“The degree that the [Henrico County Apple iBook plan] has positively affected student education has yet to be determined. About $27.9 million has been spent on the laptops in the past four years,” Olympia Meola reports for The Richmond Tmes-Dispatch. “Internet filtering became a controversial element of the program several years ago when students were caught downloading pornography at school.”
“‘We’ve been using the best piece of software we can find,’ said Dave Myers, the county’s assistant superintendent for finance. Bidders are being asked to supply larger bandwidth to the laptops’ wireless card so the county could grant teachers the option to view all students’ computer screens electronically. School officials are also considering a filter system that works when students leave school, said Lloyd Brown, Henrico’s assistant director of technology and information services,” Meola reports.
“[Parent Steven Bass] and other parents see the omission of specific filtering requirements as a sign that school officials are trying to steer the contract to Apple, the current provider. Bass suggests that the request should be retracted and redesigned to seem less Apple-specific,” Meola reports. “‘It’s a very slanted proposal,’ Bass said. If school officials would like to go with Apple again, Bass thinks they should demand that Apple come up with the solutions. That’s not the case, county officials maintain. Brown denied any attempt to again sole-source the contract to Apple. Superintendent Fred Morton IV has repeatedly said the same. In fact, the county recently tweaked a hardware requirement in their request that made it easier for more laptop manufacturers to bid. ‘Whoever comes out with the best response will win the [contract],’ Brown said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We hope officials take the total cost of ownership into account when reviewing the contracts and don’t act like Joe Six Pack at the local Wal-Mart and shortsightedly fixate on the sticker price alone. Besides, to go backwards from Mac OS X to Windows XP would be cruel and unusual punishment for Henrico students and teachers. Here are just a handful of articles (we have many more) that Henrico officials should keep in mind when making their decision:
Cybersecurity advisor Clarke questions why anybody would buy from Microsoft – February 18, 2005
Security expert: Don’t use Microsoft Windows, Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer – December 09, 2004
Cyber-security adviser uses Apple Macintosh to avoid Windows’ security woes – September 27, 2004
Information Security Investigator says switch from Windows to Mac OS X for security – September 24, 2004
Windows XP Service Pack 2 causing major headaches on college campuses – August 24, 2004
Scientists use Mac OS X for better performance, security – February 12, 2004
Pennsylvania school district’s PCs infected with virus; their Macs unaffected – October 01, 2003
Single Mac keeps company running while Windows machines fail due to Blaster worm – August 13, 2003
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Survey shows support for Henrico iBook program with ‘lukewarm support’ for Apple’s Mac OS X – March 07, 2005
Henrico poll finds students are using iBooks successfully – February 11, 2005
Henrico iBooks raise concerns among some parents – May 28, 2004
Henrico high school laptop program to continue, but will it still feature Apple Macs? – February 24, 2005
The Shao Kahn ad is very noisy.
Jack A asked: “I mean, when you are comparing breasts and guns, isn’t one of these just a wee little bit more dangerous than the other?”
If you have seen Woody Allen’s film “Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afriad To Ask”? you’d know that breasts can be very dangerous, indeed!
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Couldn’t a browser such as Freeverse’s KidsBrowser be substituted for Safari? That is password programmable to disallow or allow whichever is deemed appropriate for different age levels. Other filtering software like Intego’s ContentBarrier could also be integrated.
As was mentioned earlier, ARD2 (Apple Remote Desktop) should have been a requirement for each teacher’s computer – with training in using it. It isn’t that hard! I think if Apple would also supply new and competent parents to these students who will oversee (or learn to oversee) what their kids are doing, it would solve the away-from-school Internet issues. (I’m sure that parent-replacement & training will written into the new proposal.)
Parents who want to switch to Windows need more information (like the ENTIRE list of MDN references) and put in a cold, dark room until they have read them all! Perhaps they will be able to make a more informed “decision” (the MW) at that point.
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Steve Jobs (though I doubt that is your real name
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> ) I was simply pointing out the ironic situation that exists on what is allowed to be shown on television in the US. Graphic violence is OK but the human body without pieces of cloth covering it is not.
Sex is an activity that should be limited to adults because of the possibility of creating a new life and all the responsibility that that should involve. At what age one is considered an adult is a societal judgment that is more of a gray area. People used to get married quite often at 14 or 15 years old in the United States but you don’t see this happening very often any more. I do think, though, that a lot of people this age still engage in sexual activity and this probably has a lot to do with biology and hormonal surges that are a legacy of a time in the development of the human race when it made a lot more sense to do so at that age than it does in today’s world. An unfortunate circumstance perhaps but one which we will just have to accept and deal with as best we can since I don’t think it will be possible anytime soon to custom tailor our biology to fit current societal norms.
Doing violence to another human being, however, is an activity that I would prefer not even adults be allowed to indulge in and if your argument that pornography “lures” people into doing sexual acts, then the obvious corollary would be that showing graphic violence or murder would “lure” people into doing violence or murder. Although I would agree that both of these arguments may be true in some instances, overwhelmingly it would seem that the vast majority of people are able to resist participating in the porn industry or in doing physical violence to or murdering other people. And in the instances where people do succumb to either of these “lures”, I think that deficits in upbringing, education, and interaction with parents have as much or probably more to do with it than seeing it on TV or the internet.
