School threatening to ban DS from computers because he has been fiddling

[alison222]

Ds has Aspergers. Literally just received the diagnosis. He LOVES computers. they are his big thing at the moment.

He has been fiddling with the set up of the class computer - duplicated all the desck top items, resized the writing and screen etc.

He had also managed to rename some of the teachers documents so she can't find them.

NOw I am annoyed with hem- furious in fact - don't get me wrong as we have had the same issues with our home computer.

BUT surely they can't threaten this?
Actually I know they can't and I am more concerned about them making a threat they can't carry out and also that they have such lax security systems on their computers.

Where do I best go from here without making a huge issue of it?

THis is a secondary school, he is only allowed to work on a standalone computer.

I don't think frances was saying in this specific case the child should be excluded - simply that there need to be suitable and effective sanctions available to teachers to enable them to get on and do their job! It sounds in this case as though the sanction - banning him from the computers - was entirely justified, indeed necesary, to enable the teacher to teach and the other children to learn. And I still maintain that a 6 year old capable of doing this, is also capable of understanding and obeying simple rules.

The child I teach was excluded from his previous school for repaeatedly hacking into and somehow destroying the school network. I don't know how as I am not a computer person.

No I do not think that the six year old with aspergers should be expelled. Even if the boy was neurologically normal I do not think he should be expelled for one naughty incident. A computer is a just a bit of electronics, its not as if anyone died.

I am refering to the kids in ebenezer post who were so horrendous to that young teacher. No human being should have to put up with that kind of treatment. Teachers should be allowed to teach rather than having to do crowd control. They need the respect that they once enjoyed.

I think that head teachers need more powers to make decisions about difficult children without having their decisions over turned by courts and appeal panels. Parents should either accept the punishement given to their child to look for another school.

frances5, if the teachers you work with can't cope with two user names and passwords, how do they manage to learn 30 children's names?

Twinset and pearls. We have had a similar situation to the one you outline. We have a number of children who are not allowed on the school network r the internet, and can only use stand alone PCs (this is also in secondary).

One boy in year 7 managed to circumvent the school's filtering system (which is actually very goos, as a biology teacher I do all my lesson plans at home since masses of the stuff I ned is blocked ) and downloaded the most horrific stuff.

Have the same problem with some adult friends with AS (come in and move everything on my computer so I can't find anything grrrr).

I am shocked at some of the lack of understanding of AS on this thread. "labels" like ODD & ADHD are not just given out to excuse bad behaviour. A dx such as AS is difficult to get. It's not as simple as "he can do xs so he should be able to do y", and its attitudes such as that that make mainstream school such a hellish place for so many children on the spectrum.

Sounds like he needs more supervision than he's getting.

As for getting ds to understand. Social stories, social stories, social stories, lots and lots and lots of them. Judging by my adult friends its a tricky one..... Does the school have access to ASD advice- this is the sort of thing that an autism support service should be able to provide.

"frances5, if the teachers you work with can't cope with two user names and passwords, how do they manage to learn 30 children's names? "

You may well ask... but many teachers at my school are completely useless at remembering one password, yet alone two.
[hang head in despair icon]

I smell a story here...
I'm an occasional small time IT journalist. Like most geeks of my generation, they only way we could feed our habit was to do things that they still haven't quite got round to changing the law for yet

One thing I shall use to unnerve MB is that I'd be very sad if school techs caught my son doing this. Covering your tracks (or better still getting someone else blamed) is a basic bit of cracking.
Thus MB's people have caught the good hacker, but not the great one, who now has a key logger on MB's PC, and knows all about that thing she ordered from that very discreet site ;)

I don't have the faintest idea of what you are talking about DC.

The boy in question wouldn't have hacked into my PC details , because at the time he was caught downloading stuff, none of the staff had lap tops, or user names (except the IT department).

And I very much doubt that the child hacked into my home PC details. Dh is uber geek, and we have a security system better than most.

The boy was too dysfuctional to have the concept of covereing his tracks.

Gess, don't even bother reading this crap. People are just ignorant and stupid.They know nothing about autistic spectrum disorders because they choose not to know, then pontificate in the most offensive way.
This is why I don't tell people that ds has Aspergers. Because so many people are stupid and nasty.

Don't worry Aloha we're well out of it & no longer have to deal with this sort of stuff (although have spent the last half hour pondering that as d1 can sing the entire Joseph soundtrack with perfect pitch he's obviously just pretending not to be have a functional yes or no - e.g hold up picture of a dog- he knows the word- 'is this a dog?' - nothing) . Just rather feel for people like your lovely ds.

alison- I will search later for a social story about hits- there may be one somewhere that you can adapt.

