What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation | US education | The Guardian::Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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    1411 months ago

    For enclosed schools, it surprises me they don’t just faraday cage all the rooms, and then run school-controlled wifi.

    But in my day, teachers freaked out about electronic calculators and word processors. I’d think the appropriate thing to do is integrate smart-phone use into curricula. If your kids are texting, then your teaching model sucks.

    But here in the states, we already know our teaching model sucks, because the state doesn’t take it seriously and gives zero fucks about kids until they can be loaded with debt and can serve as a laborer or soldier for billionaire vanity projects.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      I sure you arent being serious, but farday caging the rooms would likely be highly illegal, blocking emergency cell calls and other emergency signals (like radio and gps) is a big ol no no.

      • @Ross_audio
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        1011 months ago

        Faraday cages are fine. It’s just never worth the expense.

        It’s frequency jammers and active blockers which break the law in a massive way.

        The reason being you can control the area a Faraday cage encapsulates. A signal jammer that has any decent effect has to also affect outside the area. Big no

        Plenty of buildings are accidentally faraday cages for certain frequencies.

        Emergency services have training for buildings with poor signals and it’s as simple as putting repeaters down as you progress from outside to inside.

        Jammers are much less simple to work around.

      • @piecat
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        311 months ago

        This is 100% false

        It’s a bad idea for the reasons you mentioned, but it’s not illegal in the slightest

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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        211 months ago

        The Cliff House in San Francisco is a Faraday cage. Phones in the restaurant get no signal. They’re completely legal in the United States.

    • @CookieOfFortune
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      411 months ago

      It’s not that easy to make a faraday cage that works against modern phones as the scale of a building. You have to make sure it’s perfect, any imperfection in the implementation and signal can get in.