alt Hacker NewsMy son, who recently graduated high school, went to a school that banned phones but insisted on laptops (providing them for the kids who couldn't afford one). He said it was ridiculous, as none of the kids had any problem using their laptop for anything they would have used the phone, which was mostly texting, scrolling social media, watching videos, and playing games. Even when the school tried to lock down services, as soon as one kid found a way around it, they all did.
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Way back when I was in school (2004 or so) I set up a proxy on my personal website to get around them blocking email, because I don’t want to have to save things to a damned floppy drive.
I then let a teacher use it because he was frustrated half of his search results would get blocked. From there, it spread like wildfire. Eventually they blocked it and from then on the IT guy would give me a side eye whenever we crossed paths.
Anyways, I can only imagine the clever ways kids get around things now. If it’s not per device, all a kid would need is a mobile hotspot to be king.
My son is in middle school and it's the same thing. They can't have devices in the classroom, except for the school mandated device that does everything the phone does and more.
It’s hard to imagine a slow, overworked, somewhat inept, bureaucratic school board, with a thousand other things it wants to care about, managing to stay ahead of thousands of crafty and highly motivated teens.
Yeah it probably took about 15 seconds for the first kid to figure out that you could just share a google doc with your friends and use it for texting.
It should be more simple devices with only helpful apps like books reader and learning videos player, not general access devices
they brought laptops to cafeteria? outside? the core issue is usage of phones outside of the class, no? if he used it during the class, cool (we all gad boring teachers). if he was able to use it after the bell rang that is not having a ban
The whole "browser game" industry is built on this phenomenon. It's about getting kids on school laptops mindlessly looping on something while shoving ads in their face.
Honestly, get the tech out of classrooms. A few 8 bit machines that can run LOGO are far more genuinely educational than all the gunk they have today.