Yeah, students installing software on their own couldn't possibly cause a problem.
Yes, zero tolerance is being used in this example to avoid having to apply critical thought to each situation. However, if Big Spring High School's district technical support is anything like the department I work in, they probably don't have the resources to argue over, define, and enforce a list of 'software which is cool for students to install' and 'software which students are prohibited from using'.
That student was a dumbass. Oh boy, he stood up to a technologically illiterate teacher (a brilliant move, to pick a fight he almost certainly can't win) for his right to use his favorite web browser, on a computer he doesn't own! What a major victory for open source software!
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
Frankly, I don't see what that Firefox incident has to do with "zero-tolerance" at all; that letter doesn't seem to imply that the detention is for installing shit on school computers so much as the teacher is just technologically illiterate. Speaking of illiterate, that letter pisses me off so much just for being so awkwardly phrased; even the template gives the impression of being written by a fourth-grader.
Morilore wrote:Speaking of illiterate, that letter pisses me off so much just for being so awkwardly phrased; even the template gives the impression of being written by a fourth-grader.
Sadly unsurprising, considering I once received the following email from a high school English teacher:
I just brought in a computer from home to have as a resource in the
classroom... is it possible to have it connected to the network so that
students can access internet, etc??? if not, that is okay, it will just
be a word processor... but the problem is, i turn it on and get a wierd
screen that says something like i need to download programs or
something... is there any way that I can have a tech kid come in and
check it out? it worked before ................. just let me know...
thanks soooo much!!!!!!!
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
bwahaha zero tolerance is zero thought... as I told the college copper (not university, I was 15) "It's a tool, not a weapon" used that to cut up all sorts of things.. including lunch... in grade eight metal high school metal work I turned out two fleur-de-lis's that looked like crap but possibly more lethal than a steak knife at half a kilo thrown... fixed a staple gun for an art teacher and along the way improved it.. to embed staples into walls from across the hall.. got thanked by the teacher for that effort.
Is it just me or have I not heard of zero-tolerance for such things catching on anywhere outside of the USA??
All people are equal but some people are more equal than others.
Uraniun235 wrote:
Yeah, students installing software on their own couldn't possibly cause a problem.
What if the kid was running it off of a thumb drive?
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I do remember causing no end to teacher annoyance by having my own software on disks and bringing it into school, setting up a ram drive and than installing to the ram drive....
and that was back in the 1980s before portable memory was so easy to get ahold of.
The scariest folk song lyrics are "My Boy Grew up to be just like me" from cats in the cradle by Harry Chapin
I just brought in a computer from home to have as a resource in the
classroom... is it possible to have it connected to the network so that
students can access internet, etc??? if not, that is okay, it will just
be a word processor... but the problem is, i turn it on and get a wierd
screen that says something like i need to download programs or
something... is there any way that I can have a tech kid come in and
check it out? it worked before ................. just let me know...
thanks soooo much!!!!!!!
Thought One: Was she hot?
If Thought One is true: Did you take advantage .
Uraniun235 wrote:That student was a dumbass
Could see it another way... if he does lose, he doesn't lose much so might as well fight to show the class the teacher's a dumb twat .
How on earth did he install unauthorised software on a school machine anyway?
They should all be using low priviledge accounts.
Unless he's like the top IT students at my school where we were given special priveledges as a reward for helping out the IT teachers when it came to supporting less able students.
Member of the Unremarkables Just because you're god, it doesn't mean you can treat people that way : - My girlfriend Evil Brit Conspiracy - Insignificant guy
Zac Naloen wrote:Unless he's like the top IT students at my school where we were given special priveledges as a reward for helping out the IT teachers when it came to supporting less able students.
My school didn't have a dedicated IT department, so any attempts to enforce rules were ultimately futile when pitted against the collective will of the computer savvy students.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
Zac Naloen wrote:Unless he's like the top IT students at my school where we were given special priveledges as a reward for helping out the IT teachers when it came to supporting less able students.
My school didn't have a dedicated IT department, so any attempts to enforce rules were ultimately futile when pitted against the collective will of the computer savvy students.
well the head of IT was the IT dept. That's why he needed help. He knew his stuff though, that's why the machines were all locked down tight using non-standard Admin passwords.
Member of the Unremarkables Just because you're god, it doesn't mean you can treat people that way : - My girlfriend Evil Brit Conspiracy - Insignificant guy
Even if you aren't allowed to download installers, it's a simple matter to bring the program in on some form of physical storage media and put it on the computer that way.
I know I had to install updates to the school's Windows Media Players so I could show video for presentations several times, and that's how I did it.
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Zac Naloen wrote:Unless he's like the top IT students at my school where we were given special priveledges as a reward for helping out the IT teachers when it came to supporting less able students.
My school didn't have a dedicated IT department, so any attempts to enforce rules were ultimately futile when pitted against the collective will of the computer savvy students.
EDIT: Forgot to add, I think this could be the case.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
DPDarkPrimus wrote:Even if you aren't allowed to download installers, it's a simple matter to bring the program in on some form of physical storage media and put it on the computer that way.
I know I had to install updates to the school's Windows Media Players so I could show video for presentations several times, and that's how I did it.
Entirely preventable using simple windows permissions just stupidly draconian. Same with if the user tried to run it off the USB stick, just prevent the running of any .exe's off external devices.
That article just sounds like the teacher doesn't understand what firefox is, there's no inate harm in him using firefox it's more secure than IE and as long as all traffic has to go through a proxy server it's not going to be able to breach any rules with regards to web surfing.
The teachers reasoning for giving the detention is lame as well, I find it far more likely the detention was actually for disobediance as opposed to the use of the software.
