Kids trying to play video games on school laptops • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#201

Post by cykros » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #184

gnicholas wrote: post #75

A school IT specialist told me about a clever student hack. Their school blocks all sorts of traffic, but teachers can allow exceptions via a password. One student installed a keylogger onto his BYOD laptop (many schools allow kids to bring their own, or use a mediocre school-provided device), and then made up a plausible excuse to hit the firewall (e.g., doing a report on anatomy, but innocuous site was blocked beca…

Don't worry about blocking it via firewall; just log traffic, make it against the rules, and punish kids when they're caught?

Have you met kids before? You'd never get any actual educating done if you were busy constantly punishing them for things they did first and thought about later.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#202

Post by cykros » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:26 PM UTC

adriand wrote: post #5

This relates to something that has been bugging me lately, which is as a parent I have zero parental control over the devices that our school board issues to my children. My kids have iPhones and iPads, which are part of my Apple family account, and I can both monitor what they are doing and also set limits on screen time including hours of usage and for particular apps. However, I recently became aware that my son w…

As others have suggested, simply taking the device after bed time is probably your most bullet proof option.

In lieu of that, setting up rules on your router or firewall to disallow all network access to their IP addresses after bed time. Better yet, to all addresses not on a white list.

Might occasionally be a pain for overnight updates though.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#203

Post by cykros » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 12:42 PM UTC

adriand wrote: post #52

_nalply wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This confirms my suspicion: Just take the hardware away. I am lucky that my children accept the limits I impose on them. I think because they are not stupid and they sense that they need limits. It's not a struggle to take the hardware away. I even apologize to them when it's time to let the laptop go.

We do take the devices at bedtime, in fact, I have a reminder on my phone that goes off at 9:30 pm every night (which I started after discovering the problem). But it’s not just about the late night usage, which is mostly curtailed but not perfectly given I’m not a perfect authoritarian. It’s more generally what he’s doing with it. I don’t want him going down YouTube rabbit holes, developing a body image complex via…

For this, you're in a bit of a bind, and I too have run into this on my son's school issued chromebook. Blocking Instagram and Tiktok seem to be an easy enough solution at the firewall level (or DNS, using something like this: https://dnsadblock.com/block-social-media/). Youtube, however, is the tough one, as half the time the actual class material requires the use of Youtube embedded videos in the first place.

I'd raise the issue among the PTA -- it seems like something that if enough people get involved on you might get a workable solution figured out. Hope the other stuff helps though.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#204

Post by dusted » Mon, May 08, 2023, 5:41 AM UTC

abrookewood wrote: post #76

dusted wrote: post #69

Back in my day, we had a room filled with 386 and 486 machines running windows 3.11, we'd bring floppies from home and boot them to dos to play, it was great and teachers encouraged it. I guess things have changed.. For one.. Kids no longer get to experience the joy of "going to the computer room".. Or later, the thrills of networked delta-force matches during lunch at the library.

No, now they have more computer power than that entire room sitting in their pocket. Very different times.

and yet that power has been tamed, dulled, to the point where they can do even less with it