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VIRTUALISATION NSW high school laptops put to use for games and MSN Messenger
VIRTUALISATION NSW high school laptops put to use for games and MSN Messenger | NSW high school laptops put to use for games and MSN Messenger |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Sunday, 01 November 2009 | |
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There is no question that technology can and should be employed within education to enhance the learning process. However, forum postings by high school students reveal that, for some pupils at least, the major educational objective is to bypass the restrictions imposed by DET to permit the playing of games and chat programs, even in front of unsuspecting teachers. One student wrote, “I got one of these DET Netbooks somewhat last term. Seriously, these things haven’t enhanced our education, they’ve merely corrupted it. As I speak, I see about 3 people in front playing games, 2 watching movies and another trying to hack it (failing though). All the computer did is was made the periods bludge lessons.” Another, evidently trawling forums while in class, said, “our school just gave laptops out about a week ago. There is a student in front of me right now that is playing counter strike right now.” It would appear the Department of Education had in mind that arbitrary programs could not be executed on the laptops, with comments indicating that group policy settings have been used to restrict .exe files. Questions abound across the Internet from NSW high school students asking if anyone knows how to bypass – or “hack” – this. Replies state yes; all you need to do is right-click the program in question and choose “Run as Administrator” and then click to confirm at the user access control prompt. It is not surprising that a global community like the Internet has delivered an answer to such enquiring minds, but it is astonishing that the DET image clearly has students assigned full administrative rights to their machine and that group policy settings are so easily bypassed. That's not all. |
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