hsweet
October 23rd, 2009, 04:53 PM
I teach this and that at a public high school and have made all kinds of amazing technology available to my students, much of which I have learned about here thanks to (Edubuntu) Linux and OSS software.
My students (40%) on the other hand just wanna play video games. Can't say I blame them. Give them web access, and they will come. Me, I find it annoying when kids are playing pong or whatever while I am giving a lesson, or when a kid uses the computers to watch basketball vids every day all day burning up our shared bandwidth and failing to do any assignments in the process.
That's last year. This year, I finally dug into Iptables and built a reverse firewall. Kids computers do not work at all during lessons, the rest of the time they can only access a whitelist of websites, or a less restricted access if I choose.
I'd be interested in hearing other teacher's experiences in computer labs with this issue. I'd be happy to share any code if anybody wants to do the same thing. Maybe even expand the concept.
My students (40%) on the other hand just wanna play video games. Can't say I blame them. Give them web access, and they will come. Me, I find it annoying when kids are playing pong or whatever while I am giving a lesson, or when a kid uses the computers to watch basketball vids every day all day burning up our shared bandwidth and failing to do any assignments in the process.
That's last year. This year, I finally dug into Iptables and built a reverse firewall. Kids computers do not work at all during lessons, the rest of the time they can only access a whitelist of websites, or a less restricted access if I choose.
I'd be interested in hearing other teacher's experiences in computer labs with this issue. I'd be happy to share any code if anybody wants to do the same thing. Maybe even expand the concept.