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Education

On the Problems with Laptops in School? 72

Posted by Cliff from the distractions-in-class dept.
resistor2004 asks: "My school has recently implemented a program of issuing laptops to all students from 7th grade through highschool seniors, and providing a massive 802.11b network across the campus. As you can imagine, it's a serious nightmare for the IT department. Apart from the usual run of broken laptops we have had a major problem with students usign email during class. Is there any effective way to allow the teacher to monitor the student's activity from his/her own laptop? Some of our teachers have come up with creative methods like installing mirrors in the back of the classroom so that they can see the students' screens, but a method that could be performed on the laptop would be even better." Might VNC be a potential solution to this problem. I would think that with a few creative scripts, and a working VNC client, a teacher can pop up a window to see what students are doing on their school-provided computers. Can you think of other ways teachers may be able to monitor students laptop use in-class to insure that they are at least not horsing around when they should be learning?
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On the Problems with Laptops in School? More

On the Problems with Laptops in School?

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  • Plenty of ways. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:11PM (#2654338)
    VNC is a good one, as mentioned, but it's not exactly an automated solution. Since these are school-provided computers, you could also have a client/service/component/whaddeva on the machine that, when prodded remotely, enumerates the running processes/windows and matches them against a list of what's being looked for (eg, email, webbrowsing, solitaire, etc.) and returns any offenders.

    Of course, anything that's done this way can be gotten around with enough time and effort (a reformat is simple, but the lack of the client/service/component/whaddeva would be suspicious), but that's the risk you take when you give laptops to people who might use 'em.

    • Re:Plenty of ways. (Score:3, Informative)

      by El Kevbo ( 81125 )

      Assuming that these are Windows computers, there are several tools that allow you to query a computer remotely and obtain a list of the currently running processes and kill them. For example, sysinternals has just such a suite of tools available freely [sysinternals.com].

      You could easily set up a scheduled task to look at the processes running on each computer and generate a list of ones that aren't on the "approved" list. I don't think that this is the right solution to this problem, but it is a possible one.

      Kevin

  • One way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:12PM (#2654341) Homepage Journal
    Server-centric, but why not block access to the e-mail server for the student accounts during class hours?

    I'm sure you could knock together a script that reads the timetable and determines where each student is meant to be.

    • Re:One way (Score:3, Insightful)

      by biglig2 ( 89374 )
      BTW, can we get a proer problem description?

      What OS on the laptops? What mail server? What applications might a user legitimately be running while in class? (I presume a word processor?) Does that list change (can you legitimately be sending mail and surfing the net in certain clases?) Does it need to be something the teacher turns on and off? ("Right class, now I'll turn the network on so you can look for the answes to this question on the net")

    • Re:One way (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GregWebb ( 26123 )
      This is exactly what I was thinking of - a database-driven timetabled firewalling regime. Simple and automatic. Remember to take out Hotmail et al, though :-) Oh, the other advantage of this is it reduces the incentive to skip classes. If you know that you'll be offline during classes automatically, that has to help.

      Why not make it more than that, though? Why not block all network traffic save user filestore access during classes unless a teacher explicitly enables it? If you want web access for a class, default to the proxy only letting through pre-approved URLs so you know they're reading the right sites. Only if they're doing wider research should free(er) access be provided.

      If they're in NT/2k/XP, what about requiring them to log in as a particular user account with extremely limited priveledges (as in little more than their WP) every time they enter a class, and allow the teacher to pull up a list of who's logged in differently? Dunno if it's possible, but do that automatically and you've got an even stronger truancy preventer.

      Anyway, there's lots to do (and without much imagination, so I'm a little surprised to see this question getting posted) and it's not going to be that hard...

    • "Server-centric, but why not block access to the e-mail server for the student accounts during class hours?"

      Here's an abbreviated list of mail servers that probably won't cooperate with such a policy: mail.yahoo.com, mail.some-isp.net, sapphire.student.school.edu (if someone sets up a mail server on her laptop. in this case, you could could refuse to route SYNs to *.student.)

      Now imagine setting up cron scripts to reconfigure your iptables at the beginning/end of "school hours" in such a manner that they will contain no race conditions... not impossible, but not fun, especially if the network changes.

