What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have? 1117
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?"
Be sensible. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have any experience in school administration, even at an IT support level. However, understand that not every kid that goes to school goes with the intention to learn. With that being the case, expect that there will be students that will use the computer for their own personal leisure and students that will really use them as they were intended to be used.
Being that I believe that the desire for students to truly learn and excel rest with them, I would probably be really lax about the restrictions on the computer. Really determined slackers will find ways to bypass soft restrictions anyway, which is an extra step that your department will have to prepare for. That is, of course, if you decide to distribute a shiny new Macbook to every new student.
Is there any way that you can distribute computers based on academic performance? It might seem like bribery in a sense, but in this case it just might make sense. Better performing students would obviously make good use of having a laptop and being more productive, so why not save money and let them enjoy the prize?
None, because they will break restrictions anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
How bout a compromise? (Score:2, Interesting)
And even if the kids don't mind... (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
trash (Score:3, Interesting)
I would put such a laptop in the trash, or just reformat it.
Don't try to limit what they can do with it, because they can do whatever they want with it. You have no control at all.
Depends on what you're trying to teach. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you're trying to teach them to circumvent computer security you give them a laptop with no restrictions whatsoever.
- If you put ANY restrictions on it, they will immediately start trying to break them. You'll be giving them an early start on a life of cybercrime.
- And if you punish them (the ones that get caught) for doing it, you'll also be giving them an early start on a criminal record.
Here's what I'd do in your place:
- Include a standard load on each laptop.
- Provide a backup facility on the school's network for those files they want to back up.
- Have the standard load preconfigured to automatically back up a particular subfolder. Tell them to store their schoolwork (and anything else they want preserved) there until they learn how to configure it to back up additional folders.
- Provide a facility for reloading the laptop with the standard load and restoring the backed up folder(s). No penalty for the kid to reload it to stock, even repeatedly.
- Explicitly grant permission for the kids to experiment with their laptops, loading what they want, trying other op systems, etc. (Warn them about only loading stuff they have rights to: Purchased software, FOSS software, their own stuff, stuff they have the author's permission to load, etc.)
- Let them try to run with alternate OSes, dual-booted, etc. (Warn them that the school personnel probably can't help them much with other configurations, but if they help each other or find help on the web that's fine.) Let them access the backup tools from alternate OSes if they can figure out how.
- Do any government-mandated censorship on the school's network, not on the kids' laptops.
Then the kids can reconfigure their laptops all they want and experiment all they want. When (not if) they break the configuration they can go to the school's lab and restore it to a known starting point with the latest backup of their important files
THIS way, instead of starting them on a life of cybercrime, you'll start them on a life of computer literacy and skill. You'll quickly find yourself with a herd of little geniuses, with some of them running a computing club and most of them - even those whose primary interests are something other than computers - displaying exceptional computer literacy.
Re:none (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:none (Score:4, Interesting)
"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.
It's a tool not a laptop (Score:4, Interesting)
My step-son just graduated from an "all laptop" high school. His father was paying and making decisions; if it were up to me, he wouldn't have lasted a semester before I pulled him.
They gave all the kids Thinkpads (OK, sold them Thinkpads - private school) and then left them unlocked. The step-son and all his friends installed every pirated game you can imagine and sat around in class all day playing. Not a lot of education happening as far as I could tell.
So my advice is this: Lock them down. Forget about "essentially own the computers;" if the laptop is school property, the laptop is school property.
Give them basic office apps, and whatever educational software they need. Don't let them install anything. Unless there's an educational need for it, no iChat. Sounds like a good way to cheat on tests to me.
If I weren't in IT at work, that's what my work laptop would be like. Because I'm in IT, I can get administrator rights, but pretty much nobody else can. Why should school be different?
It isn't your responsibility to provide a fun-time laptop; you don't care if they use it for anything except school work. The laptop is a piece of school property to be used for educational purposes, just like a textbook, or a desk, or a photocopier. It's a tool, not a toy, and once you realize that you'll feel better about the whole thing.
Would you say that students should be allowed unlimited access to the photocopier for personal purposes? Of course not. Same thing.
