[kotaKat]

Except then they're going to spread the exploit. Kids don't keep their mouths shut. Then word goes around Jimmy knows how to kill the lock and get Roblox again on his Chromebook and suddenly there's a problem because now the flash drives and instructions are pared down and now half your class's Chromebooks just went unmanaged. They won't think or understand the repercussions (like not being able to suddenly start a managed test), just that they got their games back, and now it becomes the teacher's problem to troubleshoot again...

Trust me, I know. I was one of those kids. Except back in my time I was running my own RDP server to get around the proxy servers while also hosting a Web server that had Ultrasurf on it for the others.

The one thing I didn't share or open my mouth about? My exploit to kill Faronics Insight. Sure, my machine would suddenly show 'offline', but the lab monitors inherently trusted me in general ;)

(And to Mrs. Remington, if you're out there on HN somehow, I'm sorry I was your little IT nightmare!)

[ethbr0]

So was I, but that's the point of instilling a culture of "you break it, you deal with the consequences."

Getting a zero on your next hw/quiz/lab/test, because your machine was non-compliant and you didn't know how to switch it back, is fair.

Then reimage the machine on IT's timeline.

And if mom and dad want to bitch, they deserve to be told that little Timmy screwed up his own laptop.

[derefr]

I would note that "screwing up your laptop" for a test written online, is a lot like "screwing up your pencil" for a test written on paper. A laptop can be borked, but it can also just have keys that break off, or other damage, some of which might be entirely accidental. Likewise, a student might snap their pencil in half or forget to bring it or grind it down to an unusable nub, but they also might just have a crap pencil where the lead got broken into little bits on the inside during shipping.

In the case of the pencil, I'd expect the student to just put up their hand and ask for a pencil to do the test with; and the teacher to begrudgingly provide them one—mostly due to the possibility of the accidental case.

Would that not be the case for school-issued laptops — just grab one from some cart of "extras" and tell the student to log into that one to do the test?

[ethbr0]

Fair point. In my mind, breaking your school laptop by modifying it is a bit like breaking your pencil by using it as a crowbar. Or if I used my textbook to level a table and the pages got stuck together.

The school owes you a working device, if they give device-requiring assignments.

But the responsibility passes to you once you modify or use that device outside of its default settings.

Which, IMHO, would be a great life lesson to teach!