Member of the Unremarkables Just because you're god, it doesn't mean you can treat people that way : - My girlfriend Evil Brit Conspiracy - Insignificant guy
Can't say I was ever really compelled to follow useless commands when I was at school. The best way around teachers like that was making it clear it was more trouble than it was worth and appealled to their laziness.
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Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth "America is, now, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the country." - Master of Ossus
Clicking on the link in the article reveals that the kid photoshopped the letter of detention he had actually been given and that what he was really in trouble for was browsing the internet and mouthing off to the teacher when he was supposed to be working.
ZERO TOLERANCE YOU BASTARD! WHEN WILL YOU STOP!? :p
In regards to OP bringing a steak knife to school is bad shit, and when I was in grade school I remember being told every year that I couldn't do it. But arresting the poor girl and charging her with a felony? Out of fucking line.
'After 9/11, it was "You're with us or your with the terrorists." Now its "You're with Straha or you support racism."' ' - The Romulan Republic
'You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)' - Darth Yan
Straha wrote:Clicking on the link in the article reveals that the kid photoshopped the letter of detention he had actually been given and that what he was really in trouble for was browsing the internet and mouthing off to the teacher when he was supposed to be working.
ITT we learn that high-school kids are dipshits, and briefly entertain the thought that they and zero-tolerance bullshit actually deserve each other.
Zuul wrote:Can't say I was ever really compelled to follow useless commands when I was at school. The best way around teachers like that was making it clear it was more trouble than it was worth and appealled to their laziness.
Why does everyone think it must be the teacher? It might be school board policy. There are a lot of places of employment where you're not allowed to install your own software.
Durandal wrote:Talk about a fucking stupid letter. And why does it read "a(n) Detention"? It's not like the use of "a" versus "an" for words beginning with "d" is a point of grammatical contention. And why is "detention" capitalized?
It's probably a generic form letter, where a less careless person would have changed 'a(n)' to 'a' or 'an' depending on what punishment was given. The punishment was probably typed as an answer to a query, and carelessly capitalised there.
I don't think you're right.
I had told him to close it....
I had then issued...
This person teaches at a high school...where he writes like he needs to attend high school.
Zuul wrote:Can't say I was ever really compelled to follow useless commands when I was at school. The best way around teachers like that was making it clear it was more trouble than it was worth and appealled to their laziness.
Why does everyone think it must be the teacher? It might be school board policy. There are a lot of places of employment where you're not allowed to install your own software.
That's fair enough, but I can't bring myself to empathise with the teacher at all. At most, it's nonharmful to everyone and productive enough to do the assignment without problems. It's a waste of time and energy telling the kid not to do it and then taking some of their life away afterwards for disobeying a pointless command.
EBC|Fucking Metal|Artist|Androgynous Sexfiend|Gozer Kvltist|
Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth "America is, now, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the country." - Master of Ossus
Zuul wrote:
That's fair enough, but I can't bring myself to empathise with the teacher at all. At most, it's nonharmful to everyone and productive enough to do the assignment without problems. It's a waste of time and energy telling the kid not to do it and then taking some of their life away afterwards for disobeying a pointless command.
Teachers are allowed very little leeway in how they conduct their jobs, especially in the US. Chances are this fellow didn't feel like risking his next evaluation or even his job by taking up would be a pointless cause (to him).
M1891/30: A bad day on the range is better then a good day at work.
Recently, a file was uploaded to the Internet purporting to be a copy of a letter from Big Spring High School to a student regarding a two hour detention. The uploaded letter was an altered version of a detention letter sent to a student. Unfortunately, privacy concerns prevent the School District from giving a full explanation of the nature and source of the letter’s alteration at this time. The Big Spring School District does have confirmation that the discipline letter was altered.
The reports, blogs and other sources on the Internet indicating that a Big Spring student was assigned detention for using the Firefox internet browser instead of Internet Explorer are untrue and were based on the fake letter. Detention is assigned in our schools after appropriate warnings are given. If students continue to engage in non-academic activities or fail to follow a teacher’s directive during class time, discipline can and will be assigned.
Uraniun235 wrote:
Yeah, students installing software on their own couldn't possibly cause a problem.
What if the kid was running it off of a thumb drive?
From a policy standpoint, it's still much better to tell teachers to forbid students from running unauthorized software; most of them utterly lack the knowledge or experience necessary to be able to make an informed judgment (or, more accurately, sniff out any bullshit line a more tech-savvy student might try to feed them) as to whether or not an application brought in on a thumbdrive is legit. The teachers who actually know better will probably not strictly enforce the policy either, so it works out.
Cpl Kendall wrote:Teachers are allowed very little leeway in how they conduct their jobs, especially in the US. Chances are this fellow didn't feel like risking his next evaluation or even his job by taking up would be a pointless cause (to him).
I suppose that's possible in other places. I know that where I work, there have been lab teachers (i.e. teachers whose classrooms are computer labs) who have allowed students to install (and play during class hours!) games and bring in video/music files on the school computers, and I have absolutely no recollection of any of those teachers being reprimanded in any way.
It really depends on the school district's attitude towards computer resources and how much (or how little) the IT department wants to rock the boat.
"There is no "taboo" on using nuclear weapons." -Julhelm
What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
Uraniun235 wrote:
I suppose that's possible in other places. I know that where I work, there have been lab teachers (i.e. teachers whose classrooms are computer labs) who have allowed students to install (and play during class hours!) games and bring in video/music files on the school computers, and I have absolutely no recollection of any of those teachers being reprimanded in any way.
It really depends on the school district's attitude towards computer resources and how much (or how little) the IT department wants to rock the boat.
I have no doubt that this is true. While this teacher could get reprimanded, he'd have to get caught first. But it seems like this incident is bogus.
M1891/30: A bad day on the range is better then a good day at work.
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