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Students Hack School-Issued iPads Within One Week
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Los Angeles Unified School District started issuing iPads to its students this school year, as part of a $30 million deal with Apple. Now Sam Sanders reports at NPR that less than a week after getting their iPads, high school students have found a way to bypass software blocks on the devices that limit what websites the students can use. The students are getting around software that lets school district officials know where the iPads are, what the students are doing with them at all times and lets the district block certain sites, such as social media favorites like Facebook. 'They were bound to fail,' says Renee Hobbs, who's been a skeptic of the iPad program from the start. 'There is a huge history in American education of being attracted to the new, shiny, hugely promising bauble and then watching the idea fizzle because teachers weren't properly trained to use it and it just ended up in the closet.' The rollout of the iPads might have to be delayed as officials reassess access policies. Right now, the program is still in Phase 1, with fewer than 15,000 iPads distributed. 'I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices,' says Steven Zipperman. 'I want to prevent a "runaway train" scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the roll-out.' The incident has prompted questions about overall preparations for the $1-billion tablet initiative."
Good thing they didn't waste $1 billion on teachers or books.
has one of these iPads (albeit in another state in another school district). I'm not sure if it's the same "security" but she says the kids at her school quickly identified the culprit, which was the profile that was set up for them. This isn't hacking, this is knowing how an iPad is setup, FYI. All that needs to happen is that the kid figures it out and deletes it.
If my kid "accidentally" deletes the profile, all that'll happen is that she'll get a talking to.
Please.
No wonder the kids in CA are seen as dummies to the rest of the country.
- whose school district had gotten all the kids iPads. She was complaining that the new toys, in conjunction with all the stupid assessments she had to do, had put her weeks behind the curriculum because she had to spend all her time helping her third graders learn to use the tablets. So I'm sure the teachers in CA who got stuck with this are frustrated about this and probably the ones who are now on delay are greatly relieved.
Personally, I think that money could better be spent on good old fashioned computer labs. A good student PC is a heck of a lot cheaper, and these kids need to learn to type on a real keyboard or else they're going to be at a huge disadvantage compared to their peers who do.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Kids bypassing security is a total failure for this program? Come onnnn. If anything it's giving them a reason to want to use them more and learn a little something about technology and security. But I guess they're not satisfied unless they have properly trained obedient creatures, not humans with the ability to think for themselves.
Students do this and the worst they get is a "Oh behave" and the ipad taken away at the end of the day. I do that with a work computer and I get a nice pink slip. Why do we keep trying to "protect the children" when it seems they are getting pretty good and protecting themselves.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Better hire and pay good teachers.
I also hope they find and disable the software that is spying on them.
the refrence from my snide comment in case anyone thinks its too tinfoil:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9159278/Pa._school_district_denies_spying_on_students_with_MacBooks
It took them a week to hack and iPad.
Why in my day we .... had punch cards run at the nearby community college using RPG. Must be nice to get that new fangled technology.
There's no reason they can't block everything from the network end. Host.deny
There's no reason to police what the students do at home either. That's just big brother and between the parents and students.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Basically I could have told them this was going to happen because of how iOS is designed. We have about 200 and they don't leave our buildings (most of them are in classroom sets/charging carts) and I'd say at least 5-10 a week have to be factory reset because the kids remove the profile and lock the devices.
How is it this easy? Well since iOS (Android has this same issue and more, sadly), unlike say, ChromeOS, isn't designed to be managed from an enterprise level. So everything we do with policies can simply be removed by the user. No password required.
We tried the carrot and stick approach, the main profile contains the WiFi password, which they don't know, so when they remove it the devices drop off the network and are basically useless. This probably stops most of the folks from messing with them too much but we still have a few that just want to watch the world burn.
However if you GIVE them to the kids, and let them take em home where they can use their own personal WiFi (even worse if they know the password for the school owned wifi) then the carrot is gone. There is little-no incentive for them to leave the iPad's locked down.