The boy in our school doesn't cover his tracks, it is almost as if it is an addiction he can't control and he does it to every comuter sytem he comes into contact with, he managed to erase lots of stuff on the local library computers so is band there as well. Our probelm is that he has siblings whom we can't deny access to a computer password and soon you will be able to get into our computer system from home.

can't find an already written social story but this is a really good simple description with some examples. Have a look at the Carole grays (greys?) website as well - it's more detailed. her books are good.

Inclusion works well fosr many special needs provided there is the right support and training. Inclusion done well is not a cheap option.

However if a child's special needs are really severe then inclusion is unfair on BOTH the child and the school. At best the child learns nothing and worse the child's/ teacher's and other children's mental health can be damaged.

It sounds like that alison222 son's school needs more help and resources. Prehaps alison222 son needs a few hours a week of 1 to 1 from an LSA so he can go on the computer without wrecking it.

Its probably cheaper option than upgrading all the Windows 98 machines and making the network secure enough.

I am no fan of inclusion. Unfortunately getting 1:1 support for an academically able child can be incredibly difficult.

Another solution that occurred to me- many children on the spectrum get given their own laptop from school (LEA funded). The rule- "you use your computer *(and do what you want) and do not touch any others" might be easier to understand than "it's ok to do this on this computer, and that on this computer, but not that on that computer".

A huge amount of mental health damage btw occurs in children on the spectrum not receiving adequate support at school.

Sorry, MB got a bit obscure and geeky.
The boy referenced by the OP could access staff documents. From this I can see him putting quite nasty stuff on their home PCs.

MS Word allows you to write macros in a powerful programming language, and these can live in documents you take home to work on.
It can use various techniques to get passwords, credit card pin numbers etc, and start buying things.
That's hard work, and a properly set up PC these days is quite resistant to these attacks, but as we're seeing in this thread, many PCs in education are far from well configured.

As I recall MB, you're a biology teacher, it isn't very hard to knock up a macro that notices you are saving or printing a document and changes every 17th use of the word "organism" to "orgasm".
Some kids would find this funny.

I think that most people outside schools would be shocked how weak IT security in schools is. However there is only so much that a badly paid technician who works for 4 hours a week can be expected to do.

The governant gives lots of grants for new kit and software, but very little funding for actually setting it up and looking after it.

There aren't likely to be many serious crackers/ hackers in a school, however a script kiddie can still do quite a lot damage.

The the following link for info about script kiddies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie

I agree that very few kids could do this from scratch, but there's plenty of info on the web.

Domini thank you for the link to scratch. I had not heard of it but it looks great. DS certainly thought so at the weekend when we had a quick look at it. I think that this could become a favourite as he gets older.

Gess, thnks for the link to social stories. I hadn't found that one but I had looked at the carol grey site.
I am still not sure how to go about writing one that will be right for DS. They seem so simplistic- I suppose that is the point though. I will have to do a bit of studying myself.

There is also Logo

Logo is a different way of doing the same thing. If your schools IT is not completely brain dead it will have this.
It is a language intended to draw things, and if you have the budget you can buy a turtle. This is basically a programmable pen. Kids love it, and it "does" things.
To me that is what we should be teaching: the ways in which you can make computers do what you want. The tone of much school IT seems to be that they are incomprehensible daemons which may yield if you make the appropriate ritual offerings.

I loved logo turtles and the school that I work at has a turtle. The only problem is that the turtle is about 20 years old and the one of the motors has died. We have been having problems getting a replacement motor that fits.

I complete agree with you about what they teach in schools, however state schools are bound by the national curriculum. I think its a real pity that kids can't learn computer programming, prehaps a bit about the hardware inside a PC, maybe alison222's son would like to learn a little bit about networking.

The reason that children will fiddle with the control panel is curiosity. Why can't that curiosity be fed in ICT lessons instead of the kids getting up to mischief.

Kids get bored with lessons on word processing at the age of 6. Especially when they get more and more lessons on word processing as they get up the school.

That's the point isn't it ?
The IT curriculum is what you get is a committee of arts graduate decide on technology.

You get collage.
The kids get stuff and stick it on paper.

In IT they get stuff and stick it on a computer, using cut and paste.

As they progress, they move from C&P into Word into C&P into some simple web package.
Collage is of course a valid technique in art, but if the 10 years of art that all kids do consisted entirely of cutting bits out of old magazines and sticking them onto paper, it would be fixed PDQ.
All my school art is quite deservedly lost to time, and that is the point. A competent techie with a little bit of time can set up any PC, so that the kids can treat it as I treated (or mistreated) bits of paper.

Same applies to French, you don't teach French by cutting bits of French newspapers into a folder, you try and say some, and do something.