The beginning of the book somewhat reminded me about what our school is doing with IPads and the one-to-one program for next year. The students were given laptops, just like we are given IPads. If we were to be monitored throughout the day, then I would not want the system. Ultimate control and tyranny would not be very useful in schools, but would be a waste of time and money. Marcus and Darryl find ways to avoid the systems in the school. Eventually it would happen to every system, so it would only be effective for some time. The school was also being very crafty while trying to monitor the children. The students in Marcus’s school are tracked down by library books, just like we would be monitored by IP address, to work around the ruling of the Supreme Court. They used gait-recognition software instead of face-recognition software and they bug library books instead of the students. If the whole point of laws is to only be an obstacle and not prevent this level of control to happen, then we should not even have laws to prevent because people are capable of overcoming these restrictions. If this would be the end result of the one-to-one program, then the system would be more of an obstacle for learning, rather than being helpful.
I was also reminded about the iPads when reading the book. I wonder if there will be people like Marcus who will use them to mess with the school.
ReplyDeleteSame with Eric. I think plans of monitoring the iPads are already in place, as you can easily track what sites the iPad had been on or if it accessed the internet in any way with MAC addresses registered in the school system.
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