    • Here are tow things I would recogmend. One, install a web access system like NetCensus and have a log given to the teacher showing the IP, the DHCP table, and the access attempts that went through, and did not go through. They can see "Bill" was trying to get to www.porn.com and "Susie" was trying to get to "www.web-based-email.com" when they should have been looking at the topic of discussion's web page.

      Second, (although not probable,) install Carnivor or a clone of it. And lick out the results of interest such as email, and web surfing. If there is any thing that looks funny from a classroom standpoint, look further into it and mail a copy to the kid's parrents.

      This however does leave the option of Solitair to be run on the computer, but if it's a WinX machine, you can not have it installed, and use Regedit or Poledit to restric the install feature of any software.

      Clamping down a networked PC can be a pain, so the options are do or do not. You can always clamp down the web access a lot easier. Two access levels. Teacher and Student.
  • My old college [farnboroughsfc.ac.uk], which my sister now attends has just started using an online registration system. Every classroom in the college has atleast one networked PC, and the tutors use an inhouse system to register the students in lessons. They also distribute messages through this system and can access a student's past records so that they can tell if the student is skipping one particular lesson deliberately.

    The relevance of this is (finally ;) ) that if the teachers had this kind of resource specifying where the students should be at any time, could that not be interfaced with the authentication system to deny students access to SMTP/web/whatever during times they should not be using those services? The teacher would be able to change the policies for their teaching groups on the fly, too, if the lesson requires web access etc...

    Obviously, with peer to peer networking these restraints could be avoided, but if you put reasonable restraints in place to stop most people, the ones who have the enthusiasm to learn to beat the system maybe deserve some extra freedom?

    --
    Andy

  • Loose the laptops (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ledge ( 24267 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:16PM (#2654356)
    It seems to me, in a classroom, the last thing these kids need is another distraction. Yeah, technology is great and all, but come on. With the direction that the educational system in the US has been going, it seems like having kids staring at the blackboard is a better method. If you need a laptop for school, limit it to being used in study hall and interactive classes.
    • If I was in high school with a laptop, I'd want to take notes in it. I can type much faster than I can write and all of the notes would be searchable.

      Obviously, the teachers expect the students to use the laptops in class. The question is whether or not they are using them in a way related to the class or not.
    • Speaking as a student (albiet a CS major who is probably taking more notes than a high schooler) I can relate the ineffectiveness of 'staring at the blackboard' Many times over, my pen has dropped out of my hand just before my head hit the desk. I'm for the laptops for the same reason I started studying computer science...I like to keep things interesting. By introducing new (easier, quicker, but possibly less 'secure') methods for completing 'old' work, i.e., taking notes, reading lectures, following examples, listening to/watching speakers, one can actually keep the interest of teen agers! Once their actually paying attention, it's much easier to actually learn (from personal experience *grin*)
    • I'm a student at a university that requires all students to lease a laptop from them. I take mine to class everyday and take all of my notes on it. Many other students have their laptops in class and some of them aren't taking notes, but some of the people with paper and pen out aren't taking notes either. They are doodling, writing notes, doing other homework and writing poetry. So what's the difference between that and playing solitare or writing email?
      • Lets see....College is a place where you can make your own decisions regarding how you do things. In most cases, you needn't even show up for lectures and you can still pass the class. While in grammar and high school, you are still not given the liberty to decide these things for yourself.

  • Curious... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nater ( 15229 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:18PM (#2654365) Homepage

    What's wrong with the non-technical solution (mirrors)? It doesn't have that "21st century appeal" but is there really anything wrong with it? Your IT department is already burdened with the chore of keeping all of this new crap working, so if teachers can solve this problem with mirrors, I say let them.

