So unfair! Teachers know what’s happening on students' fondleslabs Maybe now you don’t want the kids turning off their iPads in class after all. By using VNC remote access, pupils can now instantly share their work with their teacher and the rest of the pupils. The ability has come through the integration of software from Cambridge company RealVNC, which allows screens to be mapped on to …
Maybe, maybe not.
A few years ago I was in a meeting with a visiting US colleague. She was surprised how many people were listening to what she was saying. In the US it was so common for everyone in meetings to sit typing away on their laptops that some offices had started "full attention meetings", ie laptops banned.
While it sounds like hell, the idea was that after a while it encourages people to think more about whether the meeting is needed and do all the attendees need to be there. Well, that was the idea....
For hell meetings, there was an AD agency in London a good few years back, that painted the meeting room some really hideous bright colours, purple and orange and had no seats or other comforts. The idea was that you only wanted to spend a brief time in it so meetings were quick and to the point.
We had something similar on PC's when I was at school - they used Viglen Classlink IIRC.
The problem was, we figured out how to bypass the restrictions and run it ourselves, meaning we could monitor and take control of remote systems, including those controlling the interactive whiteboards that various departments had.
Caused a lot of trouble when someone (moi???) went porn-surfing on an interactive whiteboard in another (occupied) room whilst the teacher in that room panicked and didn't know how to stop/interrupt the session.
Not that I'm saying kids will always find a way to misuse monitoring software, of course.
"Hi Jimmy, it's great that you have brought your {$device} to school, just install this software so we can monitor what you are doing."
I know what my kids would say:
"Fair enough, before you install it can I have the source code please, I need to know *exactly* what it is going to do"
or
"Fair enough, I'll leave mine at home then and you can provide me with one"
or
"Sure, I'm running Kali Linux ... you have a package for that?"
Oddly enough, my kids have been brought up to work when they need to work and play later ... and they do it without the need for micro-managment. The role of schools is to build individuals capable of making their own decisions for life in the big world.
Here's a hint: I wonder if the people promoting this crap have read the (many) recent articles how kids from private schools do better because of "SOFT SKILLS" like confidence, assertiveness and leadership? ... I doubt you will find this type of micro-managment crapware in any private school, however, in the lower tier schools educating the drones, I suppose it has a place.
"Oddly enough, my kids have been brought up to work when they need to work and play later ... and they do it without the need for micro-managment."
Good for you. Most College teachers would encourage students to develop this kind of discipline as well. It seems to work for the majority actually. I'm always a bit dubious about technology solutions to what are essentially social/behaviour issues.
The coat: late in here and early out - results day soon.
Been around for years.
NetOp, Classlink, there are dozens of these products, and many of them have mobile (Android/iPad) counterpart apps.
This isn't news, I've been using and installing them for over a decade at the very least.
The problem you have is all those VNC streams flying over a wireless network alongside all the other stuff you're doing, plus all the other mobile devices, in a bandwidth-limited, airwave-scarce area. I don't know how many times I've told people that the BEST wifi is equivalent to a single Gigabit cable. One gigabit cable per desktop, 20+ devices on the wireless, so even in ABSOLUTELY IDEAL conditions, they are getting 1/20th of the access you would normally get. With laptops and roaming profiles, this is a serious issue, with tablets you use only for web browser and the odd Google Drive doc it's not. But pushing multiple VNC over them is quite heavy.
@Robin - school has a different meaning in the UK - 5 to 18 year olds. And let me tell you, you use what we tell you, or you don't get on the school network. That's what RADIUS and things like network protection services are *for*. Uninstall our monitoring software and your connection drops like a stone. That may be harsh for 16-18 year olds but chances are they are NOT bringing in their own devices (that's a H&S nightmare when it comes to PAT testing, etc.), and on a school-owned device you do what you're told and run what you're given. BYOD and you sign a policy saying exactly what we accept and what you can use and what we will install, or you don't get on the network at all.
And, no, you can't just load up 4G and do it yourself. Because that's a policy violation in itself.
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Oh no, I can blame the teachers. My daughters school photocopy all the homework and give it to the children on a FRIDAY of all times for handing in on Tuesday, as a consequence I get to review the homework. Frequently I have to correct the photocopy. The spelling is atrocious, the Math's problems are frequently incorrectly stated, and for the pity of all the deity's do not get me started on grammar.
I know I did piss poor in my English, but I scrapped a pass. but these "teachers", also known as "moron's", the exclusion to Darwin's "survival of the fittest" and a whole host of other unrepeatable colloquialisms make me look like Jesus walking on water. To top it off, they acknowledge the mistakes, doff said cap and then repeat the mistakes a week later. This from a well performing ofstead inspected school. So if the teachers cannot produce mistake free homework for the pupil's, how much faith do you think I have in them actually teaching anything apart from how to be a victim of society.
