matter what kind of restrictions or security was in place, within 20 minutes we were able to get around it.
... if the students are paying for it in any way, shape or form, they should be able to put ANYTHING they want on there. If it's a completely school/government-financed computer, on the other hand (which is, IMO, the only viable option for an educational tool), lock it down so that it can't be used for anything else. Otherwise, what's to stop the DAUs (duemmster anzunehmender User - German for stupidest possible user) from running IE6 without security updates, or Kazaa or other trojan, virus, and spyware-infested software? This would have a serious impact on classes where the computers are actually needed, because most of the time in class would probably be spent getting the system cleaned... Not to mention games - I have a hard time not firing up Worms Armageddon on my Pocket PC during lectures at Uni - now just imagine how hard that's gonna be for a 6th grader... Lock it all down!
It's really sad to read the responses that are seeing the laptop as an extension of the school's IT department instead of a tool for the student. My God, this is a portable computer. It is a 21st century replacement for a paper pad and pencil.
1. Locking down the laptop prevents tinkering, which is EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT STUDENTS DOING TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THEIR COMPUTERS!
2. Protecting from objectionable content is a problem best addressed at your network's border, not on the student's computer. Desktop censorware is expensive, difficult to maintain and doesn't work all that well. But you can do amazing things at the firewall that are cost effective. Most of the "lockdown the laptop" mentality comes from Windows network administrators who have to lock down everything because their client computer operating systems are very fragile.
3. All the snarking about Facebook and instant messengers from the K12 IT types shows exactly why there should be no restrictions on these things. IM and Facebook are vital ways to connect and communicate with other human beings. All the fear of facebook predators is silly given that a trip to the mall or your local city park is at least 25x more dangerous.
As a parent, if you gave my daughters a laptop with a lot of restrictions, we would likely buy our own and give yours back. The risk of my child getting in trouble for using the laptop for something completely legal is just not worth it, and I want lots of tinkering going on so I know they are learning.
-- $G
Here's the dilemma -- how much freedom do you give to students? The state mandates web filtering on all machines. However, there is some flexibility on exactly what should be filtered.
If you must filter, then filter only political and religious blogs, as these are the things that can "damage" a young and naive mind the most.
Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer?
Yes, they are good for school related correspondence with a few extra tools added for good measure (I'm being presumptuous here because I don't use these forums). At the least, it will expose them to different technologies and forums; variety is good.
What about games, forums, or blogs, all of which could be educational, distracting or obscene?
I'm up on all of this. In terms of forums, Slashdot seems pretty good. The GNAA Trolls can be studied as a communication phenomena in themselves. AS for "distracting or obscene"; it's best to white-list anything that comes up as such (except for political and religious blogs). Exposing a young mind to alternative expressions will help open their minds to reality; intelligent discussion and observations of such things will always be better than censorship.
We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat.
Bad idea; note the reasons above. Monitoring will only get them conditioned to authoritarian ideologies and practices. It also demonstrates a lack of trust. If teachers cannot trust students then students will never be able to trust teachers. Educational environments should be open and unoppressive. If students make mistakes in this regard then view this as a positive; people learn from making mistakes.
How far do we take this?
As far as legally possible (and moreso, if you have any sense of responsibility).
While on one hand we need to avoid legal problems and irresponsible behavior, there's a danger of going so far to minimize liability that we make the tool nearly useless.
There's no point have an educational tool if it can only be used for political mandates like Abstinance Education.
Equally concerning is the message sent to the students. Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
Interesting I already mentioned this. Good for you that you already considered this aspect before it was brought up.
Also, if anybody brings up think-of-the-children arguments then consider them to be automatically fallacious and don't bother arguing. They got the same weight as a Godwin argument.
Good Luck!! and best regards,
UTW
And that's preety much it. If you lock mac os, they will boot ubuntu/pirated xp/whatever from an usb thumbdrive.
Students are like this. Don't be a fool.
Nor a freaking nazi. If I were you, I would seek medical help. Your mind is not good.
As they will "essentially own the machines", you have no rights to decide what they do with them outside of your network.
Thus, any restrictions that you feel you need to implement, you must do on your network only.
If you dump stuff on the laptops that hamper whatever they want to do when not on your network, they you'll soon find them to have clean installs.
You can of course require some tools on the laptop in order to be allowed on the school network, but at no time should those tools restrict the student's actions outside of the school.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Common sense, but a lot of the posters on this thread seem to have forgotten "children are not adults". Also "students are not employees".
Children have not developed biologically or emotionally as far as adults, they don't have the life experience. This is one of the main reasons society treats them differently in criminal cases. This is why teachers and other support staff in schools have a responsibility towards students, are expected by parents to be looking out for them and guiding them, and cannot treat them like adults.
Children are students at school not adult employees as work. You choose to look at something dodgy at work on the internet, your employer would expect you to take a different level of personal responsibility. They wouldn't expect your dad to come in and shout at the boss and ask them what they are doing exposing you to all these terrible websites when they should be helping you develop your career....
For all those who advocated no filtering I'll quote what he says:
"The state mandates web filtering on all machines...."
So none appears not to be an option given his regulatory climate. It's not a case of him/her being a nazi or not it's the balancing act between state regulatory climate and the wiggle room it gives him
Filter their access AT SCHOOL. That's where your responsibility lies. So, filter it at the router level for their internet access. What they access outside school is their parents responsibility.
Frankly, any child competent in using a computer can bypass ANY software you attempt to install on it. And they will.
-Kinsey
Which is the whole idea behind anarchy: if you don't like the current sociopolitical system you're in, you can go find another one without hindrance, or start your own. In the current system, even if you go live in the woods you're still subject to laws and not "Free" in the truest sense of the term.
I work in IT at a highschool in Norway. Every student and teacher has a laptop provided for them from the school. We restrict nothing, except bittorrent. If the student wants to waste their time in class by sitting on facebook, they are welcome to do so. Its their future, afterall. Ofcourse we got students who have downloaded something from somewhere and have gotten their computers full of viruses etc. This is not a problem however. We have a table with 5 network cables where the students can re-ghost their own machines. The Desktop and My Documents folder is stored on the D drive, so all they lose in the process, is programs they installed on their own after they got their computer. TL;DR: Dont restrict anything except torrents. Hook up some network connections somewhere, so they can ghost up their own machines if they screw up.
In Portugal all 1st to 4th grade students have access to a free ClassMate and from 5th do 12th a full featured broadband connected laptop for 150 â or 0â, depending on your family income. No restrictions whatsoever. Worked out pretty fine so far!
The ability to tinker with their computers is part of the technology training intended. Hopefully, the next portuguese generation will know no such thing as the IT guy in the family that fixes everyone's computers
You have absolutely no ability to enforce anything since they can easily remove them from school grounds and work on them at their will. I would suggest you don't get to wild with your restrictions or you'll just make an income source for the geeks unlocking the non-geeks laptops for them.
I wrote programs and scripts to automate doing exactly that when I was in high school for the *schools* computers. You have zero hope of maintaining any kind of access control on laptops they take home.
Shadus
on campus is filtered within school policies, you provide the internet on campus you can filter it however you want.
Off campus you should use filtering software only to the minimal extent required by funding laws that pay for the computers and no more. What kids do in myspace and facebook off campus is none of your concern.
Note Im not supporting filtering policies, im simply pointing as a practical matter you have to follow the law.
they say that your Freedom should not be on the cost of the freedom of Next guy . so we GOT TO find a middle path . Have you heard of seasteading community [ it has been discussed on /. sometime back] they are trying to experiment with idea of society based on absolute freedom . but i am sure that overtime they will evolve their own set of regulations. its just natural .
somethings are best left unsaid , I am one of those things
and just as good, if avaible. Or an eeePC if not. They can take the physical abuse.
Seriously, don't buy them Mac books. They just don't need that type of power and people don't take care of stuff they haven't paid for themselves anyway, especially kids. I'm not even close to convinced that all time access to a computer is all that helpful to students vs. a computer lab after school.
Please, take a look at your taxpayers, who are providing this to you: it's there money. Give it back to them. I love Macs, have one of my own, but it's not built for middle schoolers that are rough and tumble with it.
If you really need a gadget in the classroom, consider a livescribe pen. Probably also a waste of money for most student, but I can see it being a learning aid to some. But in this day and age, a computer just isn't yet. You have to have the maturity to use it for it's intended purpose. That comes in highschool for some, college for others, and some never have it.
Facebook especially and myspace some also are a very legitimate part of the emerging business internet. To block those is like teaching baseball and leaving out teaching how to bat. Forums and blogs are also vital in learning how to think critically. Games maybe like chess can teach something. Chat? Who knows....depends what you are chatting about.
It takes a smart kid a very short amount of time to "mod" an xbox or other console. How long do you think it will take a tech savvy kid to crack whatever weak sauce monitoring you put on there. I bet it takes them a friday and saturday night total.
If a computer on my home network got a virus due to a computer owned by the school that my kid was forced to bring home to work on I would sue the school.
filter the minimum, cover your ass, have kid and parents sign user policies and statement of non-liability
then be prepared to learn how stupid state mandated filtering is
While it is always entertaining to see the flames and interesting responses to questions such as this, I find it unfortunate the actual useful information tends to be limited. If you want real world experiences, check out the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. Apple laptops in the hands of every middle school (7&8th grader) in the state of Maine: http://www.mainelearns.org/. The project has been ongoing for several years (renewed at least once). As part of the project each school was given total wireless coverage and (if they did not have it) internet access. Laptops were heavily locked down on what applications could be installed/run, however there was no on-laptop filtering. Filtering occurred on the schools Internet connection and there was an agreement signed by student and parent to not access inappropriate material from other locations. One interesting thing, while students were able to delete their cache's, they were forbidden to do so. While some student likely did and were not caught, because the systems were state owned, the local administrator was able to log on to the boxes remotely (Apple Remote Desktop) and could view the history. Anyone with an empty history was talked with about why. There were various levels of punishment for breaking the rules, up to losing the laptop either permanently (which was a problem since they were often required for assignments) or simply take home privileges.
