Really? I find it to be the complete opposite for the most part. I mean there are certain things you figure out in high school that are applicable throughout the rest of your time on this planet. But the only time things feel like "high school" to me, are when I'm around people that never managed to move on past it.
Indeed, I'd rather say college is then high school.
That IT admin was terrible. I don't care where you learned to be an admin, rule #1 is the most snooping allowed is "are they looking at something they can't", not WHAT exactly the contents are. You care if they're running an IM program, you don't present them with parsed copies of the damned chat or their email contents. That's just not okay, anywhere. Installing remote camera software? Beyond it being teenagers, what the hell is wrong with that person.
Honestly, I refuse to open people's email without their immediate supervisor and a few levels of management up standing over my shoulder agreeing there's a pressing need to do so. I can't imaging trying to actively spy on my user base. You lose a laptop, you're paying for it. End of story, there's no need to try and play detective.
But yeah, schools have gone into absurd "scared of parents, think all the kids are crooks" mode, and I don't see that stopping. I just can't see a politician running for office or being re-elected on a "seriously, let the kids be freaking kids while we teach them" platform. They'd be smeared as pro drugs pro crime and probably pro teenage sex before he'd left his first campaign stop.
I feel like the only computer courses that *need* to be taught in high school are computer keyboarding and how to use Excel. Web Design and computer programming are interesting classes as well, but it doesn't matter if you learn them in high school or not as most colleges will require you to take them again anyway. I learned how to use a computer in all of about an hour when I was 10 years old, and while I'm not an idiot, I feel like they are pretty easy to figure out; its definitely not something that needs to be taught in high school.
Most of the shit can be done by blindly stumbling through the programs and using the internet or help files. Computers have been made as user friendly as possible.
Don't be ridiculous. Just because you're comfortable with a computer, don't presume anybody can just bluff their way through learning something they don't know. To some people, a computer is a good as goddamn alien technology, and just as terrifying.
I feel like the only computer courses that *need* to be taught in high school are computer keyboarding and how to use Excel. Web Design and computer programming are interesting classes as well, but it doesn't matter if you learn them in high school or not as most colleges will require you to take them again anyway. I learned how to use a computer in all of about an hour when I was 10 years old, and while I'm not an idiot, I feel like they are pretty easy to figure out; its definitely not something that needs to be taught in high school.
Most of the shit can be done by blindly stumbling through the programs and using the internet or help files. Computers have been made as user friendly as possible.
Don't be ridiculous. Just because you're comfortable with a computer, don't presume anybody can just bluff their way through learning something they don't know. To some people, a computer is a good as goddamn alien technology, and just as terrifying.
Computers are coldly logical for the most part. What computer people don't understand is the logical structure of the app/how to do shit makes SENSE to us, because it's our kind of logic.
Same way accounting makes sense to some people, and makes the rest of us think those people are absolutely insane.
This is why I never in my career get irritated at end users needing even simple things explained to them (except once, where a user demanded I alter the layout of a third party web application because she didn't like it. Not my company, lady!), but I tend to get a bit testy around helpdesk and IT admins who can't freaking grep a log file or google the error message before waking me up at 3am.
edit: my school was nice. QBasic, Pascal (hah!), then C++ for the remaining two years of highschool. In addition to basic word/excel and typing classes. Yay well funded Magnet schools.
That IT admin was terrible. I don't care where you learned to be an admin, rule #1 is the most snooping allowed is "are they looking at something they can't", not WHAT exactly the contents are. You care if they're running an IM program, you don't present them with parsed copies of the damned chat or their email contents. That's just not okay, anywhere. Installing remote camera software? Beyond it being teenagers, what the hell is wrong with that person.
Honestly, I refuse to open people's email without their immediate supervisor and a few levels of management up standing over my shoulder agreeing there's a pressing need to do so. I can't imaging trying to actively spy on my user base. You lose a laptop, you're paying for it. End of story, there's no need to try and play detective.
But yeah, schools have gone into absurd "scared of parents, think all the kids are crooks" mode, and I don't see that stopping. I just can't see a politician running for office or being re-elected on a "seriously, let the kids be freaking kids while we teach them" platform. They'd be smeared as pro drugs pro crime and probably pro teenage sex before he'd left his first campaign stop.