    • Re:Curious... (Score:2, Funny)

      by druxton ( 166270 )
      I believe a proposal for a technical solution would be slightly more complicated, and involve...
      Smoke AND Mirrors.
    • Then the teacher has to stop teaching to make sure that the students aren't typing email. Add to it the fact that the distance between the student's laptop and the teacher is large enough it is going to be really hard for most teachers to tell the difference between Outlook and Word from the front of the room. And a concave mirror only distors things. So sure, it would be obvoius if the student is playing some colorful game, but that is pretty obvious without looking at the monitor most of the time. Ulitmately, the teachers should be left to teach and not spending 90% of their class time disciplining the 10% of students who don't want to learn.
      • What does it really matter? A kid who's going to let himself be distracted from class to read his email is the same kinda kid that would be acting up or passing notes or twiddling their thumbs. You can't, simply by removing potential distractiosn, make a student who doesn't want to learn want to learn (of course, things distracting interested students are a different matter all together). If the teacher can't present things in a way that interests the students, the teacher is the one at fault, not the laptops

        Not to mention the financial side. Considering the way that educational grants go, the district probably doesn't have the resources to implement anything but the most trivial of solutions. THey have money for hardware, and maybe enough for an extra MCSE to handle the machines, but anything that will require aditional hardware or software is not going to happen.

  • A possible solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by haplo21112 ( 184264 ) <haplo@epithnaFREEBSD.com minus bsd> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:26PM (#2654400) Homepage
    I assume for ease of use for the common student, that these machines are running an M$ OS...easy solution, in that case. Microsoft SMS Server. It has a software inventory, and metering component, which can be setup to tell machines what they are and are not allowed to run. Simplely set that up tell the Machines they are not allowed to run various Email clients, such as outlook.exe ect...if the students try to get around it by renaming that will not work either because the system looks at internal names, not physical names. You could also use windows policy files to accomplish the same effect.
    • First off, I'm not a windows person, I'm Unix, so maybe my question seems dumb, but does SMS allow for setting times that the apps can and can not run? I gather from the poster that email is ok, just so long as it's not during the designated class times. If you had a database of the schedules you could just query all students who are in classes that are not study halls (oh, and plant an Easter egg that they can email during gym, why not?) and set those apps to not be able to run from like 1 minute before class bell to 1 minute after. But does SMS support these timed things? It's kinda my understanding SMS needs an SQL database just to run so I guess the existnace of the needed schedule dbase would be there, it's just the time that gets me.
      • Yes, SMS does that. SMS also comes with it's own copy of SQL Server, if you so desire. You can tell SMS when to allow an app to run, by NT group. So put students in the appropriate groups, and they'll not be able to run software at various times. Make sure they don't have admin rights (you're using some variant of NT, right?) to install their own stuff, and you're good to go. Implement SMS's software auditing so you know if anybody does manage to circumvent, and you're good to go.
        • A) I'm not the one who is doing this, so
          B) I don't know if they are running some variant on NT.
          C) Presume worst case and it's infact 9x allowing students to circumvent the login process and just get to a desktop and run apps, does that not prevent SMS from running and intern preventing the underlying "bad" apps to run?
          • A) Don't you hate that?
            B) Fair enough.
            C) SMS runs as a service on NT, and as a background process on 98. I'm not sure off hand if it's user-killable on 98. SMS uses a 'I'm told NOT to let this run' model, as opposed to a 'I'm told to ONLY let this run' model. I.e. you need to tell it about all the apps you don't want running. That's why you need to couple it with the NT ability to give them a login to their own boxes that doesn't allow installs; on 98 then can install their email app of choice and go. On NT you can install your email app of choice, restrict it's working hours, and deny them the ability to install their own shizat. That won't prevent things like hotmail, obviously, but that's the content/proxy/firewall's job.

  • You've got problems? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by n-baxley ( 103975 ) <nate@baxleysIII.org minus threevowels> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @01:27PM (#2654409) Homepage Journal
    Not to belittle your problem, but you have the resources to issue laptops to all students 7-12 and a 802.11 network and you're complaining about it? Either you have a very small school, or a huge budget. I'd have given my right arm for something like this when I was in junior high!
  • Apple has a system called "Apple Network Administrators Toolkit". Amongst other things, it lets you remote control a Mac just like VNC. If you are the teacher you could have the admin tool on your computer and monitor up to nine (I think) screens as minitures on your own screen. It is up to the admin to decide wether those being monitored will see a pair of eyeballs in the menubar when they're being monitored.

    Very typical for Apple, it is extremely difficult to find any information on their website. The closest is probably http://www.apple.com/networking/ana

    Last I checked the client came free with every copy of Mac OS and the serverpart was included in AppleShare IP.
    • There are actually versions of the VNC client which will also allow you to poll several machines at once. Just head over to the vnc site and check out the contributed software.
    • I'm not quite sure where to get a copy of it, but they were installed on the Macs in the music theory lab in my old school when I took the class a couple years back.