Seriously, a 6th grader, upon graduation will have a 6 year old laptop. When new it'll probably be low-end and out of date before the 7th grade. They won't have paid for it so by the 12th grade it'll be beat to hell and someone thinks they'll want to by this from the school?
I understand there is a conflict here. Kids need computers more often and you want them to make it feel like it's theirs but allowing them to do anything with their laptop would more or less be the same as removing all security from the school network.
This isn't the answer I'm sure you want to hear but the ideal thing would be to give them Linux based netbooks. They're cheaper (won't matter as much if they're worthless in 6 years), lack a hard drive (less likely to break) and they can't install a ton of games on it and security won't be an issue. If they happen to use it to look at porn at home big deal. That'll happen either way.
Giving a computer is stupid. Each student should have to work for it. That will breed "ownership" and they will take care of them better. The work can be public service, but needs to be significant.
Ok, on to the lock down.... I've worked at a company with over 100k employees.
We had different lock down levels based on the role of the user. Some had full admin access, some were "power users" and most were normal users without the ability to load any software. Almost ALL were on an Active Directory domain with mandatory patching, only a few in security and a select few architects didn't get patched automatically. I was a lead architect and got force-patched. Laptop users were more likely to be granted local admin rights with their AD credentials to support unusual connectivity needs. Almost nobody is given a non-domain account.
There was no client-side filtering of the internet. All filtering was performed via proxies, but obviously, when you are at home and not connected via VPN, there's no filtering. There was no internet access without going thru a proxy, period. Internet addresses aren't route able internally. However, the laptop is monitored for illegal software, unlicensed software, copyrighted material, media and the hidden web browsing history. For some users, snapshots of their desktops are taken every 30 seconds and reviewed by their supervisor as necessary. Additionally, most phone conversations are recorded and retained for 7 days. Obviously, only if there is an issue would the conversations be reviewed. A few contractors were caught calling India for 10 hours a day over many, many, months. Basically, they had the sounds of their family life back home going all day.
All network traffic is logged per user and retained for over a week. DPI was deployed, so I was always careful to use SSL connections for trivial non-work surfing. Sites were blocked via a global block list and content filtering. For a school, I'd be inclined to use whitelists for approved websites.
I was amazed at the number of employees who would be disciplined due to porn on their company computers or other "inappropriate content". Some were fired.
>>>will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation.
If you give a laptop to somebody in 6th grade, it will be 7 years old when they graduate. Who wants to buy a 7 year old laptop???
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The school is definitely responsible for what the students are allowed to view and use while at school, especially during normal school hours. Conveniently enough, you control the internet access when the students are on school property so some simple web filtering (including all the proxy servers you can find) should do the trick for the majority of the time that the school has any responsibility (liability).
Because the school owns the computers, there is a fair argument for the school exerting some control over the childrens browsing habits at home. However, without an internet connection, most likely provided by the childrens parents, there is nothing for you to really control. If my child were to receive a "free" computer from school the same rules would apply to the use of that machine as I have for the ones at home.
1. No use of the computer in any room other than the main living areas.
2. Use of a computer is a privledge and I can take it away whenever I want.
3. I will be allowed access to browsing records and any folder on the machine whenever I choose. I will routinely check on things, but unless given a reason I won't get too invasive.
4. Any attempts at hiding folders, ecrypted drives, etc will result in very harsh punishment. Bare minimum, I take away the use of the computer, assign extra chores, remove other privleges, etc.
I may sound like an authoritarian @$$Hole, but it's my house and my rules. Obviously as the children get older and proove that they know how to make intelligent decisions, I'll lighten up on the restrictions and increase the seriousness of the infraction needed to bring down harsh punishment. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the school periodically checks to make sure that the child isn't installing malware, and is trying to keep the computer use at school on task it's my responsibility to control what my child does at home. Even if it is with school resources.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
don't know as much as their kids do about technology. Most parents can't control their kids in other aspects of their lives; computing is no different.
No matter the silly "nazi - no nazi" battle going on here, the simple problem is that if something happens with the laptops "off hours" when the kids are home, most parents in this country will abdicate all responsibility and blame the school system. The argument will be that the parents don't know:
1. what their child is doing
2. how to find out
3. how to prevent it
4. how to do anything with the computer
The school, regardless of common sense, will be held responsible for not putting sufficient filters in place on systems that it makes available to children. The school *will* be held liable. It only takes one successful lawsuit to deplete any school's budget.
Rather than have silly but typical geek arguments, it would be a good exercise for the communal minds here to help come up with some constructive input to meet the school's needs. You all know what the alternative is - it happens all the time. The school decides it can't find a way to provide the technology to the students, meet statutory and regulatory requirements, and reduce liability to an acceptable risk level.
In the absence of sufficient risk mitigation, the school will likely kill the program, and the children lose the opportunity.
The resultant article will be /.'d and another long but ultimately meaningless discussion will occur.
What a waste of money. I give it 5 minutes before half of the computers are damaged by the kids, then the other half will probably die just down to the fact that it's Apple.
I wish my school had that much money to burn when I was there, maybe I would have gotten a Mac (and promptly returned it to the admin)
I'd just cripple the "school OS" as much as you need to keep most of the kids from doing forbidden stuff. Then you can allow the installation of a second, personal OS when the parents agree to keep an eye on the usage so that your school can't be blamed if they do something wrong with their own OS. Forbid the booting of the second, personal OS at school, and maybe try to make the booting of the second OS only possible if a (probably visible) USB-Dongle or something similar is attached to the laptop (Maybe possible with TPM/locked BIOS?) so that non-technical teachers can spot people trying to circumvent the rules. You could also try to secure the school network in a way that makes it very hard for students to use the school network when booting their own OS (IPSec maybe? Haven't used it personally) to discourage the booting of the own OS at school (No internet, no data-sharing).
All in all I'd like the idea of a second OS without restrictions, as it makes it much easier to decide which sites/services/programs should be blocked on the main OS.
BTW, I dislike the idea of schools monitoring the activities of children on such a personal device.
However, you seem set to do it regardless, so my advice is to lock it down as much as humanly possible. Ideally, you'd lock it down so that no programs could be run, no new peripherals could be installed, disable booting from CD/USB/anything-other-than-HDD in the BIOS and password it, install a program to kill any non-approved app from running, install a client-side internet proxy that uses a whitelist for viewing approved content ONLY. Password protect EVERYTHING that you change, and guard the passwords with your LIFE; use a VERY strong password, preferably consisting of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, doodles, sign language, and squirrel noises. MAKE THE STUDENTS SIGN A EULA before they get the laptop. Re-image the machines at the slightest provocation or hint of wrongdoing, and work with the Administration to impose severe penalties on anyone that violate said EULA. Make it painfully clear to the Administration that YOU need to have the final say in who gets punished and who doesn't; no chances for Bubba the Football Star to escape punishment because he's needed for the game Saturday, and no easy dealing with Billy, the son of the Superintendent.
When it comes to selling them, keep a second NON-locked image on hand to re-image the machine for them (preferably a factory-reset type deal, with all the apps they used included as well), and that will kill the need to hand out passwords after the fact. If you follow all of that, it should take care of MOST of the issues that pop up with abuse/violations, and what it DOESN'T take care of the first few examples of severely punished children that tried tampering should kill off.
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
It's not enough that you flack up some stupid 'rules' that you know everyone will break so you can have the smug satisfaction of expelling everyone. No - you have to technically lockdown the devices so that they are absolutely restricted. In fact you should not look at them as computers as all. You should look at them as nuclear powered yellow pads that do only what is mandated by the school. The devices should be useless as general purpose computers. When the student can buy them, they will be useless anyway. This way you can recycle them back to the next round of students cheaply.
This is not about values it's about teaching.
That spending money on MacBooks is insane unless you're getting them for less than half of retail price. A reasonably good device can be had for $400-$500 retail as opposed to a MacBook.
My High School started a laptop program when I was entering my Junior year. They started with the Sophomores that year so I wasn't able to get one. However, I ordered myself a laptop to use in my own classes, but didn't have any "laptop" classes. My brother was in the initial class, though, and I knew a lot of his friends.
First, and foremost, if the school is fronting most of the money, don't get macs. They cost way too much. I would suggest either have the families pay for the laptop up front with subsidies for those who can't afford it or get something else. Acer is fairly reasonable as are a few other brands.
The one issue my school had was that they got them the shittiest laptops they could. Don't do this; nobody will purchase them upon graduation.
Second, stop buying dead tree books and find eBooks to run your classes on. It will save the school money and make upgrading easier. It'll also help the kids by not having to carry so much and they'll always have their books in class and at home.
Don't lock down the machines; they will find a way around it. Instead, lock any ports on the school's network you deem necessary and do any proxy blocking you can. If you see students using a proxy, ban the IP. It isn't as preventative as some more invasive tools, but it's a lot less trouble.
As for software, let them install what they want. If they bring it home, they should be able to do with it as they please. If they were school-owned and only used during class I can see restricting them, but they're not.
One last thing, the admin at my high school was incompetent. Find someone who knows what they're doing and for god's sake, backup their hard drives before you work on them or set up a network storage solution for kids' files. Our admin would just format and re-image when anyone had a problem for ANYTHING. The keyboard would break, reformat, just in case that was the issue before replacing hardware. A lot of my brother's friends stopped bringing their issues to the school because they would lose everything on their machines every time they brought it in.
Our program was ultimately shut down because the teachers weren't taking advantage of the laptops in class. This is the biggest problem. Use the eBooks, get software designed to augment their classes, and have teachers go through a rigorous computing course. If they don't know how things work, they won't use them.
