Pinnacle, Online Grades, Skipping School and More 912
Ishkibble writes "The Matrin County School
Board has a new way of post a student's
grades online for a parent to check. Pinnacle is the name of the
program, a simple java applet. Not only does Pinnacle log student's grades, but
also attendance and conduct. The way grades are accessed are by inputting the
first 6 digits of your social security number and the first 5 letters of your
last name. With a logon system as simple as this, one has to question the
security and privacy of the students. This has been making my life a living
hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
Re:Wow (Score:1, Interesting)
Easy way to shut it down (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a Community College and everything we do with student online statistics and information has to follow FERPA security guidelines.
Be glad... (Score:2, Interesting)
This way, you can still do an inferior job.
What's next: radio controlled dog collars that shock you until your homework is done, or if you cut class.
Cracking (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing is crying out to be hacked.
True story: when I was in High School, an automated phone service was instigated, in which if you skipped class a computer would automatically call home and inform on you. Well, I had better things to do than go to class Every Single Day, and I sure didn't want to wait around in the evening just to be the one that picked up the phone.
So, once I got the call, I taped it; then, using an acquired phone list of the students, randomly, and at a late hour, called and played this message back. Parents were furious that the school was calling them so late; students were pissed that they were getting calls when they had attended; the credibility of the system was shot to shit. So whenever someone actually skipped, they would just report that it must've been the Mad Phone Prankster and that the call wasn't legitimate. A $30K computer system shut down with $1 worth of Memorex.
Yeah Dawgs! Garfield Class of '88.
ssn? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whiney sibling: "Mom, Billy has homework."
Billy: "No I don't, liar!"
Whiney sibling: "Oh yeah, that's not what the webpage says!"
Re:HomeWork Sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
RRRRRight. The point of homework is to make sure that you understand the material. Now, granted, there are teachers who will excessive/nonsensical/boring homework which will achieve the exact opposite. But for some of my classes, I'm glad I have some homework so I got something to test on before the real test. This might become more of an issue in college though where there is considerably less time and opportunity to cover everything in class.
As to the not getting paid thing, if a teacher puts efforts into giving good homework, he or she will probably also assign grades to how well you did on it. Those grades are what you get paid with in school.
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
I will save my rant on the public school system for another time, but in this particular case, I think they've found a great solution (I do admit that the security scheme is rather silly, but were it not for that, I would have no complaints).
By the way, I'm not a parent.
No ones 'rights' are being violated here. The spirit of this idea is great, the implementation may need some work.
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Jaysyn
Re:Cracking (Score:4, Interesting)
"We regret to inform you that your" *DAUGHTER**CINDY MCGILLICUTTY* "has been shown to be truant on" *TODAY* "Please call the school office for more information. This system is shut down after 7pm every evening. Thank you."
I'm sure you could have made Apple II SAM say something approaching it, but the tedious nature of custom calls would have stopped you in your tracks. Or are you saying you have too much time on your hands?
In that case, Mister, I want a seven page report on what the Founding Fathers would have thought of this war...
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
This is living hell for teachers too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why "alleged"? Because my gradebook, like many teachers' gradebooks, is a work in progress. I might be behind in my grading, so the grade displayed might not be accurate. I might decide to drop a grade, but just haven't done so yet. There are a thousand and one things that need to be adjusted that parents simply can't see.
I intend to fight this by withholding the entry of any grades until the final week of the grading period. This way, parents (and teachers) who check on students' grades will find a 0 for the grade. They'll need to talk to me to find out the student's progress. During that discussion, we can talk about other things that might be affecting the student's grade that wouldn't show up in a simple on-line gradesheet (things like attitude, behavior, motivation, etc.).
I would urge the poster of this story to encourage their teachers (the understanding ones) to do the same.
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
School is one of those dangerous lessons. Without a proper education you can seriously mess up your future. Mess that up through trial and error and you may not get the chance again.