Something I found kind of comical is that the analyst who broke down LANRev was explaining that the IT admin has a fairly large online footprint, he posted a link to the guy's blog, and the guy is a total Apple fanboy, so much so that he has a large post detailing how awesome he thinks the iPad is. Which seriously makes me wonder about the guy.
Also funny is that LANRev has gone public denouncing the use of their programs for such things, and yet the IT guy involved stars in one of their promotion videos detailing these exact kind of uses.
Doesn't surprise me that he's an apple fanboy. The macbooks make no sense for a high school at this point. Expensive (even with the presumed huge school discount apple loves to hand out, hence all the apples in our old high schools) and more importantly tend to be outright rejected by a lot of colleges on their laptop requirements.
I will say I've never met an apple fanboy who is huge into overreaching security though. Usually those are the BSD and pure UNIX folks. A foot long white beard apparently makes you think the entire world is out to get your lucky charms.
That IT admin was terrible. I don't care where you learned to be an admin, rule #1 is the most snooping allowed is "are they looking at something they can't", not WHAT exactly the contents are. You care if they're running an IM program, you don't present them with parsed copies of the damned chat or their email contents. That's just not okay, anywhere. Installing remote camera software? Beyond it being teenagers, what the hell is wrong with that person.
Honestly, I refuse to open people's email without their immediate supervisor and a few levels of management up standing over my shoulder agreeing there's a pressing need to do so. I can't imaging trying to actively spy on my user base. You lose a laptop, you're paying for it. End of story, there's no need to try and play detective.
But yeah, schools have gone into absurd "scared of parents, think all the kids are crooks" mode, and I don't see that stopping. I just can't see a politician running for office or being re-elected on a "seriously, let the kids be freaking kids while we teach them" platform. They'd be smeared as pro drugs pro crime and probably pro teenage sex before he'd left his first campaign stop.
Something I found kind of comical is that the analyst who broke down LANRev was explaining that the IT admin has a fairly large online footprint, he posted a link to the guy's blog, and the guy is a total Apple fanboy, so much so that he has a large post detailing how awesome he thinks the iPad is. Which seriously makes me wonder about the guy.
Even more comical is the post on his blog warning people to block ChatRoulette because it's dangerous to let children camchat. I guess as long as it's only one way it's OK.
Doesn't surprise me that he's an apple fanboy. The macbooks make no sense for a high school at this point. Expensive (even with the presumed huge school discount apple loves to hand out, hence all the apples in our old high schools) and more importantly tend to be outright rejected by a lot of colleges on their laptop requirements.
I will say I've never met an apple fanboy who is huge into overreaching security though. Usually those are the BSD and pure UNIX folks. A foot long white beard apparently makes you think the entire world is out to get your lucky charms.
I have no idea if it's a good decision or not, are they easier to network? I only know PC's. I mean, at least with an Apple you would figure you wouldn't have to do as much troubleshooting with programs and so on. I know the school had a robust policy concerning their use including expulsion for jailbreaking your computer. So maybe that's why they did it, Macs are easier to lock down? Although it does seem that the school had way to much money to dick around with, and I imagine that factored into it the most.
Doesn't surprise me that he's an apple fanboy. The macbooks make no sense for a high school at this point. Expensive (even with the presumed huge school discount apple loves to hand out, hence all the apples in our old high schools) and more importantly tend to be outright rejected by a lot of colleges on their laptop requirements.
Well, I will say that before Vista/7 Macs were a little better on the "run as user, not admin" front...which would be preferable for situations like this. Windows XP was (and for those of us forced to still use it, is) terrible to run on as a regular user...it's not a constant stream of problems, or anything, but all too often you just run into incredibly stupid shit trying to deal with it.
But, like I said, Vista/7 has (mostly) taken care of this issue. Inertia might still have some admins lean towards Macs, though.
Also, I wasn't aware that so many colleges rejected Macs for their laptop requirements. Seems silly...unless you're in a select few fields Macs can handle pretty much anything the average college student needs to do (I wound up going back to Windows because of some engineering apps that had no decent Mac equivalent, at least not at a reasonable price). And some programs at my school actually required Macs.
Anyway, other than price there's little reason not to go with Macs...kids are mostly going to be learning how to Google shit and use basic office programs (with both MS Office and other equivalents available on the Mac), so it fills the need just fine. As for price, when you start to consider what the school is spending already on a per-student basis (upwards of $10K), it's probably not that significant of a difference. Figure they're going to pay at least $500 for any "full feature" (non-netbook) laptop through a commercial vendor with support and software, and the extra $300 or so per head for the base Macbook isn't going to break the bank.