-SaNo
It doesn't matter what you do, some of the kids will find ways around it. Eventually, I imagine a parent will find their kid surfing porn on the laptop that you gave them and sue your organization, then we'll have another /. story about your efforts.
who would even want it? I would never use a computer that could be remotely monitored by anyone. I would just install another os and say fuck you
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1996-01-23/ On the other hand, if you enable internet filters to things like facebook you will very quickly expose your kids to the world of hacking, ssh tunnels and external proxies!
I'm now in college and my middle school had a program like this. They gave out the laptops by grade, first the 9th graders, wait 2 weeks then the 8th graders ect... When they first handed out the laptops the only thing that was locked down was installing permissions and the school district filtered the internet. The net admins could "see" the screen of any laptop while at school and lock it remotely. They used the teachers to decide what was productive and what was distracting. If a program was found to be a distraction they blocked it. iChat lasted less then a week. After 4 weeks they had a configuration that they would keep for the 3 years while I was there. I thought this system went very well, besides the fact that a hidden admin account had the default Mac password, so installed what I wanted anyway. I know this is /. so it goes without saying, but consider open source software, my school didn't, so I had a crappy $1/license "Think-Free Office" that they banned us from using since it crashed the computers.
If you don't already know there is a high school in Colorado that is doing the same thing with Tablet PC's. Look up Fountain-Ft Carson High School in Fountain, CO. Their program has been running a couple years now I think.
If you do lock down the laptops, what happens when a student buys it upon graduation?
If I were one of those students I would demand that upon purchase that you release all those locks and remove any monitoring or lockdown software without disturbing any of my personal files or settings.
Might that not be expensive and troublesome for the school?
Why are you trying to give all kids a laptop? What educational purpose does it serve? None that I can see.
That being said: If the purpose is to educate kids about computers, then I would consider any kid who is unable to remove restrictions from the laptop to have failed the computer-science course.
And why Macbooks? Why not cheaper, more open machines like the EEE?
Wow I would say the biggest punishment isn't locking it down but you said give them a macbook. Apple's are for idio...I mean mommies and daddies. Give them a nice windows laptop with the same specs costing you less than half. If this was a tech savy school then go with a linux distro.
I can think of a few problems right off the top of my head.
1) Everybody knows any kid walking home from school has an expensive laptop. The kids are going to get mugged and the laptops stolen.
2) Any kid that bikes to school is going to have a laptop with a very short life expectancy.
Solution: Mandatory door to door busing for everybody.
Waste of money.
Waste of oil.
Waste of time.
Waste of the environment.
School has more control of the students' lives, and the parents (and the students themselves) have less. That is what the government wants.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Too true. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school and i remember that one kid hosted what was basically a proxy and gave it some innocent name like [high school name][year].tk. Full and free web access, and the news spread around the school in about a week. Whenever the administrators (if you want to even call them that) figured out what was going on and blocked the individual website url, he just switched the name.
Another thing we figured out during our 4 years there was that the "Fortress" software they used to lock the machines down was poorly implemented - If you shut down the machine and then hit windows-L to lock it, the fortress software would have been closed but you could log back into the computer with no restrictions. Took a little bit of timing (and was discovered by accident), but worked like a charm.
So all i would suggest would be to be nice and don't encourage students to have to find security holes to access basic things
When I went to school (admittedly it was college), all the computers in the labs were refreshed to a standard image on logout (they used Ghost or something). So the students pretty much had the freedom to install and run whatever they liked, and whenever they logged out, it would go back to a clean slate.
You could probably do something similar with their macbooks. I'd say it's really important not to intentionally lock anything out.
You do have to monitor and control the network, however, to prevent them from engaging in malicious online behavior.
Since you can monitor what they're doing remotely, I'd say that's good enough. You don't need any additional shackles. If they're stupid enough to do break the rules and do porn or gambling on their school computers, you'll be able to catch them and discipline them. Grades 6-12 is a perfect time to teach them responsibility.
Anyway, you want to spend most of your time figuring out the right way of applying these tools so they're not simply paper weights or distractions or impediments to the teachers' own teaching styles. Set up your moodle site so kids and teachers can use it to automate homework, testing, and grading.
If you're in the USA then welcome to CIPA in all its ambiguous open ended wording.
These laptops will be virtually worthless by the time the 6th - 9th graders get to graduation. So the expectation of being able to collect a "nominal fee" upon graduation is unlikely for that group of students. I would anticipate a scaled fee for any of the older students, with the current 12th graders expected to shoulder a bigger fee than the 10th graders since their laptops are worth more as they walk away from school.
I have been in one school where you bought a computer from them, and eventually owned it upon graduation. This was in 1985 at Clarkson and we have Zenith somethingorothers. By Sophomore year, 12 months after starting the payment plan, already there were newer better computes. By Senior year, the computers were worth not much more than doorstops. So much for paying a few thousand for a computer I get to "take with me once I graduate!"
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Put no security restrictions at all on the laptop, except that no personal files should be stored on it. That way, it can be reimaged on a regular basis to remove unwanted or potentially dangerous software. This reimaging can be done over the network or in an emergency by physically swapping the hard drives.
Do not assume that you need to protect children from the Internet. This is a false assumption that simply creates headaches for parents, teachers, and administrators. Instead approach the computer the same way you would approach a piece of sports equipment or a musical instrument that is on loan to a student. Just as you wouldn't allow a student to use a school owned trumpet as a baseball bat, you can make rules about how the computer is to be used and you can enforce them without the need for software locks and censorship.
Step 1: Clearly define the rules. This is best done by a committee of parents, teachers, and IT experts. Resist all calls for censorship during this process, just make rules that the students should follow. Also define the guidelines for dealing with inappropriate use.
Step 2: Educate laptop recipients about the proper use of the equipment. Also offer education for parents and school personnel on how to deal with inappropriate uses.
Step 3: Monitor but do not censor Computer and Internet use. When inappropriate use is detected, and it will be, follow the guidelines.
Step 4: Maintain the laptops by regularly reimaging them. Hardware issues aside, they will run forever if managed this way.
This is the responsible and sophisticated way to run a laptop loaner program. Any other approach involving software locks and Internet censorship is just a challenge to students to try to route around the damage.
Many years ago, I ran a Wintel based computer lab for students using exactly this methodology and no PC was broken for more than about 10 minutes. All infractions of the rules were dealt with individually, so we punished the guilty instead of punishing everybody.
When I was in highschool I was a part of the "science olympiad" team. As the resident astronomy guy I was always in that even, and as such, always got a school laptop to take with me on those trips. I was of course banned from playing games, but it only took me a day or two to realize that the only way they could tell what I had run was too look at the names of the executables. Simply renaming 'doom.exe' to 'star_finder.exe' solved that propblem.
Point being, nature^W err, kids, will find a way.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
My 15 year old has a great deal of trust. But that doesn't mean she has complete autonomy either. I think you presume a much more overbearing relationship than actually exists. That's understandable given you've read a couple of sentences about it and and overlaid your own biases and experiences to fill out the story.
By the way, nothing a kid writes in a diary can put her in danger simply through the act of put it in there. She may write about things she's done, but that's not quite the same thing.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Don't be ridiculous. When one person breaks the law, that person is wrong. When everybody breaks a law, the law is wrong.
Your ruleset it incomplete. More than one person has killed someone, but not everyone has. So should murder be legal or illegal?
I had the exact same program at my school. They did not do any filtering. Although, if you used too much bandwidth in the dorm, they would flag you and have a "talk" with you. There were absolutely no problems. And if you do start filtering, you'll get in a lot deeper than you originally expected. What about using proxies? What about chat services? ...and so forth.
PLUS - You will have many more savy computer users than you may expect. These users will simply reinstall whatever OS they want on it. Unless these are the Mac only hardware architecture (in which case, they still are able to install their own version of MacOS).
Oh, so you'll be one up on them and lock to BIOS and not allow them to boot from the CD/DVD drive? Sorry, there are easy ways around that too.
What it boils down to, is you are wasting your time and energy trying to do this. The only way to effectively control things is closing ports and sites w/ a firewall. Let them do whatever they want with their (almost) own computer!
But does that mean on each machine or simply that computers on school property must be filtered?
If it's the latter, I'd recommend filtering things like myspace and facebook via the school's net connection
But to put filtering on the machines themselves is just asking for the students to break administrative restrictions on the laptops. And then some overexcited school administrator is going to press criminal charges for some random computer crime.
There were some answers regarding "why buy over-priced Macs instead of something else". I'm not going to continue the ever-lasting debate about Mac/Windows/Linux.
The point is, kids don't need laptops. Regardless of manufacturer/OS. All they need is cheap workstations at school and at home.
A 3-4 years old computer costs about... nothing?! OK, maybe 50$. A Mac-laptop costs 1000$. What are you trying to teach the kids? What a "mighty mouse" is?!
Maybe my opinion is not objective because I grew up with such things somewhere in Eastern Europe, but it seems obvious: someone is getting a *profit* for buying 123456 products from *a* company and is just trying to justify the *few* million $.
Believe me. If you make the locks too obnoxious, somebody will make you look stupid.
Unless you have a very well-versed and well-paid IT-staff, the computer-literate students in any given high school class outnumber you in available man hours by a factor of about 10.
If you mess up, they'll make sure all the turned-on clients in your school display a rotating technicolor Goatse on a set date and time (been there, done that). Treat them like the kids they are, not like mind-criminals.
The plain fact of the matter is you are giving them the hardware. There is no way you can prevent the students from bypassing the restrictions you put in place. Repeat, there is no possible way you can prevent the students from bypassing the restrictions.
Filter sites? Anonymous proxy around it; fixed.
Lock proxy config? Reconfigure as root; fixed.
Lock out root access? Boot from USB; fixed.
Lock out BIOS? Flash CMOS; fixed.