On the other hand, this might give them a fighting chance to do something correctly, but my breath is not being held in and I believe there are no rashers of bacon at 30,000 ft. The teachers are already illiterates.
Back to your point, yes I can blame the teachers, I can blame them very much indeed, as they attempt to fuck up the pupils education, or more the point my kids education.
To top it off, they acknowledge the mistakes, doff said cap and then repeat the mistakes a week later. This from a well performing ofstead inspected school. So if the teachers cannot produce mistake free homework for the pupil's, how much faith do you think I have in them actually teaching anything apart from how to be a victim of society.
Leaving aside your own grammar, last year's end-of-year reports from our (top-performing, apparently) secondary school were an utter mess. I can't get on with the auto-generated sentences anyway, but the number of boys who had "she has done well at..." (and vice-versa) in their reports was astounding. These and other mistakes made it obvious that no-one had even glanced through the reports before sending them home. Likewise formal complaints to the school from us and other parents resulted in replies which boiled down to "we produced the reports, why are you complaining?"
Don't get me started on the inconsistency of target setting.
Couldn't agree more with your sentiment "if the teachers cannot produce mistake-free <whatever>".
This year's reports were a lot better, but there has been a minor management reshuffle in the meantime
M.
"On the other hand, this might give them a fighting chance to do something correctly, but my breath is not being held in and I believe there are no rashers of bacon at 30,000 ft. The teachers are already illiterates."
I'm assuming that there's something lost in translation here, but at least in The States, depending on the airline, bacon can be found at 30,000 feet above sea level.
You can also blame parents and society in general. IT & video have made the rest of life so exciting, instantly gratifying, passive and emotionally engaging that actually using the pre-frontal cortex for future benefits is both difficult (like an underused muscle) and rather uninteresting.
I've got quite a few friends who are teachers and even those with the best results report that children these days have shorter attention spans than in the past. They then have a choice, do they accept the limitations and try to make the class more exciting, or do they try to retrain the kids? If all the teachers are onboard you can institute the desired culture, but a lone teacher has no chance.
Not that the constant government interference and emphasis on metrics is helping the matter at all.
I got the impression that handwriting levels were going to drop when photocopying become more affordable.
I'm not saying my handwriting is neat and readable, but after years of taking notes during classes then 3 hour lectures at college it at least is stylishly unreadable.
Spelling is another issue, with electronic systems catching and correcting for you, there's little need to learn from mistakes.
"shouldn't be submitting work electronically unless its (sic) multimedia based" - Or like me have visual problems which lead to incredibly bad handwriting. I was constantly being assessed for special needs due to the fact that I have one OK and one very bad eye, and it affects my writing and not as in "you need to write slower and neater boy". For me, being able to submit my homework or classwork by email was a great help - I wasn't idle or stupid, just had really bad handwriting that couldn't be fixed! Quite a few people at my school used laptops to get them around various problems like this, and this was around 17 years ago - good solid Compaq laptops with a 486 processor and a black and white screen!
It is claimed that this level of monitoring helps to maximise student engagement, keeps students on task, and allows teachers to personalise teaching plans to each individual student.
It also teaches them to get used to the idea of being routinely monitored whenever they're on a computer, thus fitting them admirably for their future lives as good little robots in the Surveillance State.
Politicians and many (but not all or even a majority) of teachers believe that a failing education system can be made better through the purchase of fashionable technology.
That just costs money and is therefore easy. As an added benefit spending money on education looks good in papers and reports. It doesn't need to be spent well as long as there is plenty of it. And it can be done in time for voting.
Actually attracting good teachers and improving basic literacy and numeracy as well as having a well informed and intellectually bright (or vocationally talented) student population is hard and probably takes longer than one election cycle. Therefore they're not interested.
It's not just education that's a victim of this. A certain retail company have decided to reduce staff, and offset the difference by issuing each branch with a couple of tablets (paid for out of the branch's labour budget) so that management can complete paperwork whilst on the shop floor.
Those tablets, of course, can't restock the shelves nearly as well as the 2+ employees they replaced. Not to mention the app the company had developed is apparently shite to the extent that the paperwork takes twice as long if you try and complete it on those tablets.
Just like any other tool, technology is wielded very poorly by some
I may have read this article incorrectly but since when have you been able to remote access or view an iOS devices screen. I am not even sure you can do this on Android devices without rooting it first. I can't imagine that these are jailbroken iOS devices otherwise they would invalidate any warranty or AppleCare. How is this done because our helpdesk use MDM or verbal help with iOS users to support them.
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