EDIT: Ideally I'd force students to use both OSX and Windows...maybe OSX on their laptops and Windows in the school labs/classrooms...because I'm of the opinion that forcing people to learn the basics of multiple operating systems allows them to see the parallels that exist between them, and that even though at first glance they seem very "different" in reality there are a lot of fundamental aspects that don't really change much. Might teach people more about how to "use a computer" than "how to use the specific software they use for their daily tasks," which is all most people bother with. This makes it easier for them to sit down in front of any decently-designed application on any given platform and learn it relatively quickly, making them much more effective later at picking up new skills. But that's just me. And, of course, you could just as easily do this with Linux/Windows or Linux/OSX.
mcdermott on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
You guys, seriously, I've met my share of people who just don't get computers.
On the topic of Apple computers, when my school was awarded a grant for our film program to buy digital equipment, we went Apple. It was user friendly and got the job done pretty alright. You forget that Apple is big on granting discounts to students or schools.
... or well, they were. I dunno if they still are.
I'm not interested in this thread though if it's going to devolve into PC vs. Mac bullshit. They're both computers, they're different, everyone has a right to pick whichever they like. Having actual vitriol for one or the other is silly goosey and I won't be party to it. Grow up. There's more important stuff to life than brand loyalty.
1) It's the other Lower Merrion school that this happened at. They share a district, but it's not exactly the same people.
2) School administrators found out about this at the same time the general population did (around 7:00 Thursday morning when they heard it on the morning news).
3) All laptops are being brought in to disable features that could be used in the manner that caused problems, including undoing the webcam altogether.
4) I was repeatedly assured that actual details were much different than the speculation that's been thrown around. "About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
That was basically all I got, as there's a court order in the way.
As for why they started the laptop program, and why they used the computers they did;
Lower Merrion is a new school district with shitloads of money, serving a mixture of upper middle class kids and more underpriveleged areas (admittedly most of the lower socioeconomic kids got zoned into the school that had this issue rather than the other Merrion school). That means there were kids with laptops in classes and teachers utilizing that technology, and kids that were missing out on vital materials because they were being transitioned online. In order to alleviate this (and allow for unified programs for that sort of thing, including study organizers and online learning materials) the district cut a deal with a distributor using a combination of their own money and grants. They went with the company that would give them the best deal, and wound up with what they have.
I feel like the only computer courses that *need* to be taught in high school are computer keyboarding and how to use Excel. Web Design and computer programming are interesting classes as well, but it doesn't matter if you learn them in high school or not as most colleges will require you to take them again anyway. I learned how to use a computer in all of about an hour when I was 10 years old, and while I'm not an idiot, I feel like they are pretty easy to figure out; its definitely not something that needs to be taught in high school.
It is for a lot of people. And besides, there are lots of classes various students don't need but are mandatory to make sure they do know what the Hell they're doing.
"About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
The school district's half, presumably.
I love how this is the assumption.
School administrations are (at least in America) unrivaled in their predisposition towards stupidity and callous disregard for basic decency. If you're taking education classes and you're not already feeling adversarial towards administrators, you are probably on your way towards being one of them.
"About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
The school district's half, presumably.
I love how this is the assumption.
Well, it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
However, the speculation on this one has been pretty wild.
I'm not saying that there's now way there was wrongdoing on the part of the school here, at all.
I'm just saying that there tends to be a lot of.. residual animosity toward the school system and its employees from the kind of people that would be frequenting a forum attached to a gaming webcomic. Reading through this thread in particular has made it pretty clear exactly where the assumption of good intentions ends for a lot of the posters here when it comes to educators.
"About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
The school district's half, presumably.
I love how this is the assumption.
Well, it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
However, the speculation on this one has been pretty wild.
I'm not saying that there's now way there was wrongdoing on the part of the school here, at all.
I'm just saying that there tends to be a lot of.. residual animosity toward the school system and its employees from the kind of people that would be frequenting a forum attached to a gaming webcomic. Reading through this thread in particular has made it pretty clear exactly where the assumption of good intentions ends for a lot of the posters here when it comes to educators.
Edit: And the above post illustrates my point.
Or perhaps, instead of resentment, it has something to do with the fact that schools have, in general, been on a quest to eliminate any and all rights still possessed by students. They have all the laughable self-importance of local politicians, with virtually none of the accountability or restrictions.