Once one student figures this out, they will share it with all their friends. I understand it is a state law, so set it up. Just set up a really crappy, easy to subvert filter. It will save you thousands of hours of setup time, and will be just as effective.
If you want kids to cart around an expensive heavy (relative to the utility after lockdown) item that they wil probably break just to piss off parents (who will likely be required to pay for it) invest in Faberge eggs. It's more straightforward.
Are you f'in kidding me? I majored in a technical field and didn't even have my own computer throughout college.
the only thing a student in HS needs a computer for is writing papers and lab reports. There are labs for that. And those who want to learn computer stuff will certainly do so on their own, just like we all did.
Much more important is the question of who supports these computers. When they get screwed up (and they will), are the computers "essentially owned by the students", so they'll need to get them fixed themselves? If so, you can't enforce any restrictions. Also, you're going to get enormous amounts of complaint from the users you're not helping.
Secondarily, students that are about to graduate will have ancient (6 year old) systems. Why should they by them? Hell, how will they be able to get anything done their last few years?
You shouldn't make any restrictions whatsoever on the machines. For several reasons: 1. Teach responsible behavior instead, 2. The students aren't stupid, they will beat you anyway, 3. They are supposed to own the machines, right(?), then they should also do what they like with the machines. ...
Remember, physical access is total access. Most of the kids won't go outside the rules. However, as soon as the geeky kid figures out how to get past all your artificial security measures and tells another kid, you have lost all of your security.
The punishment could be to take away the laptop, but then the kid couldn't get work done because you've essentially taken away his books and notepad. Most kids are indifferent about detention and suspension these days.
I guess you could implement some way to force the OS to connect to the school via VPN and use the school's internet connection all of the time, but then the school has to have the necessary bandwidth for several hundred laptops connecting every night and weekend.
Honestly, the best policies are social policies. "If we catch you looking at porn or playing games, we tell everyone in the school and probably give you some kind of irrelevant punishment." Guilty consciences, laughing mouths, and pointing fingers are far more deterrent than NetNanny.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Notebooks without restrictions. Make them responsible. Shift the problem to the cause.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Computers in schools, asside from specific computer related courses, should only be used for research on the net. By doing things manualy the student is better able to learn to use their own abilities and not rely on the technology. This includes had manual note taking since you don't have the system correcting your spelling and grammer.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Realistically, there's very little you CAN do to lock down a system they can take home with them every night. You certainly can't stop one of them from putting Ubuntu on it (furthermore, would you want to stop a student from experimenting like that?)
Unless you're inspecting every single packet going in and out (which is doubtful) they can easily circumvent any sort of filtering proxy you create by using a combination of stunnel, ssh, and squid, all of which are easily available from home and can be set up on Linux, Windows, and OS X in relatively short order.
As admins, all we can really do is hope for the best, set up a system as robust as possible, and (most importantly) monitor it effectively, because you have to remember that the really determined people (like students) are time-rich and are not afraid to experiment.
I'm the IT director for a small private school. We are well on our way to having one laptop per student, and here's how we do it:
The computer is a tool to perform school tasks. Using the principal of least access, we only allow activities/applications that are related to classroom instruction.
We use MacBooks. No student has an administrative account. They are using the system, not modifying it.
We've enabled parental controls to keep track of the use of the laptop, and to prevent access to bad things on the internet. We also use a combination of OpenDNS, Cisco/Trend Micro filtering, Postini email filtering, and Sophos AV.
Teachers require the students to check in the machines each day. This allows us to keep track of the hardware.
We re-image machines if we have a problem. Students are required to keep their data on a flash disk, or on the servers at the school. If the data is not in either of those locations - too bad.
The bottom line is that if students don't like these restrictions, they are welcome to purchase their own computer, and do what ever they please, at home, under the supervision of their parents.
-ted
While still in high school I worked part time as a network admin for the school. We had just begun to incorporate a laptop program that started with the 6th graders. At time time our biggest trouble was students that bent the hell out of the wireless cards that stuck out of the side like a sore thumb. The reason that was the biggest problem was because our policy was one of educating the students about general best practices. If they came in with a trojan, adware, malware...whatever we just used ghost to set it up clean right away. The students lost all data important to them and gained in the lesson that we'd fix the computer but we're not going to hold your hand or save your data. Porn? not a problem on our network. We blocked what we expected and used a cron job to grep out any of a set of "naughty" words that came across the firewall. When any one user hit a certain threshold they were brought in for a "meeting". This was enough of a deterrent that by the end of the first month more teachers were brought in for meetings about acceptable network use than students. Even more surprising? It was an all boys school.
Your question has lots of layers. The school has s duty to safeguard the students, but many of the safeguards proposed by school boards are to soothe panicky parents or lawyers, not really to benefit students. As a result, the restrictions put on computer use tend to hinder effective use by the students.
One possible solution is to use a Roman law vs. Common law analysis. Under Roman law, anything that was not specifically allowed was forbidden. This tends to inhibit creativity.
Under Common law, anything that is not specifically forbidden is allowed. This tends to foster creativity.
So instead of thinking about what should be prohibited, think instead about why anything should be prohibited, and don't act unless you're solving a real (as opposed to hypothetical) problem. Solve problems as they arise.
I'm not extremely IT-savvy, but is it possible that you have two different lists of sites, one that's blocked all the time (basically, porn) and one that's only blocked during school hours (ie, myspace, facebook, games) but that the kids can remove the block on if their teachers deem access to said sites to be 'educational'?
Or is it possible that you can block, say, only the porn using software directly installed on the computer, but put further blocks on what sites are accessible through the school's internet connection - ie, they can't get on facebook or myspace if they're using the school's wi-fi, but they can if they go outside for lunch and pick up on some public wi-fi, or as soon as they get home and are using their own personal network?
Either way, this would enable sites that are illegal for children to access to be blocked 100% of the time, and sites that are just entertainment or time-wasters to be blocked only when the kids ought to be learning.
And iChat... leave iChat. My friends and I actually put that to good use in our freshman (college) writing class, while one kid would be discussing something waaay over our heads with the professor, we'd be having our own discussion without interrupting him, and as soon as they stopped talking, whatever we brought up on iChat would suddenly become the topic of conversation, and a good one, cause we had a bit of time to think it through before.
Frankly, if you're only trying to avoid a lawsuit, you've already missed the point.
Shit happens. Just because the school wanted to give the students a tool for learning and let the students get the most out of it by not restricting its usage, doesn't mean that the school should suddenly be liable for everything that the student does with it.
I think, in your case, the proper thing for the school to do would be to educate the kids on how to avoid that sort of thing, which I believe a fair few schools are doing already. Do that, and the school has an affirmative defence without having to strictly control everything the students do.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Important information that precedes any answer to the question you ask has either been left out, or not decided, and the description given is self-contradictory on some of the important parts that aren't omitted. For instance, you say students will "essentially own the machines" and then talk about their ability to purchase them after graduation, and state mandates for filtering on school machines. Neither of the latter two points are consistent with the former: student ownership means students don't need to buy them, and mandates that apply to school-owned machines don't apply to them.
Most importantly, you need a coherent idea of why you are spending the money to buy computers to give (or lend, as it seems from your description) computers to students. Once you know that, the uses and restrictions that are consistent with that will be much easier to determine, because you will actually have something to evaluate them against.
(Personally, I think once you know why students need computers, it might be better to decide on a common hardware/software platform that meets that need, communicate that it was required, and subsidize purchase and reasonable repair/replacement -- with a means test -- rather than the school buying computers for the whole student population and retaining ownership and responsibility for monitoring/controlling their use at all times, particularly if there are significant state mandates that apply to school-owned computers.)
---
We're a school district in the beginning phases of a laptop program which has the eventual goal of putting a Macbook in the hands of every student from 6th to 12th grade. The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night, and will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation. Here's the dilemma -- how much freedom do you give to students? The state mandates web filtering on all machines. However, there is some flexibility on exactly what should be filtered. Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer? What about games, forums, or blogs, all of which could be educational, distracting or obscene? We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat. How far do we take this? While on one hand we need to avoid legal problems and irresponsible behavior, there's a danger of going so far to minimize liability that we make the tool nearly useless. Equally concerning is the message sent to the students. Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?
Haha, we had Fortres (spelled as such) on our machines too! That software was so incredibly easy to get around. Of course, it helped that we were probably more competent than even the sysadmin.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Asking how to restrict the laptops is the wrong place to start. By thinking about how you WON'T use the laptops, you've already lost the battle.
You need to first think about how the laptops WILL be used. For each class where the laptop will be used, the instructors must know exactly how to leverage them well enough to make their use an essential aspect of learning. If a student is busy using a laptop for a legitimate, in-class purpose, then they won't be off browsing p0rn -- at least not without the teacher noticing.
At any other time when the use of the laptop is not essential, simply turn it off and put it away. Don't allow the laptops out on the playground, or in the lunch room. They are strictly for classroom or home use only.
The point is to treat a laptop like a No. 2 pencil. It's just a tool, useful only in a certain context, and outside that context, we don't use it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
US public schools are facing gigantic budget shortages (even the wealthy ones here in SF Bay area) for the next two years due to reduced tax income and your school wants to buy each student a pricey laptop? Save the money for something else; your students probably have computers at home. If they don't, why not start a home PC subsidy for less advantaged students who qualify? That way all students may have access to a computer but the school doesn't have to deal with the associated IT burden. Think of it as subsidized school lunch for the next generation.
A grownup living in the real world and advocating adherence to the law? Furthermore, providing pertinent links to the matters at hand? On Slashdot?
My head assplode!
Of course you are absolutely correct but, this is Slashdot! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!
If you're required by law to filter, but the law is vague about what to filter, then do something useful: filter ads. Install privoxy and there's your web filter.