Trust is a central issue in this. This is no different than a more thorough/convenient parent-teacher conference. Some people will abuse it and their kids will revolt. I would bet though it would just be the straw that broke the camel's back type of situation. Trust has to be built up. In this case, if the parents routinely check up on you and your story always is the same as what they get from the school, then the trust will be in your honesty. From there you need to build up the trust in your studies. Put a few hours a day into studying if you need to and they will start to trust your study habits.
I think the super lax security at this school prompts the program to be shut down immediately! It needs proper password protection through secure protocols. The passwords need to change every semester or school year. The parents that don't take an active interest in their child's school work won't bother to find the new password and those students will quickly fall back into the old routine. The problem here is the uninformed parents that don't know crap about security and that the privacy of their child's information is open to almost every other person around. My college days showed me that social security numbers have nothing to do with security.
FWIW, I'm 27, married, with a 15 month old son.
Arguments are down the hall... this is abuse. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Probably Good and Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. Yes kids make mistakes, some of them really big. But that doesn't make them "bad kids". I also hate to tell you kids don't have the market cornered on making "big mistakes". I do agree that parents need to take an active role in kid's lives, and that SOMETIMES an invasion of privicy is necessary, but by and large if parents know if they have a "good kid" or a "bad kid" and know how much to trust their kids. If you always treat your kids like "bad kids" and always watch every little thing they do, and are always there wiping their ass, they will never grow up to be responsible, self-sufficient adults. Yes kids need supervision, but they don't need the life sucked out of them.
I know someone will say it, so NO i'm not a kid who just wants to be left alone, i'm an adult who was treated as one even when I WAS a kid, and am a much better adult for that.
High School is all important!! (Score:3, Interesting)
High school is fine and all, but to imply that you're giving up on your future if you screw around in these grades is just obsessive. I know plenty of kids that were the goofoffs in high school, some stoners, some clowns, some just uncaring. I compare where most of them are at to where some people that were anal about every grade, and guess what I see more successes and happy lives with the goofoffs than the anal retentives. Just my observations.
Re:Ahh, yes... Pinnacle Gradebook! (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that our SQL package would accept unauthenticated connections from any IP address. Once connected, you could use SQL to change whatever you wanted in the database, including the security profile of the system. Fortunately we found that problem before release.
I thought of that system as a house. The house had a front door that was VERY secure. It was 8 inch thick oak with big iron bands. It had spikes on the face of the door. It had inch thick bolts that extended into casement and into the foundation. It had a lock that was very advanced and very difficult to pick. It's just that there weren't any walls in the house. Sigh.
Re:Ahh, yes... Pinnacle Gradebook! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have also had quite a bit of exposure to this and related software. When I was in high school, I believe they were using the similar software for keeping grades and were debating whether to post them online or not. Especially since graduating, I have not kept up with what has been going on, but grading software like this has been a huge pain for the school district. There was a point they spent nearly half a million dollars a year for several years in a row to either replace or patch faulty grade keeping software. This made things worse for a district already having severe money problems. Every other days would be announcements not to use the grading/attendance software due to problems, or to resubmit info because the system was reset. At the worst point, teachers were told to file grades both in the new electronic way and in old paper work way that the software was to replace since they were afraid the software might crash. What's the moral of my ramblings? It seems "fancy" grading software such as in this post can costs a school district lots of money and possibly make things worse because they don't work well. I just kind of expect that when $750,000 is spent on grading software, the software should work so that doesn't have to be replaced the next for another half million.
PS I think Pinnacle software is what they finally settle on, but it was still having trouble when I left.
Bad Webmaster! (Score:3, Interesting)
Doug and I designed that site back in 2000. There is even a comment showing that at the bottom of page source.
Seems that Patrick Lyons forgot to "clean" the html up before taking credit for designing it. (he is listed at bottom of all the webpages plus at his website.)
It was secure in 2000...
Re:Parents cluelessness level? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hack DNS to direct all requests to WWW.SMBC.ORG to your own web server, parse out any requests for your id and redirect the rest to the original server.