I find it interesting how isolated incidents of idiotic restrictions and actions can damn the entire educational system and everyone who is a part of it, when this same logic is applied to no other arena of public life.
The educational system is the visible authority in the portion of an individual's life when they're starting to dislike authority. There's no way the generalized hatred for educators is completely rational.
Educators are fine by me, and get a ton of leeway because I think our society is insane to treat teachers as poorly as it does. High School admins who mistake Mike&Ikes for drugs? Yeah, not so much leeway. For example, I have no reason to believe the Mike&Ike story except for a cursory read of this thread, but I'm not even remotely skeptical. My personal experience has been that the administration is the enemy not only of candy-popping students, but of the actual teaching faculty as well. I'll be the first to admit that I'm prejudiced here.
EDIT: I became a pot-smoking discontent after I graduated from High School, so I never had any personal run-ins with "The Man" as it were. This doesn't really make my prejudice any more justified, since it only means that it's more likely to be based on the inflated complaints of my peers than direct experience. I'm not sure why I'm announcing this, really. I guess I felt that I just had to respond to the allegation that I'm still playing out my rebellious youth, since I didn't have a rebellious youth. The actual fact is even worse: I'm playing out someone else's rebellious youth. :P
isolated incidents of idiotic restrictions and actions
As long as you ignore the whole "personal experiences" thing.
And that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Negative associations against the preeminent authority figures from the period of life when you were starting to rebel against authority. Particularly in instances where that authority you at least at one point resented is now apparently being abused.
This isn't at all an uncommon way of building extremely strong negative gut reactions.
@ nescientist: So you're fine with educators and think people treat them poorly, but you're willing to jump to negative conclusions about one you've never met based on conjecture on an internet forum. Right.
"About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
The school district's half, presumably.
I love how this is the assumption.
Well, it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
However, the speculation on this one has been pretty wild.
I'm not saying that there's now way there was wrongdoing on the part of the school here, at all.
I'm just saying that there tends to be a lot of.. residual animosity toward the school system and its employees from the kind of people that would be frequenting a forum attached to a gaming webcomic. Reading through this thread in particular has made it pretty clear exactly where the assumption of good intentions ends for a lot of the posters here when it comes to educators.
Edit: And the above post illustrates my point.
The problem is even by the school district's own admissions they are entirely liable. They didn't include any notification/waiver/written policy which would allow them to illegally wiretap the laptops even if they had been reported stolen but they did it anyway. Vague claims of "nuh uh" don't hold much weight
"About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
The school district's half, presumably.
I love how this is the assumption.
Well, it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
However, the speculation on this one has been pretty wild.
I'm not saying that there's now way there was wrongdoing on the part of the school here, at all.
I'm just saying that there tends to be a lot of.. residual animosity toward the school system and its employees from the kind of people that would be frequenting a forum attached to a gaming webcomic. Reading through this thread in particular has made it pretty clear exactly where the assumption of good intentions ends for a lot of the posters here when it comes to educators.
Edit: And the above post illustrates my point.
The problem is even by the school district's own admissions they are entirely liable. They didn't include any notification/waiver/written policy which would allow them to illegally wiretap the laptops even if they had been reported stolen but they did it anyway. Vague claims of "nuh uh" don't hold much weight
I'm not even trying to defend this individual case. I don't personally have any information that wasn't either already in this thread or added by me. If the school is liable, they're liable. Period.
I was just commenting on something that I've seen in this and other school threads. The immediate assumption is that the school and everyone officially associated with it suck, and that bugs me. I was pointing out one fairly straight forward reason why that jump from "news about school" to "educators are assholes" might be made.
I don't know Zed, sure there's plenty of speculation, and I already posted this, but what this guy has dug up so far is definitely not looking good for the school district whatsoever. It's sounding like anybody who knew what they were looking for could have logged into these computers and snapped some surreptitious photos...of teens...in their bedrooms any time they liked. And the school not only has rules forbidding the use of other private computers and expulsion if you jailbreak your district supplied computer, but they also have apparently repeatedly been telling students that the flashing of the green webcam light is just a bug, now I wasn't there obviously, but that's a pretty telling detail, and leads me to believe they knew full well what was going on with those webcams. Or how did they end up with the picture of the kid "using drugs" in the first place?
Did you catch the part where I'm not defending anyone in this specific case?