Probably nothing is a legitimate use of a school computer. The students shouldn't even be on the 'net except for whatever is required (e.g. do the they email their homework to the teacher?). The thing is, you also said the kids are expected to take the computers home. If they are expected to not touch it when they're at home, ok. But if it's ok to use it, then you should assume it's personal use, and therefore filter nothing unless the law specifically requires you to filter that site. For any site (e.g. MySpace) where you have to ask, the answer is that you don't have to filter it.
Here's what it's all about: the filtering laws aren't there to fulfill a useful purpose. They just exist to be obeyed. Obey them, but beyond that, you can safely assume their purpose is to serve some special interest (filter software vendors, religious fundamentalists, whatever) and you need not go to any extra trouble to aid those interests. Once you've met the legal requirements, switch gears and do useful and sensible things instead.
Here's your real problem:
You say that, but if it were even remotely true, then the rest of your post would be blank. If it's the student's computer, then you don't ask "how much freedom do you give to students?" Instead, you ask, "how much freedom do we go to extra trouble to take away from the students?" If it's their computer, then from that point on, no action on your part can be described as "giving;" you can only take. Therefore you should limit your aggression to whatever is required by law.
Maybe. Unfortunately you haven't said why the students are getting the computers. Without knowing the purpose of the program, how could anyone measure effectiveness?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Simple.
When the kids access the 'net through the school connection, it goes through an ISA/proxy server which forbids porn and games. At home, it is therefore nanny-free.
Filtering should be server-based if it is to have any effect.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
It's unfortunate that the current generation of school administrators apparently still thinks that the best things you can do with computers are "surf the web", play music, read ebooks, etc. These things are all great, but I think the primary lesson you should teach someone upon handing them their own computer is: "You can do virtually anything you want with this thing. It's unlike any tool we've ever seen before. If you work at it and keep your imagination fired up, you will create things your teachers and counselors and parents have never dreamed of." Why do we continue to insist that secondary languages (modern linguistic and programming languages alike) are too advanced or unnecessary for young kids when in fact the opposite is true? Are we afraid of what they might say? I think so. In the land of the free and home of the brave we sure do teach a lot of suppression and cowardice.
I would definitely not lock them down too much. I like the idea of what others have said about contacting corporations about their policies. I have a personal experience with computers being too locked down, even though they were Windows XP machines, not Macs. I was doing research on a school computer for an upcoming science project, and suddenly found my research come to a halt, as I found NASA blocked by rule "to block pornography" by WebMarshal. Create local rules, rather than subscribing to some serve service to do the job for you.
Having worked extensively with a private school in this situation exactly, we chose to have roaming profiles, which allowed the student to log in to each machine locally, but their work was synched to their class server next login on campus. While logged in on campus, all internet content is filtered, we use jabber and bonjour messaging locally and the kids love it, these services are not given wan access.
When the student is logged in off-campus they can make documents, and use the internet as their local administrator (parent/guardian) deems appropriate. In those environments, it is considered the responsibility of the parents/guardians to provide content filtering and/or monitoring of their child's internet use. As the students are just plain users, they have few rights with respect to system modification on their local accounts, any software that they wish to install is handled via a parental request form. Machine software images are netbootable so it's quite trivial to refresh each machine.
It's important to remember that if the student and their parents ostensibly 'own' the machines, they should be granted any leeway they request, yet not undermine the local regime. Well implemented network services can ensure that your local rulesets are followed.
if I claimed I was emperor just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
I have found, as a 10 grade student at a public school, that the school is quick to blame any problems on students, and not on the ridiculous amount of other reasons(radio interference, dirty power, buggy software, cosmic rays, etc...) I was recently (after an inexplicable system freeze) told that if I "messed"(am using a computer when it locks up) that would be the last time that I ever used a computer @ that school.
Please hire people that monitor/admin who know of this and do NOT blindly blame students for system lockups
Note: a good portion of the school's computers run VISTA, that's probably why it locked.
Process Terminated Normally
I remember a few years back some kids (teens) got in trouble for filming a girl who stripped for them. The school punished them because it was a camera owned by the school. They only found out because the kids put it on the internet (which is awesome and stupid/makes me feel like a pedophile now but didn't at the time because I was younger). Schools love intruding and bossing instead of teaching life skills. "Conform or get in trouble" is the public school creed.
Let's see... how can I chat with no iChat? IRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Waste, plus thousands of homegrown and niche chat programs. Baby, you better block PORTS, not programs, if you want to do it right.
Now to your question:
"Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"
Yes. It will actually incite the recipients to try to overcome the barriers to place in front of them. Give them no barriers and they will go only where their minds lead them, not where they think you are hiding something secret and cool.
is goatse
Everybody's talking about censorship as if it is a good thing, but you should consider
A) your giving these students the laptops, it doest not cost tax payers any more money if they use it for their own personal purposes
B) From experience I can tell you that the students are a lot more likely to do their work if they dont have to switch to a different computer and turn off msn and all that stuff
C) These are macs, they're not prone to viruses no matter how much porn these kids look at
D) Kids will get around any security that you put, I know that if I was one of the students receiving these laptops I would likely get around the security and do it on every one of my friends laptops also
Normally I would say you have a point but not when it comes to state-funded education. Clearly the school thinks that laptops are essential to the child's education (otherwise why are they buying them?). Given this then what right do they have to put such restrictions on activities at home? When they provide their pupils with text books are they told that you may only read them at certain hours of the day, that their usage of the book may be monitored, that if you take this book home you may not read other books etc. etc.?
The problem they have here is that either the laptops are essential to the kid's education. In which case they have a legal obligation to provide them and should not be allowed to withhold them if you do not agree to their draconian measures (anything beyond cost recovery if you lose/damage it would be unacceptable to my mind). Or they are an optional extra to enhance the educational experience, in which case, as a taxpayer, I would want to know why I am footing the bill for hundreds of free laptops which are not essential to kids' education.
So, as I see it, they have no way to justify these restrictions. If they do proceed with this then the one thing I can see the kids learning is an innate hatred of authority. This is probably not what you want to teach them.
We have various filters in place. These filters are designed to achieve various goals.
One is to prevent bandwidth-hogging (we can't afford a gigabit fiber run to the Internet backbone, so we have to share our bandwidth wisely). Nor do we feel compelled to to pay for content that hinders the academic process (see below).
Another is to prevent "time wasters". How many schools let kids bring in their XBoxes to set up and play during class time? They are there to learn, not play games, socialize on Facebook, etc. I find it funny how many will rant about the situation of American schools vs. others, especially in math and science, and then go an suggest that kids be allowed to do whatever they want on their laptops during class. (BTW, our filters switch into a "relaxed" mode at the end of the day when kids are in study halls with little to do.)
Another is to protect them from things like online pornography, etc. I'm not even going to waste time as to argue why this is a good thing.
Another is to protect the network and their own computers from spyware, viruses, etc.. Our network is proactive in that it will cut off any computer that aggressively tries to "break out" or behaves like it's infected.
Since filters are not perfect, a report is generated weekly for each teacher, showing them exactly what sites their own students are visiting and during which classes. Technology can assist good classroom management, but it can never replace it.
- Michael.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
> The students will essentially own the computers
If that is so then you have no moral right to impose any restrictions.
Any content filtering should be on the network level, at the school. If the students are required to take the laptops home, then it should be up to the parents to provide whatever content filtering they like on their home network. It isn't the school's job to police what websites students visit while at home.
I'm also curious. Are students going to be required to take school laptops home with them, even if they have their own computer at home? I think this is a disastrous idea. First, laptops are heavy, and many students are already developing back trouble from lugging heavy textbooks home with them every day. Also there is a safety issue. Laptops are valuable, and there is a good chance they will be stolen while a student is on his way to or from school. Is the student or parent financially responsible for the loss? What if the student is injured or killed while being mugged for his/her laptop? This is already a big problem with iPods in some cities. Are you prepared for those inevitable lawsuits? Remember, not all students take a school bus. Many walk or ride a bike to school. If I were a parent at your school, I would simply not allow my son or daughter to take a laptop with them on their walk to school. Would this get them into trouble at your school?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Here's a radical thought for school administrators: freedom. Why not treat students like the responsible citizens you (presumably) want them to be, and let them make their own decisions?
But perhaps that would not generate enough regulation, paperwork, and employment for lawyers.
I would install VNC then uninstall it when they graduate. Problems solved!
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Let the kids buy their own computers and don't yell at them for pulling them out in class. 8yr ago when I was in high school I had an IBM Thinkpad that I bought myself. In class I would plug into the nearest cat5. The other kids without laptops would us the schools computers -- Big deal.
How about letting the kids use their machines at home as they see fit.
And when they come to class in the morning, they boot from a live distro (USB or CD, natch) that is configured to let them sign into the school server to upload homework and projects and download learning supplies.
This allows the admin to control what apps are available to the students, but gives them the freedom to explore and fool around, on their own time.
It's also a good exposure to FOSS.
6th to 12th grade? Are you people insane???
Kids aged 11 to 17?
That's a vital period of social growth. There's some serious brain development going on during that time in a child's life, and as with all brain growth, it is directed by their social connections with other people.
Did Apple hard-sell this idea or did the voting majority of your board members all fail upward through their teacher's training courses?
I could list all the reasons why this is a terrible idea, but it sounds like Apple has already sold you swampland in Florida, so it's not like it can be stopped at this point. Let me guess: "Computer skills are becoming a vital necessity for success in life, and OUR school in order to face the future. . ." "Not all children have equal access to computers, but with THIS program. . ." Those were the two primary arguments used to sell this thing, right? --That and, "We need to ensure that our program attracts the right kind of demographic, and with an expensive computer program. . ." (But that answer is only quietly mentioned.)
Question: Who was it that convinced your board of the computer need? Was it a corporate sell-job, or was it driven by a genuine sense of need? --I know that there was some serious money changing hands in curious ways -and some VERY- annoyed students and teachers at the local university where a similar deal was put together using far over-priced PC laptops.
