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How Laptops in Education Can Help Dictators, Hurt Learning
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jun 05, 2008 03:15 PM
from the digital-cassandras dept.
from the digital-cassandras dept.
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on worries that the OLPC's BitFrost security protocols could hand a ready-made surveillance system to controlling 3rd world governments. The laptops identify themselves regularly to a server that can disable individual machines reported stolen — a system that hands a government a kill switch for every unit. BitFrost also has the potential to have machines attach a unique ID to every internet transaction, helping out anyone wanting to track net internet use. A freely available paper from a recent USENIX conference spells out the concerns."
Relatedly, an anonymous reader points out a story at Slate about a study which examined the impact that free PCs had on poor students in Romania, writing that "giving the kids machines without a corresponding level of parental supervision just resulted in distractions which ultimately damaged academic performance. By contrast, allowing children access to machines in a supervised setting, say an after school program via school labs, might mitigate some of the negative effects."
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In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Details at 11.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if you'd be equally glib in your dismissal if this article were about Google filtering content at the request of Chinese authorities [wikipedia.org], or Yahoo disclosing the identities [guardian.co.uk] of people advocating democratic reforms?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pen(cil) and paper? Leaves written records. A certain Cardinal had a pertinent quote for that.
The kid sitting next to you? Would probably sell you out so he could get a bag of rice for his family that is starving.
Who do you think would employ the teachers if the dictator is that paranoid or controlling? Commit a thoughtcrime against The Most Benevolent Leader and you and your family go off on a permanen
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This system provides a ready-made, wide-scale system for any government to track your internet usage, and then decide "you, right there, you've had enough internet exposure to progressive ideas, no more internet for you. And we'll be by with cable ties & a black hood later on, so you might want to say goodbye to your family and friends."
There is a very real concern here. Dismissing it because "well, anything can be abused, really,"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as surveillance, that happens on any network, all the time. We're only quibbling about the degree, not if.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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This report phrases the problem as if it were specific to societies that are somehow undersophisticated.
Criticism of the report aside. The OLPC should get rid of that anti-user bull shit pronto. Thieves are going to know about it and cir
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a kind of report and study that I cannot stand. Laptops cause all these problems in the developed world for middle class kids as well. But nobody says suburban tweens shouldn't have the internet. I doubt very much that they are on the whole better supervised than Romanians or Africans, basing this on my own internet-connected undersupervsed childhood in the suburbs which I might add, turned out pretty much OK.
As for dictators? People in glass houses, come the hell on. Maybe not America too much, yet, but from every thing I seem to be reading about half of Europe, Big Brother has been on laptops in the developed world for quite some time.
There's such a tendency to hold the poor to standards we do not apply to ourselves. I find it kind of disgusting.
Parent
3rd World? (Score:5, Insightful)
3rd-world dictators? Shyeah. Try "all governments everywhere."
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow (Score:4, Interesting)
Thought of posting this a few weeks ago re: the tracker tags a Texas school was using, but missed out on a near-top post.
Read it...
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ [craphound.com]
Paranoid Linux (Score:4, Informative)
They appear to be in the very early stages only, but an interesting and potentially very worthy project.
paranoidlinux.org [paranoidlinux.org]
Parent
Just more practice for the budding hackers. (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the geekier recipients of these laptops will engineer a way around this BS...and then he'll share that info with his less-geeky friends. The government will have considerably less control than it thinks it does.
Re:Just more practice for the budding hackers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Supervision. (Score:5, Insightful)
The same basic rule should apply. Don't let your kids run around unattended.
Counterproductive (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps I just had different types of math classes than you, but the ones where I learned the most were ones where there wasn't a piece of electronic equipment in the room, save for pagers (late 90s), digital watches and perhaps the computer the teacher used solely to enter grades.
Heck, the history class that undid all the cute quasi-legend Americana for me and gave insight as to
What the hell ? (Score:3, Insightful)
It reminds me of well off people stressing over giving a pan handler a dollar.. how exactly will that dollar be used ? alchohol ?, lottery tickets ?. ciggarettes ? ... If it's going to stress you out so much then just don't give anything.
