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School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

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Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#5
Dad of 5 here. Monitoring of equip can be reasonable. Request the equip be returned periodically for reset & restore.

Monitoring minors - on school property - beyond temporary measures that are strictly necessary to address recurring, meaningfully disruptive issues is not okay.

Monitoring of minors off school property is a hard no, by strong default.

This is where we start.

Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#6
post #3

Two thoughts - wtf really, is this happening? are there no privacy laws in the USA? - a big OH RLY on doing more harm than good

Children have very few rights in a school setting. It's a serious constitutional problem.

These are devices handed out by the school. They shouldn't be using them for anything other than school. We have a rule in my house - all school-issued devices must stay closed and in the backpack unless they are being used for school work.

But we are "rich". Low income households don't have alternate devices for non-school work. And these devices "work" like real laptops and tablets, so it's very tempting to use them for non-school activities.

If you want to help, make more of your web sites work well on low-spec smartphones. In the US, the primary device for a low-income household is a smartphone.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/22/digital-div...

Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#7
post #3

Two thoughts - wtf really, is this happening? are there no privacy laws in the USA? - a big OH RLY on doing more harm than good

Children have very few rights in a school setting. It's a serious constitutional problem. These are devices handed out by the school. They shouldn't be using them for anything other than school. We have a rule in my house - all school-issued devices must stay closed and in the backpack unless they are being used for school work. But we are "rich". Low income households don't have alternate devices for non-school work…

> If you want to help, make more of your web sites work well on low-spec smartphones.

Oh my, this. If a web app entry form is a little laggy on that brand new iPhone, then it's going to take like half a minute to render on a five year old discount smartphone. Most developers have snazzy machines and many rarely stop and think about how it's going to run on the lowest end devices likely to use the software.

Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#8
It's not the same thing as school monitoring but I imagine that many tech companies with offerings to youths are going to start pushing the responsibility of safety and liability to the parents, such as by giving parents control of chat accounts. Whether by school or parents, the future is one where kids are going to be watched.

Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children have very few rights in a school setting. It's a serious constitutional problem. These are devices handed out by the school. They shouldn't be using them for anything other than school. We have a rule in my house - all school-issued devices must stay closed and in the backpack unless they are being used for school work. But we are "rich". Low income households don't have alternate devices for non-school work…

> If you want to help, make more of your web sites work well on low-spec smartphones. Oh my, this. If a web app entry form is a little laggy on that brand new iPhone, then it's going to take like half a minute to render on a five year old discount smartphone. Most developers have snazzy machines and many rarely stop and think about how it's going to run on the lowest end devices likely to use the software.

It's so annoying. It's not like we don't have tools to test this stuff either. Heck, most devs have an old phone hanging out in a drawer somewhere. Most just don't take the effort.

Re: School surveillance of students via laptops may do more harm than good

#10
post #3

Two thoughts - wtf really, is this happening? are there no privacy laws in the USA? - a big OH RLY on doing more harm than good

> wtf really, is this happening? are there no privacy laws in the USA?

There are privacy laws in the US (both federally and in the states), they aren't, however, optimally adapted to the circumstances at issue (moreover, the actual practices may not align with the law; having a law does not itself automatically cause behavior to conform.)

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