      Besides being able to see the other computers, the teacher could send messages to one or all computers, take control of the mouse to demonstrate how to do something, show one person's screen on everyone's and etc. It was actually a really good tool for teaching, besides just making sure we were all doing work.

      Anything that runs like that would be a great solution. I'm not too up on my VNC, so.. you figure it out.
  • Say what you will about Microsoft, all the tools to create a managed environment have been there for years. Use system policies, group policies, anything you like, and you can enforce compliance. You won't even need VNC - besides, VNC is a troubleshooting/support tool par excellence, not a great surveillance device. Just read up on ZAK, or any other Microsoft white paper on managing the environment, and then spend a day or so implementing it. This is not rocket science, people just get used to not trying hard when faced with Windows boxes.
  • Can't remember what it was called, but a local junior college used a classroom management package for its Novell network. It actually served a much broader purpose than just monitoring. It allowed the teacher to take control of the mouse, or the entire desktop, or to share a specific window with the student. As a result the teacher could help students anywhere in the classroom without leaving their own desk.

  • Not just laptops... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @02:22PM (#2654677) Homepage
    My school has recently implemented a program of issuing pencils and paper to all students from 7th grade through high school seniors. As you can imagine, it's a serious nightmare. Apart from the usual run of broken pencils, we have a major problem with students writing notes to each other during class. Is there any effective way to allow the teacher to monitor what students are writing from his/her desk at the front of the class? Some of our teachers have come up with creative solutions like hanging video cameras above each student's desk, but a method which could be performed on the paper itself would be even better.

  • Why even bother? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wickidpisa ( 41827 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @02:29PM (#2654711) Homepage
    Why go through all this just to stop kids from fooling around in class? If they are not going to pay attention in class then it is their loss. I not saying that no measures whatsoever should be taken in classrooms to make students pay attention, but there is a limit to it. If it was technologically possible would you really want to prevent students' _minds_ from wandering? I should hope not. I definately think high school students are capable of deciding if they want to pay attention or not, and just locking computers is not going to change their decisions. You might have a valid request for the 7th/8th grade students, but I still think most of them are old enough too.

    • Kind of as an extension to this thought, you can write email in Word and then copy/paste it to the email program or send it as an attachment. Plus you have Alt+Tab to skip back to the class notes instantly.

      Furthermore, if one takes notes in gvim, mapping a key (F8 looks good) to ":w\r:b 1\r" would be really handy. Even if they catch you and remote-kill gvim, you still have .email.swp to go back to.

  • VNC monitor is an answer (Score:3, Informative)

    by iamcadaver ( 104579 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @02:34PM (#2654736)
    This is under the 'contributed' section of AT&T's vnc site:

    VncMonitor John Wilson writes:

    VncMonitor is intended for those people who need to monitor several remote systems. A single window is used to present all the displays. The tab or backtab key allows the user to switch between systems. The return key causes the currently viewed system display to be transferred to its own window and the user can interact with the system using the mouse and keyboard. Closing the new window returns the monitored system display back to the initial window.

    The configuration of VncMonitor is controlled by a file which contains all the information about what systems are to be monitored.

    A version can be downloaded from:

    VncMonitor [wilson.co.uk]

  • Now, not only are laptops a distraction for students so they aren't learning, but the teacher has to monitor the students preventing them from teaching. I struggle to see how any learning can take place in schools these days.

  • Another non-technical solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @02:58PM (#2654931) Homepage Journal
    "Put the laptop under your chair during class, or take an F."

    A laptop is a tool (and a toy). It is a tool that has NOTHING to do with learning from someone who is standing in front of you.

    The only possible use would be taking notes. Is it condusive to a lecture to have 20-30 students all typing at the same time? Is there anything more than a marginal benefit over the students using a paper notebook?

    I think you have made yourself a problem, and that the best solution is to STOP making that problem for yourself (doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this . . .).

    -Peter
    • Exactly. The laptops can come to class for reading others' electronic submissions, interacting with a physics lab, etc. They should not be used during the lecturing part of education.

    • Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DaoudaW ( 533025 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @05:36PM (#2655992)
      If lecturing to 20-30 students is your vision of education then you're right, laptops don't belong in the classroom.

      But, if you are asking students to gather information and work together to analyze it and synthesize a creative response to it, then laptops can play an important role. Even email could play an important role.

      My wife had a run in with the sysadmin at her school when she gave an assignment which required the use of email. He said, "But we have banned email during academic hours." She said, "But this is academic email!" She won after the sysadmin went to the principal to get her disciplined.
      • Well, any answer is wrong if you re-frame the question mid stream. Yes, email can be part of education. Sure.

        The problem was, however, what to do about students screwing off during class. Part of the answer is "don't let them play with their toys during class."

        Point is, there are lots of approaches to education. Handing kids notebooks with wireless and then hoping they pay attention in class isn't one of them.

        Now, having said all that, I took a "class" in high school that consisted of three back-to-back periods where the students basically wrote their own syllabus. It was different from individual study in that it was a semi-organized class. That is, you don't really have "class mates" in individual study. It was the best educational experience I ever had in pubic school.

        But you can't do it half way. You can't hand out notebook and hope kids learn something.

        Finally, all this stuff is great. Technology is great. Independent and self-guided study is great. BUT, I think we could do with a bit more focus on the fundamentals. All that "alternative" stuff is great, but it must be reserved for those who have already learned to sit down, shut up, study and learn, and who have learned to properly read, write and compute (not work a computer, compute).

        -Peter
        • The problem was, however, what to do about students screwing off during class

          Bore students enough with lectures, et al, and they'll find ways to screw off. Or they'll just tune out.

          Give them an authentic learning task and they'll engage!

          (I've been a classroom teacher since '94 and wish I could always take my own advice...)
      • Finally, all this stuff is great. Technology is great. Independent and self-guided study is great. BUT, I think we could do with a bit more focus on the fundamentals. All that "alternative" stuff is great, but it must be reserved for those who have already learned to sit down, shut up, study and learn, and who have learned to properly read, write and compute (not work a computer, compute).

        Amen to that. A lot of times I think Slashdotters take for granted that everyone is as curious and geared toward learning as they are. To me, the average computer geek seems to be THIRSTY for knowledge. However the average high school student isn't. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be required to teach for two weeks.
    • Benefits over a paper notebook:

      • I'm much faster at typing than at handwriting. I'm much more likely to take detailed notes if typing.
      • My typing is much neater than my handwriting. I'm much more likely to be able to read my notes later if typing.
      • Electronic notes can be searched much more easily than paper. I'm much more likely to be able to find something in old notes if typing.
      • Electronic notes take less space than paper notebooks and are easier to store for long periods of time across multiple moves (ie, when said student goes to college). I'm more likely to continue to get use from my notes if typing.


      How likely is that? Well, my wife took notes on her laptop throughout college and found all the above advantages to be significant. If one believes in notes at all, they should probably agree that computerized notes are good. If you don't agree notes are good, then the laptop would have no additional benefit.
      • That's all great. And that is fine for college students.

        But we aren't talking about college students, are we?

        I don't know when or where you went to high school. I graduated in '93 from a suburban school in the USA. I am confident that if we had notebooks with wireless they may as well have closed the doors.

        -Peter
      • And if we legalize Marijuana, farmers will be allowed to grow more hemp, and we can use hemp to do things that help the environment.

        Honestly, how many highschoolers can type faster than they can write? And how many of those are going to be screwing off in a class they need to pay attention to (as opposed to being a geek stuck in a 'Basic computer applications' class)?

        You can't effectively base an argument on how to establish a policy on the skills/behaviors of a minority, especially in a public school, where if you let one student do something, effectively you must let ALL the students do that. You, my friend, are clearly in the minority.

      • My experience was otherwise. I prefer to take notes by hand, if only because I can draw diagrams, relationships, equations, etc. far faster than popping up a vector drawing program or piecing together pseudocode that approximates the equations on the board. Forcing myself to manually search through notes (usually collected by class and inserted in date-order in a binder) helped me review the material. As for storage---to be honest, I think I'm going to throw my college notebooks away. I never look at them, and if I have any questions, I usually find answers on the Net or in the library.