This is why we've stopped buying iPads and started buying ChromeBooks. I hope Apple (and Google's Android group, too) takes note, were far from the only district going this direction.
Mikael Blomkbist: Here's your new school iPad, Lisbeth. It has blocks so you can't get to facebook and stuff.
Lisbeth Salander: (Looks at him with disgust) Please.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here, this will explain it to you
Dilbert 1
Dilbert 2
I actually like my iDevices and I don't believe that I'm saying this. But why iPads? They are limited use devices and once you add a keyboard you might as well provide them laptops. But even that is pushing it. Get them a bunch of cheap Kindles and provide better computer labs at schools and libraries with extended hours.
I'm a fan of using tablets to replace textbooks. Apple could capitalize on this by making a very stripped down E-iPad for educational use that neither includes WiFi nor cellular data. Apple could create a special education store like E-iTunes and have the tablet interface with that. That would be an effective use of a tablet that doesn't include a complex spyware network. It would make the tablet ONLY for reading books and watching educational/instructional videos. I figure that would be a far more effective use of technology. Furthermore, this should be introduced at the middle (jr. high) school level. Kids will be introduced to technology early on by their parents and their world outside of the classroom.
Snowball in hell
Sound of eyeballs getting reall big
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
the analog version of the chemistry E-Book has also been hacked. an enormous toothbrush mustache has been rendered in analog on Marie Curie making her look exactly like hitler...a clear violation of our zero tolerance policy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
My school attempted to lock down their Windows 3.11 386s, it was a challenge to get into them. I never caused trouble, but because it was a challenge I worked out how to beat them. Once I found out, my friends found out, and then pretty much everyone in the school will know by the end of the week.
That was a device in a room, with limited access, this is a device they can take home, and have unfettered access.
So to sum up:
Duh!
Any device can be reset to defaults that's not much of a hack and if the kids do it, the school will know the second it hits the school network. (If their IT people have any skills at all) Bypassing the lockdown on a device is only an issue if you can do it without being detected.
I'm currently doing some of those newfangled MOOC courses. Very neat. But guess what? The math course is nearly entirely done using pen and paper, with printed examples and hand-drawn examples, down to on-screen applying scissors to said paper, to demonstrate concepts and things. And yes, I sit in front of the screen with a paper pad and a (mechanical) pencil (and a numbers-only(!) calculator) because that's just about the most useful thing for that purpose. Oh, and a paper book for reference.
Makes you think, dunnit?
If it doesn't, you're management in a school system, busily making this "project" a success now that the industry lobbyists have had their share. But what about educating the kids, eh?
No wonder last week I saw some posts asking for help on how to hack Ipads on some forums...
A new generation of script kiddies.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
At least now the school knows not to include camera-enabled surveillance software on the phones.
Dyolf Knip
Seriously, though while I hate the idea of Windows RT and it's locked boot loader and inability to run unsigned code it seems like this is the perfect use case for such a computer.
It's an important civics lesson about the futility of censorship in an open society, and a technology exercise to boot! In a world where tools and processes to root just about every iOS and Android device out there exists, I'm not sure how they ever would have imagined device-level censorship would have worked; router-level censorship is a difficult enough challenge. Did they imagine that that wouldn't be good enough once the childrens got out of school and connected to non-school WiFi hotspots? That's cute.
OK, so now the Ipads are more useful, now with FB the kids can better collaborate with their classmates.
the whole idea of Ipads or any type of tablet was stupid and counter productive to begin with, but the ability to "hack them" does not change that.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This isn't failure - this is success. What better way to teach students about security, censorship, operating systems and network protocols? These are all important lessons in today's world and encountering them within an educational environment COULD be the perfect place to analyze them and promote deeper study. If the hacking is celebrated instead of scorned, we might just be raising a generation better equipped to evaluate the genuine priorities and address them.
Giving a kid a powerful toy and then telling them not to play with it is the height of absurdity.
