Computers should be banned from schools!

[Kudistos Megistos]

Lol Daily Mail.

I'm particularly intrigued by his belief that children are going to be playing GTA 4 on their government issued laptops. If what I hear about GTA 4's system requirements is true, I certainly hope the government won't be spending over £1000 per pupil buying them gaming laptops.

[nfitc1]

If those are government issued laptops given to the children then they have no right to regulate what is or is not on said laptops.

If those are government provided laptops for school use only, how'd said games get on there in the first place.

There's lots of ways to prevent games from running on computers. Even so, the teachers might be happy with the kids doing SOMETHING so they stay out of trouble.

[Kudistos Megistos]

If those are government issued laptops given to the children then they have no right to regulate what is or is not on said laptops.

If those are government provided laptops for school use only, how'd said games get on there in the first place.

There's lots of ways to prevent games from running on computers. Even so, the teachers might be happy with the kids doing SOMETHING so they stay out of trouble.

I'm willing to bet that most of the "games" they were playing were likely to be browser games and such, rather than stuff like GTA.

[nfitc1]

Still it's very easily preventable by blocking sites. It's a school, it has the right to do that sort of thing.

[Kudistos Megistos]

Still it's very easily preventable by blocking sites. It's a school, it has the right to do that sort of thing.

Yeah, but schools are notoriously bad with computers.

Well mine was anyway, and an awful lot of people on the tubes have far worse horror stories (although their truth can't be confirmed). I'd bet some schools would have a very hard time stopping children from playing browser games.

[Jaitsu]

i say, who cares what the students play as long as all work is done in time

[nfitc1]

Still it's very easily preventable by blocking sites. It's a school, it has the right to do that sort of thing.

Yeah, but schools are notoriously bad with computers.

Well mine was anyway, and an awful lot of people on the tubes have far worse horror stories (although their truth can't be confirmed). I'd bet some schools would have a very hard time stopping children from playing browser games.

I've heard some doozies too, believe me. My school was at least competent enough to hire a knowledgeable IT staff, but most technology back in those days was pretty limited. Windows ME hadn't even come out and I just mostly avoided the computers at my school.

i say, who cares what the students play as long as all work is done in time

That's my office's philosophy.

[Mako]

OMG! They make some good points but I don't think they should be banned.

[Bosola]

Simple solution: use legacy hardware with some Linux distribution that's easy to look after, can run from CD, and has low specs. Cheap hardware; no malware issues; easy to use and won't work with PC games.

[titeguy3]

My middle and high schools issued laptops to all students. They didn't have any administrative blocks on the middle school ones, so everyone would run emulators and play Marvel vs Capcom and Quake 3 Demo online all the time.

By High School, they wised up and restricted non-essential applications, but I discovered a (rather simple) way around it and single-handedly returned the school system to it's former state of chaos and 2D fighters.

I agree that government issued laptops are a bad idea. Students should play games on their own damn laptops! Not with my tax money!

[sl1982]

My middle and high schools issued laptops to all students. They didn't have any administrative blocks on the middle school ones, so everyone would run emulators and play Marvel vs Capcom and Quake 3 Demo online all the time.

By High School, they wised up and restricted non-essential applications, but I discovered a (rather simple) way around it and single-handedly returned the school system to it's former state of chaos and 2D fighters.

I agree that government issued laptops are a bad idea. Students should play games on their own damn laptops! Not with my tax money!

Heh ya, i remember opening windows explorer from the open box in microsoft word, then they disabled explorer so we all ran everything from the command prompt. Wasnt too hard to get past the IT guys. Might be harder with vista and 7 UAC and what not

[Kudistos Megistos]

Simple solution: use legacy hardware with some Linux distribution that's easy to look after, can run from CD, and has low specs. Cheap hardware; no malware issues; easy to use and won't work with PC games.

In theory that might work (and I'm sure they'd save a huge amount of money by not paying for all those Windows licenses), but I'd like to see the reaction from teachers seeing Linux for the first time and being expected to deal with it

Getting less powerful and cheaper hardware seems obvious, but I wouldn't b surprised if some schools buy MacBook Pros for all of their students and replace them every couple of years.

[halkun]

I think all computers should be banned in schools.

In Japan, there are no computers in classrooms. They might have a computer lab of 5 or 6 computers, but it's for programming classes. Microsoft has been trying for years to get the PC in classes, but there is no real reason. Can someone give me one incentive to have a PC in class? Especially when you should be paying attention to the teacher?

[sithlord48]

my school used all mac's .... we only had a few windows machines..
i think if a school is going to paying for computers. then they should consider using something like edubuntu as a OS.

[nfitc1]

Can someone give me one incentive to have a PC in class? Especially when you should be paying attention to the teacher?

Incentive? No.
But a reason; they'll likely be interacting heavily with computers in whatever career-oriented job they end up in. Granted, not all jobs require computer skills. But the entire purpose of schools is to give children more skills so they have the opportunity to have a job they're happy with and not one that's forced on them because they didn't have the proper training when they were younger. I'm in agreement that Elementary schools (likely middle/junior high schools too) should NOT have computers. Children are far too easily distracted. I took my first computer class in 10th grade and I'm much more proficient at computer usage based on my usage OUTSIDE of the classroom. I don't know that I would have bothered to be a programmer had it not been for those computer classes I took.
There wasn't a single classroom in my pre-high school schools that had computers for all students and I don't think I would have benefited from them being there. So, ban? no. Limit access? yes.

[titeguy3]

pfft, we're just slowly phasing out the educational system and paving the way for a new era.

When telepathic internet access is invented, there'll be no need for schooling anymore. 

[half kidding]

[Kudistos Megistos]

There are plenty of reasons to have computers in schools.

For one thing, word processing is generally much quicker and more efficient than writing things by hand. For another, there are still some children who don't have computers at home in poorer areas. Not knowing how to use computers as the 21st century goes on is going to become like being illiterate in the 20th century; school might be the only place where those children learn how to use computers. then there's disabled children who have trouble with things like writing; computers can be incredibly helpful in these situations. There's plenty of educational software around as well; this has the advantage of being interactive (unlike textbooks) and being able to engage each child individually at the same time (unlike teachers); I get the feeling that there's going to be lot more decent educational software coming out as the role of computers in schools increases.

Needless to say, there are disadvantages to relying too much on computers in schools, especially if the teachers have trouble with technology, but it certainly isn't the case that there's no reason to have them in schools.

Also, I'm not sure whether "in Japan" was supposed to add any authority to the claim that computers shouldn't be in schools. Japanese schools may get amazing test results, but I don't think we should be copying them.