The network filtering is tougher, but again, I come back to "what's work like?" I have to go to some technical web sites at home that I legitimately need access to, because Websense won't let me get to them. It also won't let me get to porn, gambling (including the state lottery site) hacking or proxy avoidance information.
The same should apply to school - in spades. Maybe you should just have a white list based on lesson plans rather than trying to filter out the garbage.
Re:none (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't believe that particular law applies to computers-- just school Internet connections-- but the Constitution is not the law. Law of the land, yes. Law that is followed, not always.
-a
Re:Panasonic tough books (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:No offense... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:none (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless these laptops are for elementary students, any protection you will install WILL be bypassed by a nerd, since telling everyone else how to look at porn on their laptops is their ticket to temporary popularity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only at school (Score:3, Interesting)
Traditionally, schools have always had some authority over kids outside the classroom - and the computers themselves remain school property. Which raises an interesting question for the geek: how much freedom do you have in using a customized laptop provided by your employer? I am betting he has to live within some limits as well.
Re:none (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:none (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:none (Score:3, Interesting)
Today it's even easier - there's always at least one unsecured WAP somewhere within range of most offices now that 802.11n is cheap and widespread.
Locking down the OS is so '90s, which is the last time I had that happen to me, and on both occasions it was done to everyone for just one morning while "things were sorted out" because of a management change, not any problem with IT personnel.
I've locked down users' computers, but only from a hardware perspective - removed the optical drives and installed linux, so I wouldn't be wasting time re-installing after some idiots' cracked malware-infested game cd screwed things up.
As for blocking sites, better to just log every request through a proxy server. Provides interesting material should you ever have to go all BOfH on someone.
Re:none (Score:4, Interesting)
We had an understanding. We didn't steal or break any computers at the school, and we could do whatever we wanted with the laptops.
But it was OS 9 so that wasn't much. I really find it hard to believe /anyone/ used macs before OS X.
Re:none (Score:1, Interesting)
Use the bare minimum filtering the law requires of you, and implement it in the sloppiest way possible to insure any child with an IQ above room temperature can bypass it. Further once the laptop isn't on school grounds you have no business affecting it in any way.
On the other hand, you should treat these no differently than other electronics, passing notes in class gets you sent to the principles office, be they on paper or over IM. The computer is a learning aid, it should be used for class activities only during class time.
Consider policy changes to shift as much of the burden for these machines away from the school as possible, Like having the parents purchase them at the beginning of school, not at the end. By the time the laptop has seen a few years of service it'll be next to worthless anyway, computer technology develops too fast.
Consider that the parents have in effect already purchased these machines, either your a public school board and taxpayer funded (my guess since you mentioned a legal obligation to install filters) or your a private school board, and more directly funded by the parents who enroll their children.
Pitch this to your legal department as a bonus as well, if they are your machines, your liable. If they are student owned its not your problem anymore, you would provide access only to the schools wi-fi network, get whatever licenses coffee shops have as an open wireless access point or whatever to insure your not liable for what people do accessing the net and your set.
Tell management that by selling up front you get more value since a couple years down the road the hardware will be worth less, that plus legal in favour of it ought to get them moving fast.
Finally here is the important part. On the first day of school teach the PARENTS how the fucking things work, tell them to make sure they know what their kids are doing online, make sure they know its a bad idea to put private information up on facebook, that kind of thing. Teach the parents about safely using the fucking machine.
School isn't the danger area, you cant go 5 minutes at a school without a teacher looking over your shoulder, its parents who think the net is a substitute for a babysitter who are the real concern.
On a side note, you need this experience to be enjoyable for the kids, the computer is supposed to be a teaching aid if its locked down and crippled to the point where they don't like it, it will become just as resented and homework and treated no better than just another text book. enthusiasm for the project from your students is what will make or break this.
And keep in mind, handing a kid a locked down laptop won't accomplish anything anyway. Computers are everywhere the idea that this child can't go home and use the family computer, or even their own personal one in most cases is ludicrous. Since I'm sure somebody screamed something along the lines of "We must save the kids from the dirty pedos online!" to justify handing out crippled machines the fact that the computer your handing isn't their only means of net access ought to get some people thinking twice.