This reminds me of TI-83s in middle/high school. You weren't supposed to install games onto them, and teachers would often threaten to wipe them if they found stuff installed (tbf, the concern was probably mainly cheating tools), but everyone had Tetris and Galaxian and Dying Eyes and Hegemony.
So you remove everything that is worth doing on it, and track the user like its 1984... no wonder the kids are cracking them.
Hacking the iPad is not an issue. The real issue is that an iPad is a very poor instrument for teaching. It's a consumption tool (like a glorified TV). The idiots that approved this were short sighted.
As others have said. A PC is cheaper and far more powerful, particularly for content creation - where the grey matter is actually stretched.
The problems in education in the US are not about the supplies the kids have, and the iPads, while great for publicity, won't have much effect on student achievement.
The big problems have a lot more to do with:
- A lack of pre-K education for a lot of kids means that many start about 2-3 years behind. For example, I was one of two students who walked into first grade able to read at all, count, and add. Head Start and similar programs could help with that, but they've never come close to having the funding they'd really need to solve that problem, and parents are often completely unaware that that sort of thing even exists.
- Teachers are poorly paid compared to other professions requiring similar levels of education, so we don't have our smartest people opting to become teachers. For example, someone who's good at math or science, and good at explaining it to other people, could choose to get an engineering degree and make about $85K a year, or go into teaching and make about $50K a year. Which would you expect them to choose?
- The school districts that desperately need the best teachers are not the same districts as can afford the best teachers. Teachers, like most people, opt to work for places that pay them well if possible, and that means wealthy suburban districts can get better staff than poor urban or rural districts. But generally speaking, the poor kids are the ones who could most use a really good teacher to give them a chance to not be poor.
- For students in minority cultures, education is not always seen as a path to financial success, because (certainly historically, and seems to be still at least partially true) educated people in that minority do not necessarily get the jobs they are qualified for. If education isn't a path to success, then many students will be motivated to just muddle through until either they graduate or drop out, because either way they're going to be flipping burgers for a living if they are lucky enough to get a job.
None of that will be solved with iPads, just like none of that was solved by Apple giving out Apple II's to a lot of schools back in the 1980's.
I am officially gone from
Fortres 101 didn't stop us in middle school, and iOS won't stop them.
iPads, what a joke. So here in Chelsea, MI all High School students got theirs. The security program locks it down to the point that it is useless outside the school building. And yet, they are expected to use them a home by teachers. Needless to say the students are hacking them but most of them are just not using them or using them just because the teachers say so.
The iPad experience is a lesson to kids on how a dictatorship state works and why freedom defeats it.
Our school has a 1:1 program with iPads in our middle school. It's worked out very well, but not without it's hickups.
The real issue here is lack of understanding in the deployment. If I'm not mistaken, their project listed above was a last minute effort with little to no research or training. There are measures that can be taken to prevent these situations, such as supervision profiles and MDM profiles. Sounds like they had neither, or little of one.
Also, last year was our test with one of the lowest scoring classes they've had in a while. There was quite an improvement in their testing. IMO, I agree with the sentiment that full size labs still are important though, and personally dislike the lack of natural typing on the iPad. It's a great educational tool if used with the correct MDM and grade levels.
When I was growing up, my dad would sabotage the TV by removing components in order to keep me and my sisters off of it. Being the little shit that I was, as soon as he left, I would sneak over to radio shack and spend my allowance buying whatever components I needed to repair it.
Today I'm an electrical engineer.
Perhaps giving kids an incentive to learn to hack their devices isn't such a bad idea.
I work for a school where we rolled out iPads on a limited level and wanted to prevent the scenario where they were given away to someone else. We also wanted to deploy software to these iPads so there was some functionality. This is what we found:
-There's always the functionality to wipe an iPad from the user end. When we asked Apple about this, they said that the concept behind the iPad was that control of the iPad was always meant to be in the user's hand. You can not disable the ability to wipe an iPad.
