Students Hack School-Issued iPads Within One Week 375
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Los Angeles Unified School District started issuing iPads to its students this school year, as part of a $30 million deal with Apple. Now Sam Sanders reports at NPR that less than a week after getting their iPads, high school students have found a way to bypass software blocks on the devices that limit what websites the students can use. The students are getting around software that lets school district officials know where the iPads are, what the students are doing with them at all times and lets the district block certain sites, such as social media favorites like Facebook. 'They were bound to fail,' says Renee Hobbs, who's been a skeptic of the iPad program from the start. 'There is a huge history in American education of being attracted to the new, shiny, hugely promising bauble and then watching the idea fizzle because teachers weren't properly trained to use it and it just ended up in the closet.' The rollout of the iPads might have to be delayed as officials reassess access policies. Right now, the program is still in Phase 1, with fewer than 15,000 iPads distributed. 'I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices,' says Steven Zipperman. 'I want to prevent a "runaway train" scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the roll-out.' The incident has prompted questions about overall preparations for the $1-billion tablet initiative."
well (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing they didn't waste $1 billion on teachers or books.
I heard from a teacher in NC (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think that money could better be spent on good old fashioned computer labs. A good student PC is a heck of a lot cheaper, and these kids need to learn to type on a real keyboard or else they're going to be at a huge disadvantage compared to their peers who do.
"They were bound to fail" (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids bypassing security is a total failure for this program? Come onnnn. If anything it's giving them a reason to want to use them more and learn a little something about technology and security. But I guess they're not satisfied unless they have properly trained obedient creatures, not humans with the ability to think for themselves.
Just proxy it out at the router. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason they can't block everything from the network end. Host.deny
There's no reason to police what the students do at home either. That's just big brother and between the parents and students.
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least the kids are learning something from their iPads, though it's not the lessons the schools intended.
And??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hacking the iPad is not an issue. The real issue is that an iPad is a very poor instrument for teaching. It's a consumption tool (like a glorified TV). The idiots that approved this were short sighted.
As others have said. A PC is cheaper and far more powerful, particularly for content creation - where the grey matter is actually stretched.
Re:I'm a tech coordinator for an Ohio district (Score:2, Insightful)
Go into the configuration utility go to "Configuration Profiles" -> General -> Security and set it to "Never." After that the only way to remove the profile is to do a factory reset. (Alternatively you could set it to "With Authorization" and set a profile removal password.)
Re:"They were bound to fail" (Score:5, Insightful)
The program was a total failure at conception. There is no benefit to this other than to be able to claim that the school districts new and modern. Imagine how many teachers they could have hired for the cost of this program. I like computers, but they have no place in rudimentary education other than the computer lab.
Honest Questions (Score:2, Insightful)
What exactly do the students(what age/grade?) do with these devices(iPads/Chrome Books)?
How does the device improve/aid learning over more traditional teaching tools(I presume books vs. ereaders)?
How much more does the technology program cost than the previous traditional methods?
I'm presently watching my "child" attending university. I am noticing a significant, near massive, loss in learning productivity due to online books, multiple guess homework assignments, and tests. There are at least six different sites for the various functions that all look and behave differently, all have a significant fee attached and all provide little to no value over a book and a test paper. While I am seeing a serious decline in their learning, I am seeing a massive increase in expenditure to access their book online, to gain access to homework assignments, to gain access to the testing site, to have and use a "clicker" in order to "participate" in class(required for grade) by responding in a massive online multiple guess(MOMG) fashion to the prof's questions.and more. Yet, despite the obvious decline in learning, the kids(not just mine) think "it's great because I can do my homework on my phone!" (and fail).
All the while, the state university system is announcing the eminent implementation of all online degrees. They see it as a major source of revenue and a means of significantly increasing their enrollments without increasing facilities cost. "It's going to be so totally awesome for learning and for the kids". BULLCRAP!
^This (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology in the classroom...all of it...it's just **tools to teach**
Anyone who things technology can reduce staff budget or allow larger class sizes is smoking crack.
A professionally trained, well-paid *human* teacher is absolutely the only thing that educates a child.
Everything else is just a tool.
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
"So we talked to students, and we asked them, 'Why did you do this?' And in many cases, they said, 'You guys are just locking us out of too much stuff.' " He says, after talking with students, that the Los Angeles Unified School District's iPad policy probably should be changed, allowing for some social media and music streaming sites.
The memo from a sublinked article suggests that concerns for safety were the reasons the devices were supposed to be locked down. Can't have kids getting on facebook: they might meet up with child molesters and get raped and killed!
I suspect their concern for avoiding that scenario was mainly "... and then WE'D BE SUED!!!" So perhaps they should have gone the permission slip route and only given out ipads to kids whose parents agreed that the parents are the parents and if anything bad happens to the children in connection with the ipads, or if they caught their kids looking at nudity (and subsequently were utterly scarred for life), that was on the parents and not something they could sue over. This however is not a lesson that school districts ever seem to learn.
Re:^This (Score:5, Insightful)
Only?
No.
Lots of people learn in different ways. Especially if that professionally trained teacher is still a bad teacher.
Re:I heard from a teacher in NC (Score:3, Insightful)
Noone uses iPads for any serious amount of data entry or manipulation.
Their role in business tends to be for shiny-factor, portability, or both. They are somewhat useful as POS units (as those have generally been touchscreen anyways). Thats basically it.
If you want to train your kids to be cashiers from an early age by getting them involved with iPads @ school, have at it-- just do it on your own dollar.
Re:"They were bound to fail" (Score:5, Insightful)
If this program was to replace all those heavy books, or give them access to the grand sum of human knowledge, then they should have gone for a kindle or sony ebook reader. Load the year's books onto it, and allow wifi internet access. Problem solved.
Re:I'm a tech coordinator for an Ohio district (Score:4, Insightful)
For everyone blasting me this is part of the problem; grant money bought the iPads, no one has money for a MDM.
Therefore we push profiles with the IOS Configurator, its the best we can mange with basically no money to support them. (though we are looking at the Meraki MDM; its free, so maybe things will improve in that regard)
Thank your legislators for cutting our budgets to the bone.
(also FWIW I'm the cisco / windows server / linux guy; one of my tech's does all the iOS stuff. But thanks for assuming I'm a total idiot.)