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Originally Posted by GeorgeTheEng
Not only could the school punish the offending students, but you are potentially committing crimes that could have very serious consequences.
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Dave and George, thank you very much for your comments.
Our school district has been set up the same way for the past two years
as a district-wide punishment for a crime that was committed with one of the school computers. Though we do not have the privilege of laptop usage, we use the same "Novell Box" that nukem mentioned - limited programs and no Start menu.
We have obtained our own computers, via random donations of older machines from the School District and our own team members, that we use for programming. They are not connected to the district network and they are used exclusively for robotics (they are locked in a separate room during school hours).
When we need to perform operations that require extra access or usage of a Start menu, we are usually able to work out an agreement between either a teacher (since their accounts allow for normal desktop operation and a greater variety of program usage) or the school's technology resource guru (in the form of a separate computer usage agreement resulting in modified account settings for an account). If we cannot get approval either way, the operation is left out or performed on the students' own computers at home.
We do not want to take risks with our school district. Because we are present at the school so often after normal operation hours and on weekends, we are often blamed for mishaps and occurances that are beyond our own control (setting off alarms in other parts of the school, leaving classroom doors that are not a part of our workspace unlocked, etc). Obviously, all of these are security concerns and someone has to be blamed, though we usually take these accusations with a grain of salt - making sure to cross all of our own "t"s and dot all of our own "i"s whenever we are working.
It is the same with the computer system. The incident in a programming class at our school sparked an enormous, district-wide response involving suspensions and heavily increased computer restrictions. All I ask is that you think before you act. If Mr. Lavery wouldn't be proud of it, just don't do it at all.