-We looked into MDM providers to be able to track where an iPad is (iCloud can also do this, but the user can just log the iCloud user out). However, we found MDMs are installed by profile and you can not make an MDM profile mandatory (meaning that anyone using the iPad can just remove the profile and MDM easily).
-We looked into installing applications without tying it back to an Apple ID. We were told that this is impossible without Apple Configurator (Configurator ties the app back to a workstation). However, to do this, the machines need to be kept in supervised mode, which prevents users from connecting the iPad to iTunes on any other devices but the main backoffice machine. So users need to go through some other method (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) to offload their pictures/movies/etc (this has changed in iOS so that now iPads supervised with the most recent version of Configurator can synch with MacOS machines)
Apple doesn't really seem to want their devices to be owned by anyone but the user and they're specifically enterprise unfriendly. Deploying iPads to a school is an uphill battle and it doesn't sound like these machines were "hacked" but rather students went outside of the lines that the school intended.
They're burying the lead so deep, I don't know if they'll ever find it. Yes, security is a joke on them but that's not the story. Apple products are overpriced pretend luxury items that have no place in business or school. There are superior products that cost half the money and acceptable products that cost 1/6th the money. If I lived in the area getting taxed for this project, I'd be outside the school with a pitchfork and torch.
While it is questionable to want to log onto the surveillance software known as facebook, at least the kids are learning to bend the stupid devices to their will and not someone else's. Serves the BOE right for buying DRM and wasting taxpayer money.
What exactly do the students(what age/grade?) do with these devices(iPads/Chrome Books)?
How does the device improve/aid learning over more traditional teaching tools(I presume books vs. ereaders)?
How much more does the technology program cost than the previous traditional methods?
I'm presently watching my "child" attending university. I am noticing a significant, near massive, loss in learning productivity due to online books, multiple guess homework assignments, and tests. There are at least six different sites for the various functions that all look and behave differently, all have a significant fee attached and all provide little to no value over a book and a test paper. While I am seeing a serious decline in their learning, I am seeing a massive increase in expenditure to access their book online, to gain access to homework assignments, to gain access to the testing site, to have and use a "clicker" in order to "participate" in class(required for grade) by responding in a massive online multiple guess(MOMG) fashion to the prof's questions.and more. Yet, despite the obvious decline in learning, the kids(not just mine) think "it's great because I can do my homework on my phone!" (and fail).
All the while, the state university system is announcing the eminent implementation of all online degrees. They see it as a major source of revenue and a means of significantly increasing their enrollments without increasing facilities cost. "It's going to be so totally awesome for learning and for the kids". BULLCRAP!
Kindles retail substantially less than an iPad, so in what universe would kindles cost more and have less software?
Morever, since this device is *supposed* to be locked down to only the applications installed, how the hell can you claim it would have less software? All it needs are the software packages that are wanted by the school for the purposes of the device (doesn't have to be a specific company's product to be able to do the function) and that's all. 40,000 apps on the Google App Store vs 60,000 apps on the iTunes AppStore makes no flaming difference.
Imagine if instead of spending $1B in tablets, California would put this money into increased teacher salaries so that the career path would be more desirable so that more competent people would thrive to become teachers..
Technology in the classroom...all of it...it's just **tools to teach**
Anyone who things technology can reduce staff budget or allow larger class sizes is smoking crack.
A professionally trained, well-paid *human* teacher is absolutely the only thing that educates a child.
Everything else is just a tool.
Thank you Dave Raggett
"and then watching the idea fizzle because teachers weren't properly trained to use it and it just ended up in the closet."
Well that's convenient, now it's the teacher's fault?
Administrators are the ones who come up with these crazy ideas to flood classrooms with pointless, unusable technology. Teachers just want to teach. An English or Math teacher shouldn't have to be some kind of expert on iPads to do their job.
I'm sure every teacher involved would have much rather had the money for technology spent on the basics: textbooks, supplies, maintaining a clean and safe campus, bringing back programs like art, music, etc.