Re:It's a tool not a laptop (Score:1, Interesting)
*sighs* I'm a 21 year old student in college, I can tell you right now that in high school if the students do not want to be there then either A they will day-dream or B they will play with the computer in front of them (if they are lucky enough to have one). My point is that if the computers are completely locked down then students only learn about the programs that they are allowed to use rather than the wealth of free programs that are out there meant to be used, edited (by people like them) to make them better, and in the end allow the kid to know what he/she may want from life quite possibly. It drove me crazy when a school computer wasn't working and I couldn't fix it even though I knew the fix for its issue because I didn't have the permissions to do it. The wealth of free software that I speak of is things like gimp, open office, Mozzila Firefox and Thunderbird, etc. My point is that, yes a computer is a tool, to lock down a computer is to clip the wings on an eagle. The potential of what a student learns ultimately declines because so many experiences are lost. I know that many college students show up at the university and they have no clue that its bad to click a pop-up, viruses happen, certain websites=death to a computer, and that there are removal tools for most malicious software that PCs can get. The bottom line is that students are already undereducated about the machine that their grades ride on and in that end that can hurt them when it gets to finals week and their hard drive crashes and they don't know how to recover the files from it.
Re:What Restrictions? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that may be a good perspective. There's no reason you couldn't have a sort of enterprise policy enforcement that took time into account. Even /usr/games on older Unix systems had a timed access restriction mechanism.
I think that bright students will always find ways to use systems not oontemplated originally. Sometimes this results in wonderful creations. Sometimes it means that the best-laid policies may be difficult or impossible to enforce.
If they're to be part of a mission-critical enterprise process (such as learning at school), it's also important to make sure that there is a way to audit and/or enforce basic integrity and security.
Disclaimer: I work for a manufacturer of security and policy/configuration management products.
Re:none (Score:3, Interesting)
Fantastic point on the "Make the parents sign the release" angle.
I still can't quite fathom the concept of a school-provided laptop that goes home with students, but they don't own. It just seems like asking for trouble.
I mean, if this is some magnet school nonsense, fine, but then just roll the laptop into the goddamn tuition and be done with it. Any situation where you maintain ownership and liability of a machine that is handed over to a teenager overnight every day, you've just officially lost.
Re:none (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, let the kids do what they want, but tell them that each Friday is URL show-and-tell day for the whole class, in front of everyone.
Re:none (Score:2, Interesting)
Primarily because work computers contain gobs of intellectual property. That's to say nothing of all the sensitive security, passwords, and customer/client data that exists on corporate/company laptops. Whereas school computers (at least up through high school) do not have any of these risks.
The difference here is that corporations lock down computers to protect the corporate IP and sensitive data, whereas this article is talking about locking down computers to prevent it's user from using it immorally. This is a problem because the school can't implement moral restrictions with which all parents can agree, and that could become a legal quagmire.
Re:none (Score:2, Interesting)
Growing Up (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm opposed to the idea of "technology needs to be given to our kids" as if it were some kind of Recommended Daily Value -- it's a tool, it's a field in and of itself, but it's not something you can just throw at a classroom to make things "better" or kids more "technologically literate".
That was how braindead my highschool was.
But that's just my take on laptops in class in general. Assuming that you'll be doing it anyway...
I've read a lot of good points in the comments here (filter on the router side, not the laptop side being vital) but I figured I'd tell a parable in what happened to me.
In middle school, the computer lab had Foolproof to lock down the machines (a terrible security package, I might add -- really braindead) but there was a very open culture. If you hung out in the computer lab at lunch, and showed actual interest in computers, before long you'd know the magic keystroke to temporarily disable the lockdown (essentially, sudo privileges). And in this way we'd have files and games on the fileserver and play them at lunch; they trusted us, we returned the favor by not causing trouble.
High school was a different beast. They didn't trust us with anything -- and that we were being treated as more incompetent and less trustworthy than our younger selves was a major point of frustration. So what did we do? Circumvent the security in every way we could. Any door they left open, any trick we could pull, we pulled it.
Detente only came when, finally, they improved the network policy with a round of new computers that had Windows 2000 (as opposed to 98) and used proper ACLs -- that were clearly less restrictive in the general case. We could bring in USB keys, run software, but the machines were essentially reimaged every night. This was fair enough to us, so we went with it.