        Of course, here in the Real World, my Pilot has been invaluable for playing solit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htaking notes during meetings.

    • It is a tool that has NOTHING to do with learning from someone who is standing in front of you.

      Sounds like a nice way to have students answer random questions and give the teacher instant feedback on how many students understand. Kind of like "Who wants to be a millionaire" poll the audience, we had a system like this in my college physics class...

    • I can't speak for everyone, but I type a _lot_ faster than I write. Most computer geeks I know (admittedly the original question wasn't directed towards geeks) have horrendous handwriting. To assume that writing is as good or better than typing is a very one sided argument.
  • There is no way to stop students from goofing off in class with their computers. I'm in a Network Administration class at my highschool and believe me, we've gotten around everything the teachers have thrown at us. Despite some of the computers being almost unusable except for starting Word, we still listen to music, play games, instant message, and all the other things besides schoolwork.

    For the majority of students, they don't have the experience to figure out ways around things but in my Networking class, which is all geeks, when you start putting up barriers it's almost a challenge to see if you can get around it. I'm sure there are a few of these kids in your school too.

    If kids don't want to pay attention they're not, computers or no. Just accept that just like some kids will daydream or sleep through all their classes, some kids will be emailing each other.
  • Honestly, the best way to see if they're paying attention is to check their test scores. (You do have tests that are remotely related to actual skills in the subject at hand, right?) If they aren't paying attention to the teacher, who cares? Either they can learn on their own, in which case I don't see how it's any business of yours, or they will justly fail the class.

    They're prisoners already. At least let them try to complete their drudgerous busywork in the time completed and be graded on that.

    End rant.

  • Disable access to the campus wide email server and proxy to accounts in the group 'Student' during class time. Each classroom, building or department could have a local proxy that allows students in a given class access to certain URLs on the internet, added in by the teacher, automatically purged after they expire or by you. School schedules are mind-numbingly regular, and variations from the norm (half-days) can be handled by a script to set the stop/start times for periods. When period starts, turn unregulated access off. Period ends, access resumes. You can do the same things for lunch, as long as you have valid data which students are scheduled for which lunch. This also prevents most problems with browsing inappropriate pages during class, unless one of your teachers has a porn archive that can be found on the WLAN.

    Other than that, your school has given the students laptops ... what did you expect they would do with them. Doodle? Write embarrassing poems? Reverse engineer the entire MacOS with MacsBug? Turn off access using an automated system and you won't have to police so much. Not to mention your server load will drop, letting you go a few more years between server upgrades.

    The problem with VNC is that you'd have to lock down the local security settings of the laptops to prevent the students from disabling it. It also wouldn't take long before one of them learns how to setup rfbproxy to send a prerecorded VNC sequence to clients, like an idle desktop with a hot key to pause/resume the fake sequence.

    If your laptops run MacOS prior to X or Windows that is non-NT, then good luck securing them. The products vendors sell to secure these like Foolproof and Fortress do everthing they promise, but at the hands of a determined kid with nothing better to do but crack it, their "security" is a joke. Think "scriptkiddy".

    Best of luck.
  • You could give them to my school,
    But seriously,
    you could run linux, then create a cron job that would Chmod 000 all of the apps that aren't supposed to be being used, than Chmod 777 them back after hours. No one will know how to get around it, unless they can hack, and then they deserve to use it.

  • Why is outside internet access necessary during class hours in the first place? Give each classroom a fixed IP address gateway (10.A.B.1), and allow students access to that gateway to route to the internet as required for a particular class at a particular time. Sure, adjacent classrooms might get that access, if they happen to know the right IP address, but you could even have a quick little one-time password you give the class at the beginning of the period, if you want to add one more layer of "security".

    I'm sure it wouldn't be very hard to write a few scripts to automate the whole process. How hard depends on the OS, of course.

  • Back when I was in high school, i had 3 classes that had at least one desktop per student. The way that teacher taught is by giving a lecture the first day, before any pc got booted. Her lecture explained what she expected of the students, and what kind of freedoms were alotted to them as their responsibilitys as well. She personally bought site liscences for several microsoft game packs that she allowed us to play when we completed our assignments. Our assignments would be usually 2 or 3 lessons each taking merely 5 to 15 min depending on the structure of the lesson. After work was complete we would print and turn in our assignments, then play games.

