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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?"
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
(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
That's a great way to prepare them for the real world, isn't it, where corporate computers are locked down pretty hard. I think a better idea would be to survey some companies (larger ones with as many or more employees as there are students) in the local area and average out their practices.
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
Not much else to say on the subject. If you're using my taxes to purchase those laptops, you don't get to decide what content they can access.
I have a 5 year old Toughbook that regularly get's tossed 20 feet into the bed of a pickup truck. sometimes I miss and hit the pavement on the other side of the truck.
It's great, freaks out contractors all the time.
"Wow cool laptop!"
yup, it's expensive, about 3 grand.
"wow!"
gotta go, hey watch this. Throw it at the wall, dump my coffee in the keyboard.
"holy crap!!! what are you doing????"
Trying to get the boss to buy me a new one...
Mine looks like it has spent 3 tours of duty in iraq. I get really wierd looks at starbucks with it sitting there with road rash and a dent in the corner.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The law of freedom of speech applies to the people providing it; not necessarily accessing it.
SCOTUS rulings say otherwise, specifically school systems cannot censor libraries for non obscene materials.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
That's a great way to prepare them for the real world, isn't it, where corporate computers are locked down pretty hard.
In my career (since 1982), there have only been two places I've worked where the computers were "locked down", and these restrictions were trivially bypassed. There were policies in effect at these companies, including one where you supposedly had to apply to your manager for permission to access each indivdual web site. In practice, it took about two or three days before any new employee or contractor was told the IP number of the unrestricted proxy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Anyway... the (clever) kids will bypass the filtering and remote management within a few hours/days of getting the machines, so the point is more or less moot.
That is my objection to this.
Locking things down is futile without punishment for kids who work around it. Given the incentives, the punishment will have to be heavy to be effective.
By giving them their own laptops to take home, you are giving them a very strong temptation to break the rules. All the more so because they are now less likely to have their own PCs - an issue that does not apply to adults taking an employer's laptop home.
Another difference is that you are saying that they will "essentially own" the laptops. This is likely to make them feel that they have the right to do what they want with them.
It would be far better to do what employers do and say: this is our laptop, use it for what we say: if you want to do anything else, buy your own. I am assuming that letting them actually treat them as if them own them is not an option.
While I agree that the question of restrictions needs to be thought out, I also think that the whole "they will be able to buy it when they graduate for a nominal fee" is retarded, as in "Ain't gonna happen." Would you want to buy a 6-year-old computer that's been dragged back and forth between home and school on a daily basis, and is probably obsolete as all hell?
Also, why not just spring for cheaper linux laptops, and just give them for free at the end of the 6 years? You'll save more up-front than you'd ever get on the back end with a "nominal fee", you won't have to pay for an OS update at the 3-year point, and you can upgrade the hard drive, ram, and wireless card easily and cheaply.
Heck, buy Windows laptops and then ask for a rebate on each unused copy of the OS.
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!