Teachers don't *want* this kind of technology, only administrators do. Let's not pretend this failed because of the teachers, it failed because it was a terrible idea and the value of devices like iPads in the context of education hasn't even been proven to exist. All studies support the notion that technology in the classroom is a distraction, and there is no data showing they assist learning at all.
Anyone know how the devices were secured and how it was bypassed? Did they use some type of MDM solution (eg MobileIron, Air-Watch, etc)? Anyone have any technical details?
The student must be allowed, able and accomodated if they say they do not wish to have the device if the agreement is so draconian.
Am I missing something here? The report says:
"The students are getting around software that lets school district officials know where the iPads are, what the students are doing with them at all times and lets the district block certain sites, such as social media favorites like Facebook."
Are the schools having both the parents and kids sign a legal document outlining the details of having these IPads and the penalties for not using them properly? Why give a student something if they are going to use it in a manner that is not intended? If they get caught the penalty would be high.. (E.g. small claims court and fine them $5000 for inappropriate use.) Or make it so the students would have to cough up some dough prior to getting the IPad that would be returned to them when the IPad is returned in good condition.
This just goes to show the extraordinary stupidity of school administrators and politicians. iPads and the like are toys, nothing more. Anyone who spends even 15 minutes observing a kid on one of these devices would see that. Kids will gravitate towards the most entertaining educational game they can find at which point it's just a game. Pencil and paper is still a far more effective set of tools for learning. And for older kids, you're basically just giving them a glorified text book. At that point they'll try to hack it, like these kids in LA have, or they'll never touch it because it's boring. Then let's not forget the logistics of the whole program, and how many of these will get destroyed throughout the school year.
Politicians have convinced the stupid population that more money is always the solution. They're more interested in pandering for influence than solving problems. So they'll build a beautiful school in some crime-ridden inner city neighborhood, and stuff it full of expensive crap like these iPads and expect that the problems are going to solve themselves. Within 5 to 10 years the school has devolved back into the dump it was meant to replace. Why? Because too many parents don't give a shit. The ones who do care get fed up with the problems and move out. So there's no concerted effort to fundamentally address these problems. Except for teachers, the ones who haven't given up anyway. Unfortunately, they're perpetually underpaid because even though a municipality will raise taxes for schools it doesn't mean it will go anywhere useful.
So many things would improve if parents were held more accountable for their kids instead of offering yet another handout, this time in the form of an iPad.
Any kid who can't crack them needs more education.
I see it in colleges all the time - a room full of students clacking away on their laptops or tapping away on their tablets, completely oblivious to what the instructor is saying and doing.
Over the last ten years of being adjunct faculty at a local university, I've seen this trend continue at alarming rates. There is a huge push by Apple and others to evolve college from institutions of higher learning to institutions of learning how to look stuff up on the Internet with a mobile device.
Need to build a bridge? There's an app for that that links you to a Wikipedia article on building bridges. It's hilarious and mortifying at the same time that these administrators think that giving every student a laptop or tablet will solve their institution's educational problems. Perhaps it's the kickbacks we all know they are getting from the device manufacturers.
My alma mater experimented with the "connected classroom" back in the 1990s, and it proved to be a failure. The students taking a class in the "connected classroom" with laptops for notes got lower grades and had a harder time defending their understanding of the subject matter.
So running an app to hack iPads is news?
in high school, we initially disabled the proxy server from our computers so that we could go straight to the internet and play games that were blocked. i used macro's to cheat in my typing class in order to get an A every time, (they used a program that timed our words per minute). eventually we installed a key logger to get the admin password. no one was the wiser. kids arn't dump what did they think was going to happen.
I would think the school district would have the student sign something where the student would have to relinquish the iPad if they modified it to gain access to unauthorized content or circumvent the school software. If only students would put this much effort into learning...
iPads are not designed for the Enterprise, let alone for the classroom...
Teachers don't need more gadgets getting in the way of teaching...
What were they thinking?
Teachers need to teach, not be the first-line of the Help Desk.
