On the Problems with Laptops in School? 72
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?
Plenty of ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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...
Re:One way (Score:1)
"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.
Re:One way (Score:1)
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.
Student database (Score:1)
The relevance of this is (finally
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)
Re:Loose the laptops (Score:1)
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.
Re:Loose the laptops (Score:1)
Re:Loose the laptops (Score:1)
Re:Loose the laptops (Score:1)
Curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Smoke AND Mirrors.
Re:Curious... (Score:2)
Re:Curious... (Score:2)
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)
Re:A possible solution (Score:2)
Re:A possible solution (Score:2)
Re:A possible solution (Score:2)
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?
Re:A possible solution (Score:2)
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)
If you are the lucky school that gets Apple iBooks (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:If you are the lucky school that gets Apple iBo (Score:1)
Re:If you are the lucky school that gets Apple iBo (Score:1)
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.
Implement managed PC's (Score:1)
Can't remember what it was called, but... (Score:2)
Not just laptops... (Score:5, Funny)
Why even bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why even bother? (Score:1)
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)
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]
This keeps getting worse (Score:1)
Another non-technical solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:2)
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...)
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:1)
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.
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:2)
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
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:2)
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.
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:1)
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.
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:2)
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...
Re:Another non-technical solution (Score:1)
Re:US schools have too much money! (Score:1)
necessarily those that are vital. Of course having
too mahy layers of management to pay and meddle
doesn't help either.
Re:US schools have too much money! (Score:1)
In a couple of months most of them could touch-type at reasonable speeds, and could get work done much quicker than on pen and paper. This was never meant to be, and still is not a substitute for pen and paper, which is still used, particularly for mathematics.
You are exactly like the critics I mentioned who were too afraid to try anything new; to change the style of learning, which turned out to be one of the best decisions the school made.
Just give up (Score:1)
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.
Why do you care? (Score:1)
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.
Use a little security (Score:2, Interesting)
Other than that, your school has given the students laptops
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.
Well... (Score:1)
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.
Turn off outside access? (Score:2)
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.
Skip the technical crap. (Score:1)
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-
Try Intrusion Detection (Score:1)
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.
blah! (Score:1)
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.
close the lid.. (Score:1)
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..
What about something like sub7 (Score:1)
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.
They're fools not to implement control features!!! (Score:1)
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....
Laptops in classrooms (Score:1)