As for filtering programs, I think they are a good device to prevent young children from accidently being exposed to adult images that they have no interest yet nor desire to see. However, when kids reach an age where they want to get access to material of this nature, the filter programs will probably only succeed in making it a bit more difficult and forcing them sneak around to get access. But get access they will, and making them have to do it clandestinely probably results in a lot of screwed up impressions that human sexuality is somehow “bad” or “dirty” that may cause them problems in later life. So all the parents worried that their kids may be using the laptops to look at pictures of people engaged in sexual activity are probably right and a lot of the kids probably are but I don’t think we should be making that big of a deal of it.
I agree that common sense and reason must come into play here and I think the fact that the current situation for TV in America is decidedly lacking in both in some instances is what prompted my comments. Janet Jackson’s nipple causing such an uproar is a prime example. Frankly I did not think that was really as big of a deal as a lot of people seemed to want to make it out to be. If I had to make a choice of my kids accidently seeing a nipple or a scene from a movie where people are murdered, common sense (at least for me) would prompt me to choose the nipple. However, for the vast majority of people, I don’t think either would probably cause much long lasting harm, especially if the parents were making an effort to interact effectively with their children.
This has gone way overboard, here. Somehow, Henrico parents’ conviction not to have the laptop program turned into a pornfest for their 14 year-olds has become Jack A’s screed on the poor, ignorant parenting that results in teaching that the loving sex depicted in “Anal Rescue: 911” is something “bad” or “dirty”. No decent parent wants their children to learn about sex from porn.
As for the tiresome tongue-wagging against American TV, most of the arguments here are not even factual. They do a pretty good job, in my opinion, of keeping anything graphic off the tube (at least on broadcast) until the tots are nestled in. But after 10pm, I’m the one who’s up, and I don’t always want to see oddball romances or quirky comedies – I want to see Peckinpah and Tarantino. Think there might be some biological imperative towards violence? Or is it just sex?
The point of school is to learn… This isn’t a vocational school.
Surfing the internet is not learning…
Nor is spending time on IM…
Call me old fashioned… but until one of these kids turns into the next Einstein through using a computer, computers are an unnecessary evil that must be kept out of the classroom if it’s used in place of effective teaching.
They should be employed in a classroom only with the strictest of filters and tools…
A failing student is a failing student… computer or not. This money would be better spent on lowering class sizes.
with all due respect MDN.. go f*ck yourself.. this SHAO KAHN ad makes me want to stab you with a spoon…. MUTE KEY… ahhhh relief
I could have sworn you said you’d turned it off..
CrackA, there are definitely arguments that could be made that violence in part stems from a biological imperative since aggressive males would often have a greater chance of passing their DNA onward.
But I have to agree that this has gotten a bit off track. Parents want what is best for their kids and I must admit that “Anal Rescue: 911” would not be high on a reading or viewing list that I would choose for my kid. The whole thing just reminded me of how overboard America can go on some issues while remaining quite permissive in others. And the fact that you can watch pretty graphic depictions of people killing each other after 10 pm on broadcast TV but are not allowed to see even mild images of people without clothes on would seem to be one of these areas.
And as I pointed out before, I think the kids are gonna be able to get pornography if they really want to so the only benefit I can see to the filters is preventing them from being exposed to it accidently. So parents getting over-wrought over the fact that their childrem might still be able to see pornography on their laptops seems to me to be a bit of a tempest in a teacup. Put the filters on to prevent the kids from being exposed accidently and if some of them figure out how to get around the filters, I think we will just have to accept the fact that this is going to happen to a certain extent. The kids motivated enough to figure out how to circumnavigate the filters would find a way to get porn even if they didn’t have laptops. And if there were no porn at all, they would find some other way to satisfy their interest in sex. This has been happening for thousands of years and I am sure that it will continue to happen for thousands of years more.
Preventing students from having access to laptops and all the possible benefits involved just because they might be able to use them to view some porn is an over-reaction if you ask me.
if you put children to this world raise them well its your responsibility.
at no time is it anybody else’s responsibility but the parents.
if the parents can’t/wont take their responsibility then they should be terminated.
I think that the people here who think that porn is innocent has alot to do with their age. Probably young to middle age men who view porn themselves. The problem is that porn is far from innocent. Porn breeds unhealthy views of both women and sex. Women in porn are shown to be things, not people. They are used, slapped, called horrible names, etc.
People who watch porn usually turn to themselves instead of having healthy relationships. Porn acts as an escape. It ruins kids, families, marriages. Sex is not a bad thing, but participate in it a healthy manner in the right context. The negative impact that porn has on our country is huge.
And to those who say that stupid parents need to parent their own kids, and that it’s their responsibility if kids get into porn obviously aren’t paying much attention. Kids and teens can run into that stuff without even trying. The ease of accessability makes it almost impossible to control. Even innocent sounding url-s like fun.com have dirty images. At least when porn was limited to stores, not just anyone could wander in. Now, all it takes is a click and a few keystrokes.
Another note, I’m pretty sure that Tiger is going to come with parental controls built in. From what I have read, they are very good.
– David