It's more than likely that at least one kid knew how to do it before the devices were issued. This kind of thing isn't just down to one person knowing how, it relies on them knowing how and being willing to follow through on it.
Stupid #2 - thinking that client side software (doubtless very shoddy client side software) could stop students who want to look at porn in class.
A smarter programme would have required students to buy their own tablets that supported some common platform (which Apple, Google or anybody else could implement) and put the firewall / netnanny filter as a transparent proxy in the school's wifi. Then there is nothing to "hack", at least not in the devices.
And when you force people to go to them they will just zone out and do what even to pass the time even more so if it's just reading from the text book.
You can never solve a social problem with technological solutions. Social problems need social controls.
Hack your iPad: 1 week detention. Second time: 1 week suspension. Do it again: expulsion.
There is no way to keep kids from writing on the walls (prohibit markers?), drawing profanity on white boards (lock them behind glass?) or any sort of vandalism. Pass the rules, publicize the first few detentions, suspensions or expulsions and the problem will all but go away in two weeks. Sure there will be sporadic incidents but not district-wide bypasses as the article speaks to,
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
It's interesting, and relevant, to contrast what the Americans are doing with Apple and their locked-down, passive consumer, computing device, and what the BBC did with Acorn Computers - specifically chosen because the computer was designed with learning about the device itself, as well as what can be created and worked on with it.
It's also interesting that another bidder for the BBC Micro Project - Sinclair - didn't get a look in because they were game- and entertainment- orientated - anybody remember the frustration of trying to type a program using words embossed on the keys? I do, and I hated it. The Amstrad CPC, was the antithesis of this, and with hindsight, I was glad I had one, and not a ZX (even though I was then "stuck" with that machine until I was 14!)
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Are the kids that DID hack/crack/jailbreak/whatever we are calling it these days being rewarded for their ingenuity and know how? or are the school officials repressing it as usual?
Why Nerf/Block the device at all? All of this can simply be handled through punishment/behavior modification. For example if the Teachers/School district do not allow facebook.com, ec... to be accessed during class hours. Then there should be an appropriate punishment, Detention, expulsion, etc...
I hate when our society tries to engineer complex solutions for simple problems. The KISS solution, if a kid wants to spend all day on facebook instead of doing math homework, then let him fail. The best things learned are through failure. Hold them back a grade, or wash them out.
It's this no child left behind BS that causes us to tap dance around the real problems to come up with band-aid solutions to artifically created problems.
Nothing motivated me to learn about computers more than bypassing policy restrictions and web filters at school. I wound up becoming our student admin, starting computer clubs, and even changed my mind about the school and degree I had planned for college.
Also, It sounds like the kids have managed to configure the devices the way they should have been configured in the first place. If my HS had handed me a device for tracking my whereabouts and logging my web activity, I would have handed it right back. Surely they have internet filters on the school's WiFi, so this software is meant to stop kids from using Facebook on their own time. Oh, and don't forget that the school's essentially sticking a GPS tracker on your kids, because apparently that's acceptable nowadays.
I still think schools handing out tablets is a stupid idea (esp anything that starts with "i"), but I'm glad the kids are finding a way to use them.
They'd sue Apple for this.
If this is a "hack" then throwing one of them out the window is a denial of service attack.
I understand why they would want to track such an investment, especially after handing them out to a bunch of kids but I don't want my kid carrying around an iPad which is sending her location to some school board!
For that reason I MIGHT support or even help her crack it but.. I don't want her to be in a position to have to make the decision to crack, risking some sort of consequence from the school or be tracked. They shouldn't be putting kids or parents in that position.
As for the filtering software.. well.. I can understand why schools would do that to. They don't want to be giving the kids a shiny new porn portal do they? But that doesn't mean that I want the local school board or whatever official being the one to decide what my kid gets access to or doesn't. That is MY job!
So... including tablets in their education... probably a good idea because they are such a large part of the modern world. But.. let us provide our own. Also.. enough with the iOS stuff. Is the school system trying to help build a new monopoly? Support 'bring your own device' and do support Android. Preferably support both iOS and Android but if that isn't practical at least chose Android over iOS since more than one company can compete for our money.
