School Kids Get Virtual Web Lockers 178
Lucas123 writes "Seventh and eighth graders in Tulsa, Oklahoma not only get tablet PCs at the beginning of the school year, but they are now issued 100MB of storage through a hosted school 'Web Locker' system. The Web lockers also include chat, calendaring, and collaboration capabilities, but school administrators can also monitor and track all files uploaded to the system, and lock out individuals for misuse."
Useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
Incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Product Placement (Score:5, Insightful)
And, of course, a steady supply of advertising and "product placement".
That's quite the story write-up, almost as if done by a PR writer...
great. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Useless... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most kids have thumb drives; why would they want to use 100MB of disk space that can be spied on?
Re:They will WANT the control (Score:5, Insightful)
Grow up. Not everything is Big Brother.
Re:Incentive? (Score:3, Insightful)
The big difference being that the school didn't have and didn't exercise a right to read through everything written on school paper. Your love poems to the girl two rows over, and which you kept at home, were kept safe, not only from her and other schoolmates, but from the teachers too. The papers they got to see, they got to see because you handed them over, not because they had automatic access.
I think it's really bad when everything kids do is being supervised 24/7. Kids need hidey-holes and journals with a lock on. They won't ever be able to build their own identity nor handle secrets as an adult if they haven't been allowed to and trusted to keep secrets while growing up.
Re:Incentive? (Score:5, Insightful)
This big brother paranoia is going through the roof on
Some advantages:
- Local storage means much faster access times than external provider
- School bears responsibility for system upkeep - if it fails, you have a legitimate reason to not produce your homework or project that was stored or submitted there.
- System can be integrated with class notes and announcements, and the calendar can be used as school agenda - student logs in, sees the courses he's taking, and sees the homework assigned to him in each course.
- With login information tied to student IDs, it is much easier to track assignments and work going through the system for administration and teachers, you don't need to wonder who submitted the work coming from email s3xyb4b3@gmail.com.
And YES, you will get in trouble if you download pr0n or pirate music using the system... Just like you would at your workplace for doing the same thing using the corporate system. If you want to send something without being monitored, don't use the school system for that particular message, just as you wouldn't use your work email unless you expect it to be monitored by your employer.
It's very nice more schools are accepting the high-tech way of doing work. Not only it makes managing assignments much easier (meaning teachers can spend more time TEACHING and less time going through homework), but it trains children to real life, where high-tech work has already became a standard.
ehh (Score:2, Insightful)
But the "Locker" thing... I've seen plenty of solutions like this. All have either received negative or lukewarm reviews by students (including me). WebCT and Blackboard are the only two I can think of off-hand.
Really, what it comes down to is that whatever content is posted on these portals (calling a spade a spade) is owned by the school district. If teachers and students post their work on the portal, the school owns it. I don't suppose people plan on putting any personal work on there.
School deploys nfs with quota (Score:4, Insightful)
More in-depth reporting on this amazing and lightning-paced story, as it develops!
Wow, somebody got paid for this, as an innovative product. People's tax money was spent on a "technology" for storing files on a remote server. Does anyone else feel a feint impulse to just give up, turn evil, and start fleecing suckers like this? They're out there, and they're waving their money around, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do me! Do meeeeee!!"
Re:Useless... (Score:2, Insightful)
In the past, parents let their children read all kinds of books. Horror stories, romances, hell, even the bible includes sex, rape and murder. This stuff is NORMAL for a child to see and experience. Hell, I was reading Steven king at the age of 10. A pannel member at a games development company stated that he read the exorcist at about the same age.
As far as I can see, there is little to no difference between what children see now and what they saw in the past. The only difference is that parents can actualy tell that their children have been looking at those websites rather than them not noticeing what books the children were reading.
(gets off high horse)