Why break the restrictions? Because they're there. The more restrictive, the more the desire. The more permissive, the less the desire.
But moreover, only a small fraction of kids will ever seriously butt heads against it. In the general case you can lock down the system to the bare minumum. But the kids who do hit the restrictions -- these are the kids you want to know. Trust them. Give them the keys. Help them play. Talk about your "teachable moments" -- treat them with respect and they'll do the same. They're not stupid -- it's not like we suddenly wisen up at 18. You might even change their lives.
The magic key in middle school was Cmd-]
Re:none (Score:3, Interesting)
Dilbert shows why it is pointless (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:none (Score:3, Interesting)
I, for one, hope they have very strong filtering methods that require some real knowledge to bypass. You will be pitting their desire to be lazy against their 14-year-old hormones and they will, completely by accident, end up with very useful knowledge about information security.
Some of the hardest workers that you'll ever find are the lazy ones trying to find a better methods to be lazy. A hard normal worker will do things the long hard way because it's like their duty to do it the way they were shown and not mess anything up. A lazy worker will find and exploit every means to improve the process that they were shown in order to have more lazy time when others are still hard at work.
This is something that is never quite clearly shown in Dilbert. Wally is likely the guy that gets the most work done soonest or improves his efficiency and his ability to do his work so that he spends the rest of the time not doing anything. It only appears that he isn't working because he's already finished. That's kinda one of those key things that you learn in school. Finish everything ASAP so that you'd have it when needed and can spend the rest of the time goofing off and never ever let some one that assigns things see you finished/not doing anything while everyone else is hard at work. That just encourages them to assign more and more work on until you appear to be hard at work busy.
Re:none (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually this guy's best bet is to start collecting the purchase price from the students immediately. It dosn't matter how much. If you take $1 per month as higher purchase or even rental on these machines then you are not responsible for the misuse of them. Even illegal use.
If you do that then you can just filter P2P on the school network and log web traffic with a view to just warn those you spot wasting a lot of time on porn or social networking sites like Facebook and SlashDot (duck).
You've already started off on the wrong question (Score:3, Interesting)
Asking how to restrict the laptops is the wrong place to start. By thinking about how you WON'T use the laptops, you've already lost the battle.
You need to first think about how the laptops WILL be used. For each class where the laptop will be used, the instructors must know exactly how to leverage them well enough to make their use an essential aspect of learning. If a student is busy using a laptop for a legitimate, in-class purpose, then they won't be off browsing p0rn -- at least not without the teacher noticing.
At any other time when the use of the laptop is not essential, simply turn it off and put it away. Don't allow the laptops out on the playground, or in the lunch room. They are strictly for classroom or home use only.
The point is to treat a laptop like a No. 2 pencil. It's just a tool, useful only in a certain context, and outside that context, we don't use it.
Re:This whole argument is ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
Was this reviewed by monkeys?
Worse. It was reviewed by beancounters, with markedroids from various companies wanting to push their product (and get kids used to them) as advisors.
No, I don't know the case at hand, but let's be honest here, what else is to be expected?
And you can't even go and do what you suggest, "punish" someone breaking his computer by putting him at the end of the support queue. Maybe you're even rewarding him that way. Why do those kids need their laptops? Most likely to make home assignments and write papers. And he cannot write his paper when you have the computer because it's broken. soooooo... if I break my computer when I try to unlock it, I get to do no homework.
Now, I dunno about you, but thinking back to my school years, that wasn't quite punishment, was it? I mean, I'd have broken my computer routinely whenever our French bitch wanted some huge paper from me. And I would would have made it my top priority to keep it broken 'til she forgot about it.
If you think about giving the student a bad mark for not bringing his assignment because his computer is broken, forget it. You will have the parents all over you instantly. "YOU demanded that my little Billy has this machine, now it's broken and you dare give him a bad grade because YOUR machine breaks down? You have to accept it the old fashion way, and you have to tell him that... (rant on as desired)" Remember, parents ain't necessarily too computer literate. Most just know that those things break down at work and they can't get anything done 'til those coffee-junkies from tech show up.
No, I'm more convinced of my way. Put the blame on the parents and get them off your back that way.