Difference between revisions of "Classrooms of the Past"

Revision as of 00:01, 7 December 2007

Haverford High School currently has a technology policy which prohibits external electronic devices from connecting to their network and being used during class. This policy is hypocritical, because they have accepted over $200 million as part of a "Classrooms of the Future" program to purchase technology for classrooms. However, they prohibit students from using technology that they brought to school. This sends a powerful message of hypocracy.

Recently, Ms. Reilly, my English 11 teacher assigned the class to read a passage from a poem. She told students to look up words that they did not know. When I came across a word I did not know, I looked it up on my Nokia N800 internet tablet. The N800 is like a small laptop which fits in your pocket. Ms. Reilly asked me to put it away. She did not care that I was using it for school purposes and following her directions. When I asked her for a old-fashioned "dead tree" dictionary, I was told that there was none, and i was to look the word up at home. Ms. Reilly is a recipient of a "Classrooms of the Future" grant.

Haverford's policy also restricts students from using electronic devices as personal organizers. Some students have expressed to me that they wish to carry PDAs or use their cell phones to keep a calender. However, under under current school rules, students are forbidden to organize their lives on electronic devices during school.

While I understand the school's worry about electronic devices in class, it should be up to the teacher to determine when students may use electronic devices rather than a top-down policy.

In addition it would up to the students to use devices at their discretion. While understandably, the school does not want students , it does not need to impose a blanket policy. Just as it would be inappropriate for a student to read a book while the teacher is talking, it is unacceptable to be text messaging or surfing YouTube during class. The school does not ban books merely because they could be a potential distractor during class, so it should not ban electronic devices.

Electronic devices should be able to use the school's internet connection to access the internet. Security is concern regrading this. However, student-brought devices contain no additional security risks against network attacks than school-purchased laptops. Any security devices on client machines could be bypassed by using seperate, bootable operating systems. These operating systems could be configured to run the same software which could be installed on non-restricted computers, such as the ones students would bring.

In addition, the current wireless network uses out of date, and insecure methods of encryption, or none at all. However any wireless encryption could be bypassed by merely plugging a computer in to a orange Ethernet port. Thus, student-provided electronic devices provide no additional security risk of network-based computer attacks.