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
I mean, this is a thread where we're talking about a school giving its students laptops with webcams that they could spy on them with, and not only never telling about them about it, but in fact turning them on when the computers are at home with the kids. So I think you can cut people a little bit of slack if they get a little hyperbolic with their arguments here, as it does seem like there has become an increasing trend of educators being way overzealous with the application of the rules in public schools.
I know anecdotally I had some really terrible educators growing up, and some very good ones. And I think everyone does, so when you read a story like this, yeah, it gets your blood boiling, because you remember that small, petty teacher who used to make your life hell in high school.
Did you catch the part where I'm not defending anyone in this specific case?
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
I don't think most here are assuming that a majority of educators are fascist assholes.
But I think most of us assume that a majority of administrators are. Because, you know, they are.
I went to three different high schools, and it was different flavors of what-the-fuck at each. And now, looking back at it through adult-colored glasses, I feel pretty much the same. And having a wife who is an educator, I get to see more than a little bit of what the administrators she deals with are like, and it's much the same.
The bulk of school administrators regularly make decisions that range from benignly stupid (banning shorts at a high school in Phoenix) to catastrophically absurd (strip searches, this bullshit).
So yes, I feel perfectly comfortable making the assumption in any given case that a school administrator is, at best, fucking retarded. At worst, downright malicious. And I'll defend anybody else who does the same.
Just noticed this thread, and as a Harriton graduate I'd like to say I'm proud to have attended a school that is apparently at the cutting edge of espionage. (You have to figure an affluent suburb like that is gonna produce a couple supervillains, so why not collect all your evidence now? It's genius!)
As far as "blaming the educators" goes, there's a fair bit of disconnect and in some cases hostility between the teachers and administration in Lower Merion, in my experience. Teachers may be controlling shitbags on the whole for all I know, but this isn't a case of it. I'd be interested to find out the extent to which faculty was informed of the function, if at all.
Yeah that blog made it sound like this laptop program has been a big experiment in [illegal] covert surveillance by the one IT guy. I mean, as if he considered what he was doing to be research or academic or something. Making the world a better place by figuring out how to use theft-tracking software to randomly gather images all over the local community.
Anyway, you can bet I would have been one of the ones with tape over my camera, especially if it wasn't usable by me anyway. The only webcam I own now has a physical screen that slides in front of it.
Did you catch the part where I'm not defending anyone in this specific case?
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
I don't know about you, but i've read a whole lot of stories about US school administrators being... well, generally nutty the last few years. Stories about kids being stripsearched for dubious reasons, frankly disturbinngly intrusive rules about attire (seriously, a uniform has to be less hassle than someone demanding you kneel so they can check whether your skirt is long enough) kids having the cops called on them for little stuff like drawing on a desk, one getting tasered by a cop for throwing a tantrum (she was 6! and I don't care that it was in Florida, that's not an excuse). Paired with the lower authority teaching staff have over kids here (our rights never ended at the school gate), it looks really bad.
I find it interesting how isolated incidents of idiotic restrictions and actions can damn the entire educational system and everyone who is a part of it, when this same logic is applied to no other arena of public life.
The educational system is the visible authority in the portion of an individual's life when they're starting to dislike authority. There's no way the generalized hatred for educators is completely rational.
I would say the police are treated much the same around here.
Did you catch the part where I'm not defending anyone in this specific case?
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
I don't think most here are assuming that a majority of educators are fascist assholes.
But I think most of us assume that a majority of administrators are. Because, you know, they are.
I went to three different high schools, and it was different flavors of what-the-fuck at each. And now, looking back at it through adult-colored glasses, I feel pretty much the same. And having a wife who is an educator, I get to see more than a little bit of what the administrators she deals with are like, and it's much the same.
The bulk of school administrators regularly make decisions that range from benignly stupid (banning shorts at a high school in Phoenix) to catastrophically absurd (strip searches, this bullshit).
So yes, I feel perfectly comfortable making the assumption in any given case that a school administrator is, at best, fucking retarded. At worst, downright malicious. And I'll defend anybody else who does the same.
I think that terms like "bulk" and "majority" when dealing with any group are unnecessarily stigmatizing. If "the bulk" of those in the educational field, even as administrators, really held these traits that you seem to think they do, this kind of stuff wouldn't be news. It would be par for the course and we would be too jaded to even care.
The fact that isolated incidents are, in fact, isolated enough to be noteworthy flies in the face of the "all administrators are idiots/fascists" line of thought.