Saddly, I see what the trend is and when she reaches that age there will probably be iPads involved. Actually, her pre-school is already trying to get them for the teachers!
How the school district can somehow find $1 billion to spend on iPads, yet is shuttering programs in art, music, dance, athletics, journalism, horticulture, biology, driver's education, broadcasting, etc.
There is still no serious computer curriculum in California schools. There are also no field trips, school-funded clubs, librarians or after school activities.
But there's always an extra billion for the latest shiny object with a corporate logo on it, no doubt built by people about the same age as the students who don't get to go to school and don't get a free iPad either.
Sounds like the devices have already accomplished all they can: the students have learned how to master their iPads and are now using them exactly as they please. Which is what human being do with anything they find lying about in their environment. HOORAH!
If the ideas were to empower, to teach electronic/digital literacy, to open minds to options and to information, mission accomplished!
Probably the only thing NOT learned by now, is adult interaction with others. Perhaps when these kids are 10 or 20 years older, THAT may be largely digitally mediated as well.
Bravo to the students for so quickly smacking the educators in the face with reality. Doubtless it will be the only lesson learned by virtue of the unique properties of the device.
Yeah, but have they beaten "Giant's Drink" yet?
Who cares if they crack it? If you care, you're in for a whole lot of disappointment (Unless, of course, you're in support of the cracking) because it WILL happen.
1% of the users found ways around the blocking. The only thing that means is you have 200 students that would be interested in a new, advanced computer-related curriculum. The other 14,800 drones can continue their daily lives unaffected, and unaware, of this non-event.
So they're reassessing the rollout plan... No doubt it will return, soon, with an exhaust port big enough to fly a cargo freighter inside.
I can't find anywhere if the kids did anything special other than deleting the security profile from the settings, which can be locked down. Did the admin just not choose the "can't delete profile" option?
It's total bullshit to blame a handful of relatively anonymous California grade school teachers for the failure of an Apple security feature. You might as well go all the way and blame them for several "immutable laws" of information and security.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I'll allow it.
I am a staunch advocate for highest quality public education, but I don't mean that to be some sort of magic bullet.
Properly trained educators, however, are better able to identify strongly independent learners or 'gifted & talented' students and give them proper accomidations
Also, the latest education strategies encourage (or in some states mandate) teachers design lesson plans to all learning types.
Professional teachers...well paid...again not a magic bullet but everyone reading this can understand how a professionally trained person who is plain bad at their job is easier to remediate.
On a personal note, I feel my education let me down. I went to a private religious school that strongly discouraged my plans to eventually get a PhD from a 'secular' (read: accredited) university after HS. My love of science was stronger than their dogma but when I became a public school teacher, I was simultaneously amazed and enraged at how well the school system handled 'different' students of all types.
Thank you Dave Raggett
one last thing I saw mentioned below I'll clear up: I'm not currently a teacher nor do I have close family employed in K-12 education...these are just my thoughts
I have taught all kinds of stuff all over the world at all levels (Korea, snowboarding, public HS, adjunct prof) but am no longer actively involved in the education profession.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I responded to another post similar to yours above...
the tl;dr is that I agree there is no magic bullet & just as you I acknowledge all types of learning scenarios/types...beneath it all, however, is the public education system...when done right it can handle *anything*
Thank you Dave Raggett
From the summary: 'There is a huge history in American education of being attracted to the new, shiny, hugely promising bauble and then watching the idea fizzle because teachers weren't properly trained to use it and it just ended up in the closet.'
Knowing several educators in the public school system, including my wife, I can say that the above statement isn't a 'huge history' of American education these days, but one of the defining principles. Even good public schools (and I believe here in Virginia our schools are overall pretty good) suffer from this problem. There seems to be almost no one in the equation who actually understands technology and how it can be, and should be, used to enhance education, and the inevitable result is a bunch of money wasted that could be put to infinitely better use, a bunch of teachers being further burdened with tasks that have little or nothing to do with actually educating their students, and a bunch of vendors laughing all the way to the bank... not to mention the students who are always the first ones to be sold out. This is American public schools in a nutshell.
