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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."
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.
The alternative attitude is what happened recently in my hometown, where a student was nearly suspended for possessing "hacking tools" - a Linux live-cd.
Part of the purpose of schools is to be a safety net, where irresponsible kids can test their limits and, while not getting away with anything fully, they are shielded from the worst repercussions and are given gentle encouragement that they are not supposed to be doing that. Unfortunately, that attitude doesn't mix with the "freedom is doing anything I want" or the "kids should be imprisoned in schools until they are perfect adults" mentalities that are so popular today, and it's made even more complex (as is everything else) by the ever-expanding community boundaries brought about by modern technology.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Bad teachers are no justification for iPads. Either way, dont expect me to pay for your child to get tools that are not proven to do anything but entertain and have been around for all of 5 years.
You cant even draw the parallel to the advent of computers: that was a whole new field. Noone in their right mind would claim that the future of technology looks like "iPads".
A professionally trained, well-paid human teacher eh?
If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?
We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.
Meanwhile home schooled children, taught by parents with no formal training as teachers, outperform government-schooled students so often that the high achieving home schooler has become a cultural meme, if not a cliche.
Charter schools have also been able to deliver superior results at lower cost.
No, I don't think we need professionally trained well paid teachers. What we need are voucher programs, more home schooling, teachers and schools that have to compete, the utter end to tenure of any kind, and pay/bonuses based on classroom performance instead of seniority. Opening up the teaching profession to anyone with a bachelor's degree and a demonstrated knowledge of a subject (english, math, science) would be even better. There is no evidence that having a master's degree in early childhood education helps someone teach 3rd graders how to multiply. Let those who want to teach and who are good at it take the field, and get rid of parasitic space takers for whom a teaching job is a state-paid sinecure.
Most of all, outlaw public sector unions so that groups like the NEA aren't able to block real education reform.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.