    The way the place was set up.. there were 4 desks/computers/chairs to a group.. each faced in a rotated star facing clockwise of the group. Everyone can see everyone else's screens, if they wanted to. Plagerism was not tolorated. The setup was good for group moderation. (why are you playing tetris, she's giving a lesson)

    Sure there were some of us that could get away with hacking each other's machines. (I did it) It did help all of the classes are advanced classes, so the goof off creeps that dont want to be anywhere near a place that you have to actually think were filtered out before schedules were made. Four of us in the class had advanced knowledge of computers, three of them being in my group, including myself... We usually finished our assignments the quickest, printed the code out and handed it in and then proceeded to cause each other trouble if they werent finished or play the teacher's games. (We would junk up the other's hard drives while they were compiling to make it take longer or make the loose print jobs.) It's fun playing god with someone else's computer.

    All in all, we did ok. The teacher was able to keep a lot of control over the class with the freedoms and responsiblity phrase. She would just have to mention that and the person in the wrong thing would see and understand their fault and adjust to classroom activity.

    DRACO-
  • I agree with various comments already made about how you can't really count on the laptop's configuration itself to keep the students from using email, etc. It's too easy to reinstall an OS without the locked-down configuration, for one thing. If you can't do it at the host level, the network level is an obvious next step.

    Just a wild idea, but what about a modified intrusion detection system? Rather than detecting people coming into the network, it could look for anomalous behavior, such as ICQ traffic during class periods. You might not be able to stop it, but you could probably detect it. I think you could write rules for pretty much anything you'd need to detect in Snort, for example.
  • I carried a laptop throughout high school, it sucked!

    First of all, 802.11b, if you get a collision, you loose communications for a little while (a noticable period). Also, I have friends that worked in university labs, they have told me in the past that there are a few software packages out there that are designed for situations like that. Check with a college it/mis department, or maybe somebody who works for the school system may know about such software.
  • see the subject.. there's no better way to keep people from using email on a laptop than to close the lid..

    If they are activily using the laptop for some learning exercise, they will be busy with what they are doing so their won't be a problem with them checking email..

    Besides computers are made to multitask.. if the children realize that before the teachers, thats too bad.. but in the real world of college (that hs love to tell lies about) you can check email or whatever else you want to do while using computers as long as at the end of the class period you have the required work done too..
  • One of the problems, with using VNC and laptops is that kids are smart. They'll figure out how to disable it, or otherwise mess with it. Especially if they can take the laptops home and spend hours "customizing" them.

    Maybe a tool that's more stealthy, like sub7 would be more appropriate?

    The other option is to implement a proxy server as the only way to access the net and then block the webmail sites and the mail protocols.
  • Any NetAdmin worth his/her weight in silicon will tell you never to deploy a completely unsecured machine if you want to limit the user's capabilities with it... Micro$oft offers group policies both with and without $M$, Novell offers ZENWorks, Apple offers something or another that I can't think of right now... Heck, if you don't want to do that, use something more cheezy (like M$'s policies isn't already?) like Fortress 101 or the likes. Limit what the user can and cannot execute -- define a list of allowed apps (and, for pete's sake, keep em out of the registry and control panel!!!)

    Both $M$ and ZEN offer remote control agents, though I must admit that I do like VNC. The big draw-back to VNC though is name resolution -- how do you figure out who is who? Esp when the user has the ability to modify the computer name...

    Besides, if they're stupid enough to give out all that hardware to kids (and I thought I was all the rave for getting extra time on the lone trash-80!!!), they've got to assume some responsibility and proactively address such issues....

    And, while on the subject, what gain in productivity do these kids see by having yet another distraction everywhere they go??? I don't have a problem with technology in the classroom, but ONLY when it's utilized appropriately....
  • There was a software company that was located in Milwaukee, I beleive it may have been sold to HP and moved to the east coast, but it was called Discourse Technologies and it was specifically used to monitor classroom activity so that each child was linked with the teacher and could answer questions etc. This gave the teacher the ability to know what the student was doing. I assume this may work with existing hardware although I believe they marketed their product to include the hardware, probably worth checking into, I remember good write-ups about the company in the local papers.

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