You say I have a hand in electing government, but I do not. In terms of the Federal government, I only have a hand in electing the president, two senators and congressman. There are tens of thousands of Federal government members remaining. Also my vote was only one among over a hundred million. My vote does not count. I've got a better chance of winning the lottery than having my vote make a difference.
Only as soon as you begin to take that attitude and stop voting does your vote no longer count. And once you stop voting other people's votes start counting more and if enough people don't vote then the government becomes an oligarchy.
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.
As a student let me say this: kids only need computers in libraries, computer labs, etc. for research and writing essays. Giving kids access to computers in the classroom is just distracting. Computers should only be in the classroom when the teacher is doing something like giving a presentation, otherwise let's not try and distract kids.
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You say I have a hand in electing government, but I do not. In terms of the Federal government, I only have a hand in electing the president, two senators and congressman. There are tens of thousands of Federal government members remaining. Also my vote was only one among over a hundred million. My vote does not count. I've got a better chance of winning the lottery than having my vote make a difference.
Only as soon as you begin to take that attitude and stop voting does your vote no longer count. And once you stop voting other people's votes start counting more and if enough people don't vote then the government becomes an oligarchy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
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.
As a student let me say this: kids only need computers in libraries, computer labs, etc. for research and writing essays. Giving kids access to computers in the classroom is just distracting. Computers should only be in the classroom when the teacher is doing something like giving a presentation, otherwise let's not try and distract kids.
Sounds like all you have left then is to provide entertainment.
You could try something like creating your own Pandora.com radio station and encourage students to make their own and share them.