The end result? Halls and concourses which were once bustling with life and activity and bright eyes ten years ago, are now dead, quiet places filled with dull-eyed and confused-looking young people in far fewer numbers, quietly clicking on their portable computers.
Great.
The classes themselves are dead spaces. Teachers can expect to look out at a wall of laptop lids and kids paying barely half the attention to you they might otherwise. This is not cool. Not at all. I've seen both ends of it, and it's lousy.
The cool students, the ones with natural spirit will survive this travesty, but they will do so because they are not computer nerds and when at home spend as little non-necessary time on their computer as possible, socializing and making their way through the physical world with joy. --Actually, everybody will survive; that's what humans do. They will manage and they will go on to make lives for themselves. But this is not making it easier to become a fully rounded, powerful person. It is making it harder.
School, for all it's many flaws, (and there are SO many; the main one being that kids are grouped by age; ever wonder why groups of kids of all ages hanging out together during the Summer are kind and supportive while kids in school live in so much misery and fear of one another?). . , but for all the flaws, school DOES allow kids to meet lots of other people and learn social lessons. The introduction of computers, unless you handle it very carefully, will dramatically reduce the level of social contact. The kids are already plugged into TV, game systems and personal computers when they are at home. Moderation is what is needed, and enforced conditions where social activities cannot be hidden from.
So given this, the following are my recommendations. . .
Lock down those computers down as much as possible. Let them be word processors and little more.
Give teachers the ability to turn on wireless access with a wand or something. One click and the computer is able to access the network for the duration of the necessary portions of a class, after which it automatically returns to its native locked-down condition. Maybe lift these restrictions after school hours.
If it is possible, alter the program so that the computers are handed out in class rooms and must be handed back at the end of school. A kid should still be responsible for a given computer with his or her name on it, so that they learn to take care of the thing, (I killed a lot of scho
I suggest creation of a student admin group. They (with the guidance of a professional) can better weigh the needs of their peers against the need for security and control. It also serves as a great educational opportunity and a chance to gain real-life skills. We tried a similar program at my university (Colorado School of Mines) and it was very successful. It was sometimes hard to find students willing to volunteer their time as admins, but after 3 years we are still strong.
In general I encourage as little admin influence as possible. This provides the most educational experience. Where would I be today if someone was always taking care of my computer systems for me? (A: stress free?)
-Thomas W.
If the school district and tax payers are providing the computers, the computers should only run apps the school district approves of. And, if the computer has internet access, the schools routers should block any sites that are not pre-approved. I don't want my kid looking at porn, religious sites, atheist sites, and crazy liberal blogs like Slashdot.
Don't give them restrictions. If they can pass all the tests/exams and hadn in all assignemnts on time it shouldn't matter. If they fail it's not the fault of the laptop restrictions. It's the fault of the user. Putting restrictions on the laptops gives some a challenge to try and subvert.
Partition it into two drives. Put the home directories on the second drive. Manage a build with radmind. Once a year, people come in and get the first partition wiped to get a new build. If you need more help, email me, jdobbie@gmail.com. (Yup, I've done stuff like this before)
I'm just going to put this out there plainly: You don't have a prayer of successfully restricting the machines themselves. Students can tweak, reinstall, use Live CDs, or any other number of things to get around anything that is actually set up on their own machine, and I would even encourage them to do so. It's good to be curious and test the limits, and if the school is going to make that easy to do, then that's their own problem. Now, where you actually have a legitimate chance of doing something useful is on the network side. You can do real filtering there, and it will fit the purpose of preventing non-school-like use during school hours. They'll still be able to do as they please at home, as it should be. I don't know the exact wording of the state law you refer to, but either this should satisfy it or your law needs to be changed. Finally, don't waste too much energy on this. If the funding and competency of your school is anything like most high schools, you're still going to fail, so it's just a matter of making the talking heads at the state regulatory offices think you tried. A real network administrator with proper training might have a chance, but generally the folks setting things up in high schools are no match for high school students. I'll also second the opinion that you should be buying open systems, such as Linux-loaded laptops from System76, Dell, or similar, rather than Macs. You're a school - you should be using technology to help student LEARN, not just teach them to be sheep that know which button to click for certain pre-defined tasks.
AT the college where I work, most computer labs that were deployed a few years ago were locked down very tight. Basically all the students could do is use an approved set of programs, and Internet was blocked off. During that time, the computers were vandalised regularly and on a large scale. Students would unplug them for fun, smash the keyboard and scribble on the screen. And yes, we're talking about yound adults. Magically, when the restrictions were eased, and unfiltered Internet access was allowed, vandalism was reduced dramatically. Instead of wasting their time vandalising the school's equipment, the waste it on Hotmail or Facebook. Moral of the story, the best way to have students take care of computer equipment is to make them feel as if they own it... With that said, I still agree that giving every kid a laptop at school is a baaaaad idea. Any sane teacher would strongly oppose this plan...
At the University of Washington and many other institutions we are increasingly implementing laptop bans in the classrooms because the students are browsing Facebook and MySpace instead of paying attention to lecture. Normally I would argue that a person's computer is their own to whatever they wish. However, the screen-flashing from the constantly changing Facebook pages is distracting to other students who can see the screens. I have even observed students watching movies during lectures. I would argue that your students will find many other things to do with their computers in your classrooms that do no include learning. Besides, exactly what is it that you are trying to teach them that they could not otherwise learn without the laptops in the classroom? Clearly it is not proficiency with word processors. Most undergraduates in our classrooms don't even know how to create page headers or page breaks in their Word documents.
Is it really necessary for every student to have a laptop in order to receive a good education? Couldn't this money be better spent in other areas of education?
My answers to these questions are "yes" and "yes".
Nope. When one person harms others, that person is wrong. When breaking a law doesn't harm anyone, the law is wrong.
There are a good many laws to be made that only a few people will bother to break, but that makes them no more just or legitimate.
First of all, who has enough funding to throw Macbooks at 6th graders? That's way to much money to be throwing at children who will most likely break it.
Second, who wants to buy their laptop when they reach the 12th grade? Are you still using a computer that's half a decade old?
I remember back when I was in highschool, all we had were these IBM PS2 model 20's and 30's (ICK!) all hooked up via coax ethernet (ICK!) to another PS2 that ran Novel 3. Kids these days are lucky to get a laptop, wifi, etc!
No windows, no linux, Wordperfect 5.1 and some wacky menu. Oh and Tetris, Snipes, and netwars. ooo fun!
Anyway, WP5.1 has this "drop to dos prompt" feature and, well, colorizing the background colors to look like wordperfect was a snap. I think I spent 95% of my time in Dos playing with things instead of doing the "copy this document into the computer" busywork the teacher had us doing.
I found this floppy one day that pointed me in a fun direction tho.. on it I noticed that a batch file was set to log in as Supervisor (root) to the network without a password. Totally pwned!
Not that I did anything with it (after all, it *was* Novel 3). I ran across a copy of Snipes and played that with my classmates until the network was taken back.
.
First of all, please point me to the watchmaking educational software, because this I've gotta see. Believe me, I've looked for just such a beast. And on a practical note, how does that software get updated? Because the info on websites seems to keep up without any effort on my part. Now substitute a fast-moving, cutting edge subject like, say, quantum computing for watchmaking and these challenges get much, much harder.
And if your argument is "Well, the kids shouldn't be learning about watchmaking," then I say you have no business in the education field.
I'm sure when you studied kids learning about the signing of the Constitution, the machine without internet beats a machine with internet. But if you want them to learn about something a little more current, fuggedaboudit.
Personally, I think computers don't mesh well with most ciricula (and I was an IT professor for 12 years). For the school, the entire idea of providing laptops to students is misguided. As a parent, I would buy my own kid a machine with internet access (as I did for my kids) and keep the school out of it.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html Is the URL... but there is a lot of abiguity right now as this FEDERAL (not States) law is what governs what/how school children must be protected while using School resources that access the Internet. => The Childrenâ(TM)s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is a federal law enacted by Congress to address concerns about access to offensive content over the Internet on school and library computers. CIPA imposes certain types of requirements on any school or library that receives funding for Internet access or internal connections from the E-rate program â" a program that makes certain communications technology more affordable for eligible schools and libraries. In early 2001, the FCC issued rules implementing CIPA. More recently, Congress enacted additional protections for children using the Internet.
Interestingly, a couple studies have been done in the last few years, that show when you take away most of the driving laws, stop signs, stoplights, etc - the roads get safer.
There was a danish experiment a few years back that took away bike lanes, side walks and road signs/lights, so you had a big mixed use road without signals. And road safety went up. Anyone who has experienced the awe of third world roads can attest to this - seems like mass chaos, and yet no accidents!
The problem is too many laws/rules, and people turn off their brains and go into automatics mode.
If for exams, why not the exam got changed to avoid unfair? For some exams which do not allow to use computers may be the answer.
If for expose students to so call harmful information, why not we teach them to fight those information? Our children faced many many dangerous, we do not hide them in a safe!
And more important! No body have ever justified those so call harmful information is really did the harms!
Justified it if you want to restrict, it is about the the constitution! if you do not have the reason to limit one's right, no limition is allowed!
...you block the right sites. I'd recommend dealing with forums and blogs on a case by case basis. I know it'd be an annoying task, but I've had several cases where having access to a programming forum or blog at school would have significantly increased the educational value of having computers in the classroom. Blocking anything that's a blog or forum is a bad idea. Just an example, the website for MIT's admissions was blocked at school for being a blog. Ironic isn't it?
Teachers worldwide tends to lay restrictions.
Teachers worldwide daily demo punishment to our next generation.
This form a negative thinking culture. That make almost all of us think negatively.
That is really really bad, comparing to what the teachers contribute to our society, this make more damage to it.