Did you catch the part where I'm not defending anyone in this specific case?
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
I don't know about you, but i've read a whole lot of stories about US school administrators being... well, generally nutty the last few years. Stories about kids being stripsearched for dubious reasons, frankly disturbinngly intrusive rules about attire (seriously, a uniform has to be less hassle than someone demanding you kneel so they can check whether your skirt is long enough) kids having the cops called on them for little stuff like drawing on a desk, one getting tasered by a cop for throwing a tantrum (she was 6! and I don't care that it was in Florida, that's not an excuse). Paired with the lower authority teaching staff have over kids here (our rights never ended at the school gate), it looks really bad.
I think there have been missteps and major over reactions from people in the field. I never said there hadn't. But at the same time people that work in education are literally in the public eye constantly (they literally work "on stage"), they are by the nature of their job directly associated with a cross-section of the public that we're instinctively insanely protective of and there are hundreds of thousands of them in the US alone. Combine that with the fact that virtually everyone has some sort of negative association with the school system based on an individual or a policy that they chafed under, and it's a really bad situation for anyone to be trying to make a gut reaction on.
I just don't think it's logical that every time we have a thread about anything going on in schools it turns into a "fuck those guys, they're all jerks" thread in the first two pages.
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Honestly, I refuse to open people's email without their immediate supervisor and a few levels of management up standing over my shoulder agreeing there's a pressing need to do so. I can't imaging trying to actively spy on my user base. You lose a laptop, you're paying for it. End of story, there's no need to try and play detective.
But yeah, schools have gone into absurd "scared of parents, think all the kids are crooks" mode, and I don't see that stopping. I just can't see a politician running for office or being re-elected on a "seriously, let the kids be freaking kids while we teach them" platform. They'd be smeared as pro drugs pro crime and probably pro teenage sex before he'd left his first campaign stop.
Don't be ridiculous. Just because you're comfortable with a computer, don't presume anybody can just bluff their way through learning something they don't know. To some people, a computer is a good as goddamn alien technology, and just as terrifying.
Computers are coldly logical for the most part. What computer people don't understand is the logical structure of the app/how to do shit makes SENSE to us, because it's our kind of logic.
Same way accounting makes sense to some people, and makes the rest of us think those people are absolutely insane.
This is why I never in my career get irritated at end users needing even simple things explained to them (except once, where a user demanded I alter the layout of a third party web application because she didn't like it. Not my company, lady!), but I tend to get a bit testy around helpdesk and IT admins who can't freaking grep a log file or google the error message before waking me up at 3am.
edit: my school was nice. QBasic, Pascal (hah!), then C++ for the remaining two years of highschool. In addition to basic word/excel and typing classes. Yay well funded Magnet schools.
Something I found kind of comical is that the analyst who broke down LANRev was explaining that the IT admin has a fairly large online footprint, he posted a link to the guy's blog, and the guy is a total Apple fanboy, so much so that he has a large post detailing how awesome he thinks the iPad is. Which seriously makes me wonder about the guy.
Also funny is that LANRev has gone public denouncing the use of their programs for such things, and yet the IT guy involved stars in one of their promotion videos detailing these exact kind of uses.
I will say I've never met an apple fanboy who is huge into overreaching security though. Usually those are the BSD and pure UNIX folks. A foot long white beard apparently makes you think the entire world is out to get your lucky charms.
Even more comical is the post on his blog warning people to block ChatRoulette because it's dangerous to let children camchat. I guess as long as it's only one way it's OK.
I have no idea if it's a good decision or not, are they easier to network? I only know PC's. I mean, at least with an Apple you would figure you wouldn't have to do as much troubleshooting with programs and so on. I know the school had a robust policy concerning their use including expulsion for jailbreaking your computer. So maybe that's why they did it, Macs are easier to lock down? Although it does seem that the school had way to much money to dick around with, and I imagine that factored into it the most.
Well, I will say that before Vista/7 Macs were a little better on the "run as user, not admin" front...which would be preferable for situations like this. Windows XP was (and for those of us forced to still use it, is) terrible to run on as a regular user...it's not a constant stream of problems, or anything, but all too often you just run into incredibly stupid shit trying to deal with it.
But, like I said, Vista/7 has (mostly) taken care of this issue. Inertia might still have some admins lean towards Macs, though.
