Oh, ffs.

[conuly]

Don't text your kid at school for no damn reason, folks!

If you want that much daily contact with your child - homeschool!

But on another note, every time I see an article about schools having trouble enforcing no-phone policies I keep thinking this: every teen shoplifter knows you can make a simple faraday cage for your tagged goods by lining a bag with aluminum foil. Then you can smuggle your whatever-it-is past the door and not get stopped with a beep. This same principle is why cell service inside elevators sucks - those things are made of metal and it blocks everything.

So, on that note, it should not be impossible to retrofit your school from top to bottom to make cell service too shitty to be worthwhile... and so long as you're using passive methods then it's all legal! (This may also be an option if you're a teacher in a single classroom and expected to decorate. Who says you can't decorate with metal? Line your classroom with cookie tins, guys! Who doesn't want a shiny classroom that, coincidentally, has the worst cell and wifi service in the state?)

Edit: I just googled, and faraday paints and wallpaper are things you can buy. As always, I believe functional engineering solutions are superior than behavioral ones. If you make it so that kids can't text in class then you will no longer have to spend energy trying to stop them from doing it. So, while this might actually not be feasible for a teacher, any school which is really irritated by this should consider trying to find the funding to redo their paint. In my experience, all schools are badly overdue for a paint job anyway. Shove a metal grid over the windows and you will be good to go.

Comments

[kengr]

True, but there's a flip side to that. The kids calling out to anywhere *but* 911 can cause problems.

Me, I don't think the faraday cage thing is a good idea. What is needed is a gizmo I can't recall the name of. It acts like a cell phone tower, and the phone connect to *it* because it's the strongest signal.

It then redirects calls. Most calls would get directed to a "cell phone use is prohibited in the classroom" recording. Calls to emergency services (911) would go thru.

And it would be easy enough to set up *some* phones as allowed to go thru anyway (teachers and staff).

Could also intercept *incoming* calls and redirect them to the recording, with an option to connect to the school office.

Might be spendier than the paint, but I suspect not hugely so.

Monitoring chromebooks and the like can be stopped by reconfiguring the wifi routers in the school. Only a limited number of external sites would be allowed (things like wikipedia). Chat and monitoring software would be blocked.

[the_siobhan]

Honestly I like the sound of that solution a lot better. 'Cause reading the article, it's not so much the students' behaviour that they need to regulate, it's the parents.

[conuly]

This is one of several articles I’ve read recently, most of which talk about student behavior.

The redirect gizmo is not legal. Cell jammers are not legal.

However, passive construction methods that result in poor service inside the building are legal. No $11k fine!

[silveradept]

The gizmo is usually called a "stinger" or a "stingray", if I recall correctly, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's completely forbidden for civilians to use, since the most common use of such an interception device is for law enforcement to engage in warrantless surveillance (and sometimes, to do it because they bothered to get a warrant first). Giving a school such a thing would give them the ability to read and eavesdrop on all communications going to and from any phones that connected to the device. (Except maybe end to end encrypted communications.) It's a privacy nightmare, even if it came out of the box designed to deny just about every communication protocol that tries to route through it, or to apply filtering so that only some devices can communicate through it.

[conuly]

All such devices are very illegal.

[conuly]

Yeah but that is illegal.

[kengr]

Not necessarily. Such gizmo *can* be nade without the surveilance features (and more cheaply, too!.

I've heard of theaters and other places using something along those lines (as well as cell phone "jammers")

[conuly]

Jammers are very illegal. Anything that actively interferes with radio signals is illegal.

Passive methods are legal. It’s not a crime to have poor reception. It’s just a crime to use a device to interfere with somebody’s ability to send or receive signals. But building materials aren’t a device.

[conuly]

https://www.fcc.gov/general/jamming-cell-phones-and-gps-equipment-against-law