And they will deny it, destroy everyone against it.
Let fight it.
We're not your personal army, Perkins Schools :)
Apple could literally make a KILLING in this program. I understand they are looking for a lower-cost entry-point MacNetBook equivalent or better of netbooks. Well, Apple, ramp up the design board and assembly lines, because with MILLIONS of potential new owners of laptops who could be swayed to "grow up Mac", you could strip down the MacBook to be the "Student MacAir".
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"students will essentially own the computer" Well, who REALLY owns the computer? If it's the school, then you have to replace it when it breaks, maintain it, update it, etc. If the students/parents own it, then you have no legal obligation or authority to place any restrictions on it.
On another note, the idea of giving students laptops is a decade old, and has been shown time and time again to prove nothing except that you have the abilty to blow massive amounts of money. Perhaps a little research into school districts that have tried and failed in this endeavour is in order.
On another note, you can't get any software for mac, so just save $1500 per computer and get a cheap toshiba.
While they're technically enforceable, their real purpose is to make clear to everyone what the rules of the game are going to be.
If you have to go to court over it, everyone has already lost.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
In my school, every student has a Gateway Tablet. Facebook is blocked during school, and regular web filtering is on anytime the students are at school. Filtering at home is managed by their parents. The students are administrators on their own tablet, and can install any software they want. This has worked well.
I think there's a disconnect between what governments want and what is actually required. Too many people are scared of the Big Bad Internet and all those legions of pedophiles and cyberbullies and l33t h4x0rs just waiting to corrupt The Poor Defencless Children. They take the position of "If we protect our children from it, they won't be hurt by it", and "If they can't access it, it won't corrupt them"; which is ironically the exact opposite tact taken with regard to that other topic, Sex Ed. If you tried to tell educators that they should be simply banning sex among children, or that they should segregate schools by sex, you'd be laughed out of town. Yet when it comes to something like the Internet, they attempt to do exactly that.
In our District (SD92 Nisga'a), we apply an absolute minimum amount of filtering. Don't get me wrong- our connection is content-filtered at the gateway in Victoria where our main connection point is- that's because the Province provides all schools with broadband connections, and they use a single gateway for all of us. It's filtered by Websense, which is a pretty stupid company overall, but fortunately, we have our own set of rules, so we're not tied to what everyone else gets. If a site is blocked that we feel is legitimate, we can (and have done) request a removal, and it takes a day or two to kick in.
At a District level, we do zero content filtering. We will occasionally block a website temporarily at the request of an administrator, but at most for a couple days (if, for example, there's a case of bullying that needs to be dealt with). We do watch our squid logs for 'interesting' surfing habits, but in several years, that's only resulted in a couple of reprimands for students.
As for other restrictions, we use Apple's Workgroup manager to help with that, although I have to say, it's probably not the best thing out there. It tends to cause us headaches with mobile users. We restrict what students can install through Workgroup Manager (they get a local account on the machine, but it's very restricted), and teachers can authenticate to allow apps to be installed if needed. We had to kill Bonjour on our networks because there was too much filesharing and chatting going on during classtime- which really comes down to a classroom management issue, not a technical one, but it's easier for teachers to ask for services to be nuked than to change how they run their classrooms. (That being said, most of our teachers are awesome and really do grok the importance of open networks.)
Our students get to take their lappys home at night, and because we use an authenticating proxy for web in our schools, they need to disable their proxies outside the district. Since they can't (limited account), we provide them with Firefox on their machines, and set it for direct connection. That way, Safari uses their Network Prefs proxy, and Firefox lets them straight out. For teachers and admins, we set them up with Locations.
As for customising the laptops, we pretty much let them at it. We spend a lot of time in the summers removing stickers and Sharpie doodles, but allowing the students to personalise their machines actually has given them a higher level of ownership, which results in less willful damage to the machines.
As to the discussions around selling the units when they hit a certain age, we've decided not to go that way. For student machines, because they are almost all using G4 iBooks, we're keeping as many as we can and using them for spare parts as the warranties expire. And honestly, after four years in a high-schooler's hands, those things aren't worth much! The Elementary students are a lot easier on their machines, so those ones last longer. We talked about selling them at, say 4 years, but decided it would be better to keep them for spare parts. While you will only get $200 for a 4-year old 12" iBook, if the screen is good it's worth $600, and the logic board
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
Students should not have computers as a compulsory or required part of their education.
First, this is money most public schools don't have in spades;
Second, there isn't a ton of evidence that computers enable a level of education that is any better than the "old-fashioned" way
Third, the teachers need extensive additional training if the computers are going to be used as anything more than fancy word processors and spreadsheet-chart makers
Fourth, technology has been increasing for the past thirty years, the quality of education has not. I'd in fact argue that our technology level has decreased the quality of education.
My high school had laptops for every student, and one of the most annoying things was the VPN. While the laptop was attached to the school's wireless network (maybe the wired network too, I never used it), access to any site outside that network (including the school's own websites) required you to join the VPN, for which you had login credentials. That meant that every time you opened the computer, it took probably two minutes to get on the Internet, what with waking up, joining the wireless network, waiting for the VPN client to connect, and entering you ID.
This may have facilitated some kind of logging or something, but I found it extraordinarily tedious, and the VPN sometimes failed, kicking the whole school off of an otherwise good Internet connection.
This space reserved for administrative use.
I'd probably focus on content rather than function. Obscene sites should be blocked at the school's internet firewall as well as on the machine itself. Myspace and facebook should be allowed. The teachers should be able to keep them off of it (for the most part) during school hours. As far as games, chat apps and the like I'd let them go. The laptop isn't suddenly going to change good students into bad ones. The ones that want to learn will use it for that, the ones that want to be distractions will find them with or without a shiny macbook. Lastly, I'm not terribly familiar with OSX (despite the fact that I'm sending this post from one) so forgive me if this is a non-issue. Can't they simply obtain a fresh install of OSX from bit-torrent and negate all your efforts anyway?
The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night, and will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation. Here's the dilemma â" how much freedom do you give to students?
Clearly the students *don't* 'essentially' own the computers, if you can do all that stuff to them. ("We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat.") At best they are operating under a restricted license, like a car. Looks like you will end up using the 'parent' model: "Do X and get grounded, otherwise, you're free: use your common sense."
However, you are already teaching them an even more important lesson: 'a word means what *we say* it means, and not what it *actually* means'. "License is ownership". What you are *really* saying is: 'Here is your ballandchain. You are responsible for it, but we'll be watching.' This is *excellent* training for the hypocritical and surveillant world in which they will soon find themselves. (Not to mention preparing them for their eventual mortgage.) However, you have failed to explain to the students what you are really doing, instead hiding it behind a mystic fog of 'empowerment' and 'responsibility'. If you deconstructed your velvet prison for the enlightenment of your students, they might actually trust you -- because they respected you for being up front with them. The fact is, some will be responsible and some won't -- no matter what rules you come up with.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Having been on the receiving end of something very similar a few years ago at school, my primary concern is that the project will achieve very little for those students already with access to computers at home. We paid for the systems, however when the scheme was presented it was made to seem virtually essential to have a laptop at school. The reality was that the majority were left at home, as there really was no need for them in lessons. From experience I believe that throwing IT at education in this manner is not helpful. The system was locked down by means of a dual-booting Windows XP setup. One installation we could use as we wished, the other was heavily locked down. By 'locked down' - we did not have any local account access, just a network account which synchronised with the school servers when it could access the wireless network. This wireless network was WPA protected, with the key entered onto the 'school' side (the objective here to prevent the internet being used at school for games etc., which you could only install on the 'home' side). Of course, the effectiveness of those measures was questionable.
You should read about what happened to 13 Kurtztown students who faced felony charges for their violations of the district usage policy.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/25/0130230
That said, during the day it would be nice for the teachers if chat,im,myspace,facebook could be disabled cause many kids will be distracted during class by that.
Since they are intent on using Macbooks, all it takes is to either download, borrow or buy a copy of OS X. You stick the disc in the drive, boot from it (there are no mac utlities that will block this) and reinstall the OS.
No need for cracking, no need for hacking. Just reinstall. OSX doesn't have serial-based protection, the macintosh itself is the "dongle".
I believe you'd be better off with Linux. You can lock down the user interface more than a Mac. It's less maintenance work for you and less legal liability. It also affords your users freedom to run their own stuff in a sandbox.
You can block certain things like iChat and facebook in school and block students from downloading games, but the reality is that if a student wants to break any restrictions on the laptop, they can probably do so just by Googleing it.
Giving kids laptops is stupid, it really is. It's a waste of money and a distraction. Students only need computers for writing papers and doing research and that's what computer labs are for. So seriously, don't waste your time and money giving students a distracting, easily hackable tool and trying to censor it, especially when STUDENTS DON'T NEED LAPTOPS.
P.S. I'm a student and think this is a horrible idea.
As some one who managed a school's network, I've found that the kids are moderately clever at defeating what you do. You can make the off limit stuff harder or slower, but not impossible unless you lock the computer down to the point that it is impossible to use for much of anything.
A good part of this is education, both of kids and of parents. We had a set of rules -- a code of conduct or appropriate use, and fairly limited filtering. E.g. I 'enforced' a no porn rule. My definition was simple: If you are uncomfortable with the thought of your sister or mom (boys' school) then it's porn. Monitors in the lab faced hallway windows. First offense, I took the kid aside and explained why I considered inappropriate. Second offence he had no access until he wrote 200 times (by hand) "I will not use school computers to surf porn." At this point they either get clever enough to not get caught, or they get alternate sources for their pix.
Similarly part of the intro process is appropriate use of social networking sites. We talk about the risks, the damage that group gossip can do, the possibility of predators.
Your situation will be different. You're somewhat younger than my group. (I had 7-12) You have full time access by the kids. Your filtering will be more limited.
