Quote:
Originally Posted by dudefise
As a student who rather likes technology, I do not think that schools should give out laptops. I am not sure if this is an attitude shared by many, but I would feel nervous about using it on my newtork as it would obviously have some kind of a "big brother" program installed. In fact I probably would refuse to use a school-issued computer whenever possible...  ... Even an application I would have some worries about installing... (yes i am a bit crazy about other people + my data... regardless of how insignificant it is...)
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This is a legitimate concern.
There have been some rather depraved
incidents where a school board that didn't know a damned thing about information technology installed software with camera access on students' laptops, and allowed their IT staff to activate it. You can imagine what ensued: lawsuits everywhere, and rightly so.
If the school is going to fully control the software that is installed on such a system, it needs to accept commensurate responsibility for the consequences. It also needs to be proactive in demonstrating that school employees will not have access to any sort of information that might be considered confidential, except under court order, or following a clear and equitable internal procedure (with notice given to the student).
It serves nobody's interests for users to have reason to distrust their office supplies. High school students are very perceptive when it comes to detecting software that appears to have contempt for them. Website filters
that block legitimate sites, or a locked-down user interface (or worse—software that reloads a fresh copy of the operating system on bootup) just serve to crystallize the impression that the school doesn't trust them. For some users, that mutual distrust will manifest itself in a desire to acquire full permissions on the system, in order to be able to independently verify that there is no monitoring software (e.g. examining the contents of their personal e-mail). (There is no practical way to prevent a determined person from acquiring administrative access on most operating systems, or even to mitigate that possibility without severely compromising functionality.) Others simply won't use the systems to their full potential, and may end up less-educated as a result. Either way, distrust will reduce the program's effectiveness.