--- Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko(a)panet.co.yu> wrote:
On Wednesday 15 August 2007 03:45, Antonio Olivares
wrote:
> Administering the Lab is a pain in the glass.
There are many threats,
> virii, spyware, trojan horses and the MySpace
workarounds. Kids are kids
> and there are several extreme ways to prevent the
kids from doing bad
> stuff, disconnecting the computer from the
internet. Still kids manage to
> load games, download stuff, in restricted
accounts, visit sites that are
> blocked and all.
[snip]
/// Note: what follows may possibly be off-topic.
///
Sorry for not quoting earlier posts in the thread,
they're scattered around.
First I need to check if I understand the situation
correctly. There is a
highschool computer lab, running Windows, connected
to Internet, which is
used for teaching students Word, Excell and
PowerPoint.
Q: is it sane to keep the lab connected to the
Internet if it is used only for
this purpose?
The students need the internet to fetch assignments,
i.e., research some topics. If it was not important,
pulling the plug solves this issue.
These students are needed to learn those basic apps,
while they are
profficient enough to be able to tweak the registry,
change admin passwords,
circumvent firewalls etc.
Q: is it sane to assume that such students do not
know how to use Word?
Nope, They know how to use Word. It is just that
assignments start off with word processing, ie.,
typing letters, documents, research papers, ..., etc.
There is a lab administrator, who doesn't know how
to change the admin
password if it is stolen, short of reinstalling the
OS.
The administrator knows, but is not there most of the
time. He is very busy attending to other computers or
other duties outside of his job. He has to work on
other labs.
Q: is it sane to hire an incompetent administrator
who is outperformed by geek
teenagers? (btw, tell him to google for
"winternals", for example...)
Let me just paraphrase Douglas Adams and the Guide
--- when creating a top
list of the most important things in life, "sanity"
got stuck somewhere
around 182. place... :-)
Ok. Sanity aside, there are several distinct
approaches to deal with the
problem.
1) Determine what *is* the problem, exactely. Why
are the kids not allowed to
watch movies from YouTube, download music, etc? The
only thing that one
really needs is a tight firewall preventing them
from attacking outside world
(you don't want the kids to hack into Department of
Defense or something).
Other than that, it's up to their education to help
them restrain themselves
from immoral and similar content, rather than rules
being enforced on them.
The school's internet comes from a source where
YouTube, MySpace, Porn Sites, ..., etc are blocked
because of contents inappropriate for the kids. The
kids wanting to know more ****except about subject
area*** explore and find proxies, workarounds to
bypass the firewalls. They even cracked the
Administrator passwords which allowed them to visit
the inappropriate sites. These kids are amazing and I
am not joking.
2) Delegate the problem to the kids themselves. Pick
three or four of them
that are most knowledgeable wrt computers, and hire
them as assistants in the
lab. Give them full access to computers, and ask
them to do their best to
keep them in working order. I have personal
experience that once a teenager
is given a task that assumes responsibility, "we
rely on you" attitude and
proper respect to his computer skills, he tries to
do his best to prove
himself worthy of it and up to the challange.
Sometimes they exibit behavior
that is more adult then adults. Besides, one of the
main point of school in
general is to teach children responsibility and help
them grow more mature.
Administration of a computer lab is a nice
toy-problem for that.
My friend has tried to do that, but as Spider Man
said, with great power comes great responsibility.
One of these students put some games on their
computers, installed LimeWire and started downloading
off.
This suggestion will be put off by my friend. He has
been there done that.
3) Fight against kids. Put passwords in bios,
disable booting from anything
other than trusted media. Limit their user-rights.
Or create diskless
machines that are booted over the net from a main
server. Create domains or
such. Prohibit entering the lab with a laptop. Weld
the computer case so it's
not to be opened easily (not kidding, I've seen this
done!!). Log their
complete activity (web sites visited etc.),
eventually displaying it on a
public place for everyone else to read. Send weekly
reports to their parents.
Humiliate in public every kid that visits a porn
site. Ask the
director/principal to punish every kid that ignores
the rules. And so on...
Yes, my friend setup the machines with limited
accounts in XP. Each student had an account with
their own password. These students started installing
games and programs with some options that bypassed the
administrator account.
A computer is a tool, and as such does not make a
distiction between good and
bad usage. Consequently, it is inherently impossible
to enforce only "good"
usage automatically. You have to use social rules,
laws, punishment, etc.
If that is the approach you wish to pursue, that is.
If you ask me, I would go for option 2) and ask the
kids to help me fix the
problems other kids made. Put *them* in charge and
in your position, and let
them feel what it's like. They'll learn something
far more serious and
important than Word and Excell... ;-)
Oh, and btw, regarding your original question, you
may install Fedora on one
test machine, install vmware or similar with a
frozen windows client (you do
have licensed windows, iirc), put a line in
/etc/passwd to invoke it on every
login, and copy the frozen client from the backup on
top of the
possibly-modified client on every logout. Instruct
the kids to use cd/flash
memory/diskettes/other to save their data. Put the
test machine randomly in
the lab, wait for a month, then decide what to do
next.
This is one solution that seems to be the best other
than the one suggested by Casey.
How should one set this up so that all these things
take care of themselves and what do we need to do,
like the steps to implement this solution.
P.S. Sorry for a long mail... ;-)
I have enjoyed your mails and others' as well. There
is a wealth of talent amongst fedora users. I like
this very much! :)
Best, :-)
Marko
Marko Vojinovic
Institute of Physics
University of Belgrade
======================
e-mail: vmarko(a)phy.bg.ac.yu
Regards,
Antonio
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