You need to educate the parents as well as the kids. Explain to parents what the issues are, and suggest to the parents that depending on their kid, they may want home rules such as, "You use the laptop at the kitchen table when your mom or I are in the room." Or "Please leave your bedroom door open and the screen facing the door."
You should have a system of sanctions for inappropriate use. These can range from "Your laptop needs to stay after school" to blocking internet access outside of school to forced rebuild of system and applications folders.
OpenDNS is your friend. It makes it easy to block the worst of the really raunchy sites.
As a second thread:
Your ownership period is way too long. The lifespan of a laptop is short -- typically only a couple years. Then too, consider that even a state of the art laptop given to a 6th grader will, 6 years later, be totally lame.
I suggest that laptops stay in active use for 2 years, then you replace them all. Or if budget is a big constraint, then 3 years. If really a constraint, then 3 years in senior high, then move them to junior high so the kids have a bright and shiny laptop to look forward to making the transition from grade 9 to grade 10.
On lists I've been a member of that discussed laptop per child ownerership the consensus seemed to be that you needed 10% over for spares, and that had about 5% mortality (uneconomic to repair)
I know of one school that had a two year cycle. They would lease the laptops for 2 years, and replace them all simultaneously. This made imaging easier, as they all had identical hardware. Now that was winsnooze, which is a lot trickier in terms of maintaining multiple images.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Treat them like kids.
This means they aren't miniature adults.
reduce contamination or theft of company IP. Many of the restricted use policies were aimed at protecting companies legally, but prior to the ubituity of mobile computers' ability to boot and use external devices and simultaneously bypass local/onboard storage. So, if a users uses bootable DVDs or CDs or flash drives, and no data is stored nor allowed to use the hard drive even as a temp location, and if all the user-surfed/interacted bytes/bits only go to user-owned storage media, then using the company computer is almost like using the company car to buy dinner on the way home, or to drop off mail on the way to work... It would be smart, though, for the user to disconnect the company drive (if IT hasn't glued or special-screw-locked the drive cover to the chassis) to eliminate any chance of sophisticated scripts mounting and reading internal drives to read them and to attempt to write to them.
I would argue that as long as the machine ID is not tied to acts nefarious or embarrasing to the company, then who should care? I am sure plenty of carpenters use some of their company tools around the home, even if they have a totally duplicated, personal set.
Companies wanting to REALLY enforce no-non-work use need to consider specialized BIOS-MOBO combinations, but then that could increase the asset value and may not be worth the expense and reduced support options.
As an aside, I think Apple could modify the MacAir or the MacBook models to be sub-$500 and to be student-friendly, but not as appealing to adults seeking to get a cheap Apple netbook. The lightness and larger screens would be superior to the eePC type netbooks, and the al-you-min-ee-yum chassis would lend to durability, and survive the students' bulging backpacks chock-full of overweighing text books.
I think Apple could be missing a great opportunity to become prime source for student computing. Schools might be able to migrate their current seat licenses to BootCamp or Parallels or VMWare or VirtualBox...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
As a parent, my job is to recognize that when she's old enough to have real curiosity about it, we need to have exactly the discussion you describe. In fact, I've used very very similar wording. She knows that what's depicted tends to be at the extreme end of human behavior, and doesn't accurately represent human sexuality for most people. Most of what you see in porn that looks sick, is indeed fairly sick -- not representative of healthy relationships at all.
Also, my knowing that she can get to it does not mean I accept that she's allowed to do so. She's not -- but I know that curiosity is normal and the world isn't going to come to an end. I'd much rather my kids can come to me with questions or problems without fear of being in trouble for thinking about "such things".
So far its working out for me as a parent. I'll have to hold back on taking any bows until all three reach adulthood and are safe, happy, and on the road to whatever success means to them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Secure OS/X???...BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Any reasonably intelligent HS sophomore with a familiarity with FreeBSD, and a Mac install disc could gut any security restrictions in a New York minute...and a truly intelligent one could cover his tracks! Just give the kids the damn laptops, sit back, shut up, and let them learn.
mweep:the sound made by the system bell on a SPARC workstation.
No school district is going to buy Macbooks for all students in 7 grades. Even with the fee to own them after graduation, that still means the school is investing capital.
I can see a school district buying cheap netbooks... but not Macbooks.
That type of policy is also there to ensure the availability of the PC in case the employee actually needs to use it for company purposes. PC's have policies and are locked down in my company not to protect from IP theft but to protect them from stupid users (protecting IP is exactly what DRM is for). Students aren't expected to know how to properly operate a PC. They also aren't bright enough to know that the gamecheaters.com site will likely contain malware. I think that one of the reasons they have to set policies like this is that they can't simply lock down the mac like you can a PC.
There is a difference between carpenters tools and a laptop. I would expect that a carpenter would not only qualify as expert with that tool, but be able to replace it if he breaks it. Likewise I have no problem handing out an unrestricted laptop to even a junior helpdesk tech. If they break it I expect them to be able to fix it. I wouldn't expect the average homeowner to properly use anything other than the basic tools and will likely be unable to complete any complicated projects, and the average user only knows how to use 10% of office.
I've recently worked in the IT section of a large girl's school (K-12). Every girl from Year 5 to Year 12 is provided with a fully loaded Macbook.
Each machine has a comprehensive suite of productivity, creativity and connectivity tools. Every girl has administrator rights to their machine. There is monitoring but no blocking on the school network. Students are encouraged to adopt appropriate use - and this is seen as an educational issue - so counselling and mentoring replace punishment and punitive measures in the very few instances of inappropriate use.
If the girls do manage to corrupt their machine - we simply try to salvage data and then reimage the machine and return it to them. Compared to the 8 or so other schools where I've worked the instances of misuse in this environment are barely noticeable.
Blocking and witholding do nothing to promote appropriate behavioural choices. In fact it might be seen to be instigating poor behaviours - trying to circumvent factors that limit comprehensive use of computers seems a very natural response to me.
Give the students the opportunities to make choices - give them the chance to learn how to behave responsibly - do NOT pander to petty fear and paranoia... students can and will respect the openness and will generally work more effectively in such an environment - especially if the teachers and other school staff model the enthusiasm, productivity and creativity that the machines afford.
Prohibition will always see the rise of an underground economy in whatever commodities are witheld. DO we really want Elliot Ness wandering our schools?? I'd rather see Mr Holland, John Keats and other inspirational figures.
if you allow the students to bring these laptops home, then whatever you put on them for security or filtering is all null and void to the people that want to get around it. those who want to get around it...will. its that simple. they could simply format the drives at home and install their own OS without the schools additional monitoring/filtering software. And another small thing. being able to remotely monitor ones laptop when they are in their homes, is definitely invasion of privacy.
Do not give/rent/sell school-owned laptops to the students. Just let the students use their own laptops, bought by them or by their families/carers. You can help everyone have a laptop by giving the students gift cards/coupons, or making a special deal with a local computer shop and issuing a prepaid coupon that is valid only for laptops. You can get ideas on the specific implementation by studying how the Greek Government ran its own laptops-for-students programme (which is a special programme for good university students): the student can choose any laptop they want and are the owner of their laptops from the day of purchase; this works easily with the student just visiting a computer shop, saying they want to buy a laptop under the government's programme, the government issues a unique ID number to them which is then given to the shop (if I remember well), and the student gets any laptop they want with a 80% (up to 500 EUR) discount. In this way the student can get any laptop, even with GNU/Linux, with no strings attached, and it is their property. I do not know all the details of the programme, but at least that's what I remember when I happened to read about it.
If you give out guide lines there will be open rebellion and clubs will for to find a way around it. I am certain that there will be an underground of kids figuring how to get around the restriction.
I guess if it was put to me. I would specify all programs that the student can use and then do a random search and confiscate any computer that violated the "list". Make sure the parent understand it and absolutely no exceptions. I would also have the best anti virus software out there and have it installed on each students PC with auto checking every time the student logs on to the school network. The rules have to be iron tight with no way to wiggle out and they will try.
If the students own the laptops then get out of their way you self-righteous buffoon.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
macbooks are expensive. i would suggest getting something cheaper. either way, i would apply eavy filtering at school. as far as when the kisd are at home, let them do what ever they want. Lock the machines down at school, and open them up at home.
"Too bad they aren't the students' computers; they belong to the school until end of year/term when the students have an option to purchase. Only after the student has purchased the laptop should the restrictions come off but not before. " You mis-read the original. They buy the computers when they graduate. Who would want to buy a six-year-old laptop at any price? In fact, are the sixth graders who receive one of these computers going to need an update or new computer before they graduate? This whole story is full of holes anyway. I'd like to know where this district is and how they can afford to buy computers for every student, maintain them, monitor their usage and replace the broken or old ones - which will probably be most of them within the first two years. I don't think it's a good idea and I would not want to live in this district.
You are planning to put restrictions on hardware you don't control? It's cute that you're trying but really, you are wasting your time.
Ok, there are things you can do: stiff penalties, hardware tampering indicators, remove the Firewire and USB ports, etc, but you don't sound like you are ready to go there.
Also...remote monitoring? I hope you can't possibly say, flip on the iSight 'cause if you can someone else can, and will, while the thing is in someone's bedroom.
In all seriousness, you are asking a legal question in a technical forum. Find out from your district's lawyer what you are required to block by law. Find out what the consequences for failure are. Perform the former & learn to accept the latter. You have my sympathies. (Protip: If the answer you get when you first ask isn't a variation on "It depends." consider getting your own counsel. Scratch that, get your own lawyer anyway.)
Don't suppose there'd be any way of forcing the machines into logging into seperate accounts, (blocked an de-restricted) depending on weather or not they're in range of the school's wireless network would there? I guess there'd have to be some kind of an external blocker too though for outside school, can't have the little darlings pirating Spore in a seperate window behind their English essays...
This does not work with a laptop.