Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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
>>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.
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.
Learning does not require a computer.
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.
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*.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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".
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.
Isn't giving them an Apple product restrictive enough in itself already?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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?