This kind of thing always happens to government monopolies... and don't tell me the public school system isn't a monopoly. Until I can get a voucher that lets me take my share of the public education budget set aside for my kids and use it to enroll them in the schools of my choice... it's a monopoly.
By the way, my kids _are_ in public schools, and overall, like I mentioned above, I'm reasonably satisfied with service and education they have received, including special ed resources, but there's still a lot left to be desired.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
how is this different than what I said? I emphasized *human*...and indeed all your scenarios involve a human...home school/charters/voucers/etc are all just variations on the same thing as a public school....human teaching human...it's just different contexts
**NO MATTER WHAT THE CONTEXT** a shitty teacher will not educate a child properly
your argument is a complete fallacy...you jump on one linguistic crack in my argument (how I said 'professionally trained' which might be taken that I am excluding homeschooling completely)...and away you go to Glenn Beck land...
stop it.......it's people like you who *ruin* any chance of productive discussion on this topic
every state does this now...every single one...I used to teach (not anymore) and got certified in two states based on my BA degree alone....
just to recap, everything about your post agrees with my point that *humans* teach humans...not technology or budgets or voucher...
Thank you Dave Raggett
some people are in academia for years with limited real work place skills and that turns out people loaded with skill gaps
Hahahahah
Realistically, one kid should be applauded. The remaining students were just copycats.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but copying is a large part of how people learn.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Who would have actually thought that the systems would have remained secure here?
And yet the LAUSD was surprised. Their quality of help must be astounding.
The average idiot on this board knows better... and they don't while making billion dollar choices. Just process that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
They aren't good for learning with a hands on approach. They are better for just looking at junk. In that case, just use books and a blackboard, right? Because you can't play on those and get distracted.
It's more likely it took a week before any staff members noticed students were doing "fun" things with iPads.
First of all this story broke a week ago. Second of all, the students didn't "Hack" the device, the people who set up the configuration did not enable the lock out so the students couldn't remove the profile which filtered their content. The short fall was on the end of the school and its a really easy fix.
So we are progressing without the broad reach of a governance by developing hack counter measures instead of exacting legal punishment. Then if hackers are pre-discovering flaws and high school kids are using them, where are the fixes? Closed source I guess, haha!
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
I loved the bbc micro and archemides. Then an IBM compatible machine now known as under the vernacular "pc". I then realised the games were far better as well as it being far more powerful using a pc over any acorn product. I think that the kids should be given a tablet version of the Raspberry Pi (a educational version of arm [risc os electron hardware gone full cycle]) to help the west develop education programs for the whole world. It could easily be classed as powerful as an iPad and would cost far far less than $100 and would provide far more educational capacity than an iPad. When the child learns more and reaches a point they can be taught to make their own os's. The problem is having adequately trained teaching staff that are just as content with a command prompt as they are with a GUI. I would have loved to have been taught computer science instead of what they called IT which should have been called ICT. Despite loving IT at home I hated IT at school as they were so different. Spreadsheets and making mail print macros from databases, how could that be dragged out for so many years? An iPad sounds like the same thing will happen unless they planned to use Xcode as well. But the electron or bbc micro just used simple basic. Learning that at such young age turned me into a hacker (not a cracker, who works for the good). But I had to go off the beaten path and mess learning how to compile acorn viruses in order to own the system in order to stay amused.
I think that if you gave the iPad to loads of school children many interesting results (and patches) will happen.
The iPad is far from the best for the next generation of computer scientists, what the hell will they learn. Not how to make an os or create drivers. You can't even get a terminal. I own an iPad but it's simply made for the masses and not hackable. The article should have said cracked. But if the details aren't realised it could just mean a kid changed the DNS so they could access anything.