Also, I wasn't aware that so many colleges rejected Macs for their laptop requirements. Seems silly...unless you're in a select few fields Macs can handle pretty much anything the average college student needs to do (I wound up going back to Windows because of some engineering apps that had no decent Mac equivalent, at least not at a reasonable price). And some programs at my school actually required Macs.
Anyway, other than price there's little reason not to go with Macs...kids are mostly going to be learning how to Google shit and use basic office programs (with both MS Office and other equivalents available on the Mac), so it fills the need just fine. As for price, when you start to consider what the school is spending already on a per-student basis (upwards of $10K), it's probably not that significant of a difference. Figure they're going to pay at least $500 for any "full feature" (non-netbook) laptop through a commercial vendor with support and software, and the extra $300 or so per head for the base Macbook isn't going to break the bank.
EDIT: Ideally I'd force students to use both OSX and Windows...maybe OSX on their laptops and Windows in the school labs/classrooms...because I'm of the opinion that forcing people to learn the basics of multiple operating systems allows them to see the parallels that exist between them, and that even though at first glance they seem very "different" in reality there are a lot of fundamental aspects that don't really change much. Might teach people more about how to "use a computer" than "how to use the specific software they use for their daily tasks," which is all most people bother with. This makes it easier for them to sit down in front of any decently-designed application on any given platform and learn it relatively quickly, making them much more effective later at picking up new skills. But that's just me. And, of course, you could just as easily do this with Linux/Windows or Linux/OSX.
On the topic of Apple computers, when my school was awarded a grant for our film program to buy digital equipment, we went Apple. It was user friendly and got the job done pretty alright. You forget that Apple is big on granting discounts to students or schools.
... or well, they were. I dunno if they still are.
I'm not interested in this thread though if it's going to devolve into PC vs. Mac bullshit. They're both computers, they're different, everyone has a right to pick whichever they like. Having actual vitriol for one or the other is silly goosey and I won't be party to it. Grow up. There's more important stuff to life than brand loyalty.
1) It's the other Lower Merrion school that this happened at. They share a district, but it's not exactly the same people.
2) School administrators found out about this at the same time the general population did (around 7:00 Thursday morning when they heard it on the morning news).
3) All laptops are being brought in to disable features that could be used in the manner that caused problems, including undoing the webcam altogether.
4) I was repeatedly assured that actual details were much different than the speculation that's been thrown around. "About half the stuff they're saying is completely untrue."
That was basically all I got, as there's a court order in the way.
As for why they started the laptop program, and why they used the computers they did;
Lower Merrion is a new school district with shitloads of money, serving a mixture of upper middle class kids and more underpriveleged areas (admittedly most of the lower socioeconomic kids got zoned into the school that had this issue rather than the other Merrion school). That means there were kids with laptops in classes and teachers utilizing that technology, and kids that were missing out on vital materials because they were being transitioned online. In order to alleviate this (and allow for unified programs for that sort of thing, including study organizers and online learning materials) the district cut a deal with a distributor using a combination of their own money and grants. They went with the company that would give them the best deal, and wound up with what they have.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The school district's half, presumably.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Well, it's usually a pretty safe assumption.
However, the speculation on this one has been pretty wild.
It is for a lot of people. And besides, there are lots of classes various students don't need but are mandatory to make sure they do know what the Hell they're doing.
School administrations are (at least in America) unrivaled in their predisposition towards stupidity and callous disregard for basic decency. If you're taking education classes and you're not already feeling adversarial towards administrators, you are probably on your way towards being one of them.
On the bright side, the pay is decent.
I'm just saying that there tends to be a lot of.. residual animosity toward the school system and its employees from the kind of people that would be frequenting a forum attached to a gaming webcomic. Reading through this thread in particular has made it pretty clear exactly where the assumption of good intentions ends for a lot of the posters here when it comes to educators.
Edit: And the above post illustrates my point.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Or perhaps, instead of resentment, it has something to do with the fact that schools have, in general, been on a quest to eliminate any and all rights still possessed by students. They have all the laughable self-importance of local politicians, with virtually none of the accountability or restrictions.
