Students Find Ways To Hack School-Issued iPads Within A Week

[Recursion]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/27/226654921/students-find-ways-to-hack-school-issued-ipads-within-a-week

Los Angeles Unified School District started issuing iPads to its students this school year, as part of a $30 million deal with Apple. The rollout is in the first of three phases, and ultimately, the goal is to distribute more than 600,000 devices.

But less than a week after getting their iPads, almost 200 of the districts' high school students found a way to bypass software blocks on the devices that limit what websites the students can use.

Roosevelt High School in East LA has the most offenders. Earlier this week, Mayra Najera, a high school senior, told NPR that she hasn't hacked her school-issued iPad just yet, but that some classmates have offered to do it for her.

"They told me Friday, 'I would do it for you because you're my friend,' " she says. "They told me that!"

[Shrike47]

1. They knew this was going to happen, didn't they?

[Recursion]

2. Sounds like a good way to teach systems administration... (nt)

[Coyotl]

3. Giving students iPads is all about Apple's bottom line!

[X_Digger]

8. And inculcation- look at the result of all the Apple IIe's then macs in the 80's

A whole generation of fanbois was spawned.

[frazzled]

12. Utterly and completely false

Apple never had and still does not have the market share of anything. Throughout the 80s and 90s especially, it had a minuscule share of the computingmarket, and still does. The Windoz fanboiz certainly must know that.

Facts? Proof?

Total Share: Personal Computer Market Share 1975-2010












http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

See also http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/from-altair-to-ipad-35-years-of-personal-computer-market-share/

[X_Digger]

13. None of which actually address what I said.

Perhaps you should read it again?

[frazzled]

14. I did reread it , and its still false

A "generation of fanbois" is a ridiculous statement when you look at actual share of the computing market. How can fewer than 5% be considered a "generation " of anything?

I call it Apple Derangement Syndrome.

[X_Digger]

23. What makes you think that 'market share' is somehow a representation of a generation?

A generation refers to a set of cohorts fixed in time.

[msanthrope]

4. You know, just when you think American schoolchildren are lazy, with no ambition, always

hopped up on something like Purple Drank....I read a story that warms my heart.

Who says American Ingenuity is dead? Who???

[Recursion]

6. Thank you

That was my reaction, too.

Offer kids porn, and they will find a way. The American spirit lives on.

[msanthrope]

9. Porn and cat videos. I am heartened that these kids found a way. nt

[leeroysphitz]

21. LIFE finds a way. n/t

[rrneck]

22. You know, when the folks say the country is going to hell...

I always tell them, look at all the hard work our fine young lads are doing down in the Points.

[bhikkhu]

5. A network bypass is an easy thing, regardless of the device

just by using a proxy server. I don't know that much about those things, but I don't know that the headline should imply the device was hacked; it has very little to do with the device at all. The ability to bypass website blocks is more or less built into the internet itself, and used regularly by journalists and activists in countries where internet access is limited.

[bemildred]

7. Deasy is an idiot. nt

[Sunlei]

10. kids are clever, so they will patch. A great thing for our students to have ipads.easy book upgrades

Every school child needs a pad of some type. and school districts need to get away from the old fashioned paper book system.

[michigandem58]

11. That's too bad - my daughter's school-issued iPad is very useful

How about warning or disciplining the kids who abuse it?

[Recursion]

16. How about rewarding kids who hack it?

I'm a sysadmin and have been for years. The first rule of that is that you don't understand something until you break it.

[Downwinder]

15. iPad becomes a NSA recruitment tool.

[LittleBlue]

17. So basically they spent $30m so students could view porn and play games?

Excuse me while I

[wildeyed]

18. And this is bad why?

Sounds like the students learned many skills, how to do the hack and then a quick exercise in entrepreneurship by selling the service to other students. Sounds like excellent hands-on, real world learning to me. Probably way more interesting and useful than whatever the school administration intended for them to learn (can you tell I hated school?).

[Recursion]

19. I personally don't think it is.

I'm a sysadmin. This is exactly the kind of skills I look for when I hire.

[wildeyed]

20. And I am a small business owner.

I would totally hire the kids who were selling the service. They saw an opportunity, developed a service and sold it to the masses

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. If you can't open it, you don't own it.

[seveneyes]

25. No problem

As long as they can still use it for the function the school intended. If they broke it to the point where it's no longer useful for school work, then send them to remedial hacking or somehow make an educational moment out of it.