Limited Access may be a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was not in front of the keyboard I was reading about computers in magazines or planning what I wanted to do next with the computer, I wrote so much code and other ideas on notebook paper helped get my pre-planning skills developed.
I am not sure full 24/7 access is better or not for kids to appreciate computers. But I can think it can be a major distraction if it is connected to the net all the time (and not just for the nasty stuff).
Limiting network access would be a good thing. then they can think and plan on what to do while connected. And/or work on stuff while not connected without the distraction of all that stuff on-line.
Computers in schools... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the personal computer revolution hit its peak and we got an Atari and Logo and all that good stuff, and then my kids were born, but by the time they were old enough to be really interested in computers and what Daddy was doing what they mostly had in school were IBM PCs that were running Office and used to teach kids how to be secretaries and accountants.
Computers in schools seem to miss the point more often than not.
What's worse (Score:3, Insightful)
What's worse is that with an electronic device like a laptop or a "Kindle like" device, information can be easily "updated" to read however the current power structure wants it to.
Is anyone else nervous that Rupert Murdoch's Corp has taken an interest in electronic textbooks?
When history gets in the way of some future political power they can simply "update" that e-book or laptop and then it will read as they want it to.
At least when you printed a book it stayed that way...now information is malleable it's going to become untrustworthy.
Forced "updates" for "security reasons" and no trustworthy source of information.
The Study is Absolutely Irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
1) The Euro 200 program was just a PR stunt of our goverment to get more votes, it was never ment as an educational program.
2) This program consisted just in giving a 200 euro reduction to children from relatively poor households if they bought a computer. It was never associated with an educational program, or any educational software(as in programs, ebooks, or anything at all).
3) The children who benifited from this program being mainly poor children, so even if they wanted to learn something, most of them didn't have the money to buy software, or to pay for an internet connection.
Adding to this most of the computers you could buy in Romania would come readily installed with a pirated version of Windows and full of pirated games and other pirate booty.
So let me explain it clearly:
The study is absolute *insert word here* because:
Even if those kids wanted to do something else but play pirated games on a pirated version of windows, they couldn't have done it, they didn't have any learning material or an internet connection.
On top of which there was no educational program that would allow the schools to help the children use the computers for educational purposes.
(OK, in order to avoid comments, there was and is a computerized educational program in Romania called AEL [advanced e-learning or something like that], which consists in a crappy CMS that's practically unusable, and has such a restrictive licence that you're not even allowed to look at it, not to speak of taking it home, at least this was the case 3 years ago)
The Euro200 program is totally oposed to the OLPC initiative wich consists in giving children small low-performance linux laptops(at least that was the idea not to long ago) full with educational software and an educational program that makes full use of those notebooks as an educational tool.
The idea is not in giving children computers, it's in giving them the oportunity to use them as educational tools.
If you give kids a relatively powerfull desktop with windows and full of games do you really expect them to study all day or to play games all day.
On The other hand, if you give them low-performance laptops, full with educational software and help them and require them to use these laptops for educational purposes, then you really can expect results.
Lets see if I get this right... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Laptops can be 'controlled' by government
- fear that bad behaviour (in the eyes of the government) will result in laptops being disabled, and schoolchildren punished.
Wow. Sounds a little like Maine's http://www.mainelearns.org/ [mainelearns.org] MLTI initiative...
- Hand out laptops
- Monitor them, after all even though they are inside a protictive proxy server, sometimes bad things get past that...
- Cut off the entire school system, if necessary, to protect the students.
- Fear among students that anything interesting will be blocked. taking the laptops home only requires their parents pay for insurance against damage/loss. At a very reasonable (for the insurer) cost.
- Effective control of the laptops, since they actually belong to the government.
Well, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Though I wonder how much OLPCs would cost v. iBooks, and how much more/less useful they would be. The OLPC could use a big Stateside order, eh?
Don't hold yer breath, chummy...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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I swear this is not a troll. I am asking this question earnestly hoping for a real answer, so please, read it in that spirit.
I understand, and agree, with your characterization of computers as assistive technology for children with disabilities. My mother worked as a speech pathologist in a public school system, and I got to see some of the technology she was using with