The Classroom of the Future
IT is a warning to all young computer hackers, as five Sydney high school students have been made an example of following their four day suspension, after compromising the security settings on their government supplied laptops only weeks after they were first issued by the Department of Education and Training.
According to a NSW Department of Education and Training spokesperson, “These devices have internet filters and other security measures…breaching the Charter can result in disciplinary action”.
As part of Prime Minister Rudd’s Digital Education Revolution, ’state-of-the-art’ laptops have been made available for all current NSW Year 9 students to own, for use at school and home.
The laptops are distributed to each student on the condition that the student and their parents sign the Charter Agreement, after which the device then becomes their property.
Section 4 of the NSW Laptop User Charter outlines acceptable computer usage, “Students are not to create, participate in, or circulate content that attempts to undermine, hack into and/or bypass the hardware and software security mechanisms that are in place.”
Within the first week of receiving their personal laptops, many students communicated with each other outside of school hours and shared ideas about how best to ‘hack’ into the locked laptop settings.
One suspended student explained, “After the government said all the stuff they were going to set up on it, it seemed impossible [to hack]…but the first thing that came to my mind was that ‘I want to hack it’…so I looked up the forums, and heaps of people had different ideas.”
Students facilitated conversations on hacking techniques through various online gaming and video streaming websites; popular online youth spaces that the government cannot control.
One student organised to meet a fellow gamer and experienced hacker on MSN Messenger for advice, “It was first hacked by a student…the guy I spoke to apparently figured all the stuff out days before he even got the laptop.”
The attraction to hack into these particular laptops stems from their design to be locked to the Department of Education and Training network to prevent access to sites that are not pre-approved by the Department.
“If the government doesn’t like the website, they block it…not just because they think it’s un-educational but some of the websites say bad things about the government…it was all blocked. You can get like 1% of all the internet” claimed one annoyed Year 9 student.
Whilst at school, the students were visited by a Department of Education and Training official who notified them of their contractual breach
According to one student, they were told, “It might take us ages to get to your school, but we already know everyone that hacked…there’s no way you can get through us”.
A total of five students were found to be in breach of their charter as they ‘vandalised’ the laptop and ‘performed illegal operations’ by altering the computer operating system and installing their own software,
“What we did didn’t really require much skill. It required you to know how to use a screwdriver and use a cable to attach external software. Actual hacking and programming requires knowing how to read and write scripts”.
The students were suspended for less than a week and their laptop contracts considered void.
On the opening page of the User Charter, “The NSW Department of Education and Training is providing students with a personal laptop on the expectation that they will make good decisions with regard to their personal use of technology.”
According to one student, within the first week of receiving laptops, “The general year niner was watching movies and playing games in class”.
Although the government has supplied a $550 million budget for teacher training, many may still struggle to lead a class with the distraction of so many buzzing screens.
One suspended student claims that providing all Year 9-12 students with a personal laptop is not only for show, but a waste of class time, “Some of them [teachers] don’t even know how to use the softwares…so kids are slacking off in class…by the end of the first week half of the class had emulated old Nintendo systems and games on their computers and the teachers couldn’t do anything about it.”
Two of the students guilty of hacking into the system feel their punishment was not fair but share no regrets for their actions, “I asked my mum if she was proud of me at all, for what I’d done, and she didn’t actually reply…so maybe she was”.
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I’m sure if these students wanted to explore “the other 99%” of the net they could have done it at home. They must have some school related stuff they could have been doing on those laptops. I can’t help but think the whole point of this laptops scheme was for Rudd and who ever is leading the NSW Labor party at the next election to say, look how much money we spent on education. The shame is it was a really good idea that got ruined by politics and some bored teenagers.
Great article that brings a lot of issues up to the surface. Read an article on FOXnews (don’t judge.. came up on my newsfeed) about Australia’s govt pushing forward with nationwide net filtering.
While I think most of the intentions are good… the whole idea of censoring small parts or, in the case of school netbooks, significant parts of the internet is just going to cause uproar and ill-focused efforts to overcome the ’system’.
I’m all for banning sites that are potentially harmful/detrimental to people from our moral standpoint in this day and age but what’s stopping them from imposing new rules in the future once we get used to this?
