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Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

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Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#41

Post by madcaptenor »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
GrinningFool wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We handle this by not allowing devices in our kid's room after lights-out. There's just no reason to have them there, and they represent a temptation that can be hard to resist at any age, nevermind school-age.

Ah, the old days when I'd read a book with a flashlight under the covers.

My kids are 4 and 2. When they get to where they can read independently I intend to make sure they have flashlights, and if I have my shit together I'll make sure they always have batteries.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#42

Post by digitallyfree »

> “One kid kept opening up game sites” said one high school teacher who asked to stay anonymous, to protect the identities of their students. “I would wait for them to open one, add it to my list of blocked websites, refresh my settings, and then they would get locked out of it. Then they would open a new tab, find a new game site, and the cycle would repeat. This happened over and over over the course of about half an hour."

It strikes me as strange that the schools are playing a cat-and-mouse game rather than simply disciplining the students caught playing games or accessing these sites. Loss of privileges or so forth for violators would serve as an actual deterrent rather than encouraging students to simply find new ways to get around the block.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#43

Post by duderific »

VikingCoder wrote: post #26

I know I'm picturing a technology will solve education problems, but... ...can't we fund some amazing games that are... educational?

Kids are very smart and if they get a whiff that a game is trying to teach them something, they won't find it as interesting as a shooter or platformer. This probably varies by age, but I've got a third grade boy and I can tell you that's how he is.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#44

Post by swsieber »

When I went to high school we used windows XP. I took an accounting class that used Excel and by some keen insight and nifty use of formulas and copy->paste values, I was able to get down with in class work exceptionally fast and often had a good hunk of time left over.

I decided to play a SNES emulator in my spare time, on a USB stick. I had to sit towards the back. But the machines were locked down and I couldn't run any plain old .exe I had on a stick. But XP had a zip file view, and I could launch the exe from there. The last thing I needed to do was preconfigure saves and the controls to point at the correct thumb drive letter since it was different at home than it was at school.

Now I've moved on the real world, but that time of mindset sticks with me. That software doesn't do what you want in an automated way? Surely there's a way to do that. Autowiring JSPs in a mixed Spring/JSP legacy java app, writing custom jenkins plugins, a custom code coverage library to performantly calculate code coverage against minified JS, etc.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#45

Post by rcarr »

Many aeons ago, someone at my school worked out you could download the Halo trial on to the school PCs and play anyone on any other school PC over the LAN. Entire classes of IT students were just sat playing Halo every lesson. At one point the teacher even gave up trying to get everyone to stop and just came round and watched everyone play it lol those were the days

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#46

Post by marssaxman »

wildzzz wrote: post #15
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…

Easy, no devices in their hands after bedtime. Your child isn't some busy tech professional that needs to be on call for work emails. They can live without having their iPad and iphone in their room. When I got caught as a kid playing my Gameboy when I should have been asleep, I lost my free access to it and could only use it when homework and chores were completed. Once play time was over, they took it back because…

> Easy, no devices in their hands after bedtime.

This is no longer so easy after your kid realizes they can simply wait until you fall asleep, then sneak into your room and filch the machine from wherever you've stashed it.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#47

Post by konschubert »

jollyllama wrote: post #14
amagrude wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You control the network that device is on. Block and/or track access using that fact. I use a combination of DNS via https://1.1.1.1/ and WiFi/DHCP via https://eero.com/ . Works great. Yes. This should be way easier.

Until your kid learns how to boot linux and run aircrack-ng to get into the neighbor's wifi because you're restricting the internet access... Ask me how I know

Well, good on you!

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#48

Post by thomastjeffery »

Shared404 wrote: post #4

Speaking as a past kid trying to play video games on school laptops, I'm really grateful for the experience. Some of my first experience with reverse engineering/pentesting methodologies came from extracting flash games from websites so they could run without getting net-nannied, or learning that you could use google translate to run a makeshift web proxy. Honestly helped kickstart a lot of my learning about computer…

I visited my high school a few years after graduating. My secret persys.sys folder (full of games) was still there. Fun times.

That was the era of painfully slow (~10min) windows boot times. At one point, teenage me had a floppy with unetbootin to boot a flash drive with tinycore. I could get a browser running a solid 8min. before anyone else.

Regardless of the fun, there was still a dark side. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt should not be the foundation of education.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#49

Post by gs17 »

digitallyfree wrote: post #42

> “One kid kept opening up game sites” said one high school teacher who asked to stay anonymous, to protect the identities of their students. “I would wait for them to open one, add it to my list of blocked websites, refresh my settings, and then they would get locked out of it. Then they would open a new tab, find a new game site, and the cycle would repeat. This happened over and over over the course of about half…

Taking computers away means they can't use them for their intended purpose either. It's just going to be a bigger mess (if the alternative is less work, every kid will try to get banned) and end up with the headache of parents getting involved. My high school didn't punish students unless they did something really bad (someone I knew got in trouble for printing off porn).

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#50

Post by runnerup »

madcaptenor wrote: post #41
WalterBright wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the old days when I'd read a book with a flashlight under the covers.

My kids are 4 and 2. When they get to where they can read independently I intend to make sure they have flashlights, and if I have my shit together I'll make sure they always have batteries.

Idk I feel doing this a lot as a child may have solidified terrible sleep hygiene for myself.
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