This September was a landmark for the Los Angeles unified school district, which began to equip each of its 30,000 students with iPads. The push goes through all grades, K-12 and provides the iPad, an educational suite of apps and a gated internet portal.
Businessweek (citation) reported that it took only days for students to hack their machines and work around the limitations imposed on internet usage. The school district immediately reacted to the breach and seized all the machines in order to address the problem.
Interestingly, I see no mention of how this is quite an amazing effort by the students to assess their situation, realize they are frustrated and hack their way through the security. First, this should be exactly what you expect. But more importantly, this demonstrates a lot of skill and ingenuity. I would be proud if my son had been the one to do it.
This is like recognizing the Kevin Mitnicks of the school early on, before they got into any deep trouble and having the opportunity to cultivate their skills rather than demonize them. After all, where did this guy wind up?
Phone home, Captain.
That’s right, working as a security advisor. (I’m sure everyone would have been happier without the time on the lamb and locked up for doing for fun the stuff he does today for profit.
DownHouseSoftware 