With all the bureaucracy involved in real life these days… I’d imagine that we still like to use our own moral judgement when it comes to the internet – this might change somewhere down the line(especially with govt providing blocked netbooks to ‘nurture’ future generations) but surely there are better solutions/alternatives to explore before doing something this drastic.
I’m no pro but the whole of idea of blocking sites using some kind of hardware and software intervention on the user-end is pretty old fashioned if I’m not wrong. We’ve seen loopholes (especially in the gaming and entertainment sectors for a while now) and if the private sector, who’re substantially motivated by money, are still struggling to find a way around it… I very much doubt that a public institution has much of a chance.
So I suppose we could conclude that whoever designed this system on a budget of $500 severely underestimated a generation that will eventually run circles around everyone in today’s ‘knowledge society’ by trying to stay cost-effective.
What about cloud computing? I’m no whiz but everyone’s talking about it. Without a doubt, it’s cheaper as you approach critical mass. It takes a lot of control away from the user-side of things but then again, next generation of hackers might figure a way around this.
For now though I reckon it’s a more viable alternative but not in a barbaric approach that the DET has taken – that would just provide way too much incentive to find loopholes.
Why not restrict software/net access depending on the time of day?
Example, during classes only have students able to access certain softwares on the cloud and sites (like office suites and educational sites relevant to the class that could be prep’d in advance by a teacher). And during recess… give them more freedom, let them access social networking sites.
Not only will you let them do what they ACTUALLY want to do with a netbook but it would open up a new way to collect information on the social networking phenomena with the hopes of finding a more comprehensive solution in the future or quantifying their effects more accurately before coming up with some scheme that reeks of paranoia.
Just my 2 cents… lol.
yeah… what julian said.
that was not 2 cents! that was bloody 2 billion dollars
Already predicted plus a lot more more in Corey Doctorow’s \Little Brother\, I book I’d wager neither you, Mr Rudd nor anyone from the Department of Education and Training has had the opportunity to read http://bit.ly/97AOce – You can download it for free as the author has made it available under Creative Commons
As a parent, I’ll be showing my daughter how to hack a locked down machine once she gets one. If we’re required to sign something equivalent to the Charter in order to obtain a machine, we’ll do so, but I’ll ensure she has access to an alternative machine that has completely open access to the Internet.
Disclosure: I’m an EFA Board Member with a particular interest in an anti-censorship agenda.
[...] plan. As yet, I’ve seen no revolution from this program, and little evolution. Mostly just reactionary, frightened implementation of the laptops for high schoolers program and the building of so many Julia Gillard Memorial [...]
Schools should have laptops with different security settings for kids to experiment with. “Good job kiddo, you hacked the standard laptop. Now let’s see you hack this one with extra security!”
At least it keeps them interested in using computers to do technical stuff rather than just for entertainment.
In order to address this situation one must ask the broader question, what was the purpose of giving students laptops in the first place? I’m assuming the Department of Education and Training believes that computers help students learn more efficiently and effectively. If that is the case, then the laptops given to students should be viewed as merely learning tools. All the other capabilities of the laptop, such as Internet surfing, becomes irrelevant, unless one can prove that unrestricted Internet browsing helps one study or learn. Therefore, the students’ desire to hack these computers are unwarranted.
Who wants australia’s youth to be think, innovate or technical leaders when we have mines for them to work in. Shut kids and dig harder…we’re happy living in a global backwater
There are evidently so many issues to explore and discuss that have been raised in the small space of this article. It is a topic that draws in major sectors of our society that ultimately will affect the future of this country- the youth, the government and the department of education. This is why, I believe, this simple example of children compromising equipment supplied to them gives rise to such controversy. It represents a clash of three sectors of Australia that should be working in unison. What do people think is the most central issue worth exploring here? Teacher funding? misdirected government incentives? the technological capacity of youth?
Laptops for year 9’s was probably the worst idea the government came up with. There are so many problems that come with these laptop, and one of them are the fact that the laptops distract most students rather than being a helpful device and to be honest classrooms ran perfectly fine before these laptops came into place. lol
PS. Great article!
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