The educational system is the visible authority in the portion of an individual's life when they're starting to dislike authority. There's no way the generalized hatred for educators is completely rational.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
EDIT: I became a pot-smoking discontent after I graduated from High School, so I never had any personal run-ins with "The Man" as it were. This doesn't really make my prejudice any more justified, since it only means that it's more likely to be based on the inflated complaints of my peers than direct experience. I'm not sure why I'm announcing this, really. I guess I felt that I just had to respond to the allegation that I'm still playing out my rebellious youth, since I didn't have a rebellious youth. The actual fact is even worse: I'm playing out someone else's rebellious youth. :P
As long as you ignore the whole "personal experiences" thing.
Negative associations against the preeminent authority figures from the period of life when you were starting to rebel against authority. Particularly in instances where that authority you at least at one point resented is now apparently being abused.
This isn't at all an uncommon way of building extremely strong negative gut reactions.
@ nescientist: So you're fine with educators and think people treat them poorly, but you're willing to jump to negative conclusions about one you've never met based on conjecture on an internet forum. Right.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The problem is even by the school district's own admissions they are entirely liable. They didn't include any notification/waiver/written policy which would allow them to illegally wiretap the laptops even if they had been reported stolen but they did it anyway. Vague claims of "nuh uh" don't hold much weight
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I was just commenting on something that I've seen in this and other school threads. The immediate assumption is that the school and everyone officially associated with it suck, and that bugs me. I was pointing out one fairly straight forward reason why that jump from "news about school" to "educators are assholes" might be made.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Edit: Inserted correct link
If the school is admitting fault and they get the individual or group doing this stuff, then that's really all there is to be said.
At this point my beef is with the ease of assumption around here regarding educators being fascist assholes.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Lies. Homeschooling parents HAVE to say that or else they get charged with something.
I mean, this is a thread where we're talking about a school giving its students laptops with webcams that they could spy on them with, and not only never telling about them about it, but in fact turning them on when the computers are at home with the kids. So I think you can cut people a little bit of slack if they get a little hyperbolic with their arguments here, as it does seem like there has become an increasing trend of educators being way overzealous with the application of the rules in public schools.
I know anecdotally I had some really terrible educators growing up, and some very good ones. And I think everyone does, so when you read a story like this, yeah, it gets your blood boiling, because you remember that small, petty teacher who used to make your life hell in high school.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or if you're just silly-goosed.
Some states only allow homeschooling for religious reasons. So, I guess the answer is "neither."
I don't think most here are assuming that a majority of educators are fascist assholes.
But I think most of us assume that a majority of administrators are. Because, you know, they are.
I went to three different high schools, and it was different flavors of what-the-fuck at each. And now, looking back at it through adult-colored glasses, I feel pretty much the same. And having a wife who is an educator, I get to see more than a little bit of what the administrators she deals with are like, and it's much the same.
The bulk of school administrators regularly make decisions that range from benignly stupid (banning shorts at a high school in Phoenix) to catastrophically absurd (strip searches, this bullshit).
So yes, I feel perfectly comfortable making the assumption in any given case that a school administrator is, at best, fucking retarded. At worst, downright malicious. And I'll defend anybody else who does the same.
As far as "blaming the educators" goes, there's a fair bit of disconnect and in some cases hostility between the teachers and administration in Lower Merion, in my experience. Teachers may be controlling shitbags on the whole for all I know, but this isn't a case of it. I'd be interested to find out the extent to which faculty was informed of the function, if at all.
She's got a hard-on for enforcement. It wouldn't shock me if she responded by accusing the kid of something else.
New entry on disciplinary record: lied to discipline administrator about drugs.
Anyway, you can bet I would have been one of the ones with tape over my camera, especially if it wasn't usable by me anyway. The only webcam I own now has a physical screen that slides in front of it.
I don't know about you, but i've read a whole lot of stories about US school administrators being... well, generally nutty the last few years. Stories about kids being stripsearched for dubious reasons, frankly disturbinngly intrusive rules about attire (seriously, a uniform has to be less hassle than someone demanding you kneel so they can check whether your skirt is long enough) kids having the cops called on them for little stuff like drawing on a desk, one getting tasered by a cop for throwing a tantrum (she was 6! and I don't care that it was in Florida, that's not an excuse). Paired with the lower authority teaching staff have over kids here (our rights never ended at the school gate), it looks really bad.
I would say the police are treated much the same around here.
The fact that isolated incidents are, in fact, isolated enough to be noteworthy flies in the face of the "all administrators are idiots/fascists" line of thought.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I just don't think it's logical that every time we have a thread about anything going on in schools it turns into a "fuck those guys, they're all jerks" thread in the first two pages.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.