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Comment by dijksterhuis | Hacker News Reader

Kudos to whichever kid discovered this. They're a damn industrious lot when it comes to avoiding school work.

True story: During Zoom classes, a friend's kid used to move his lips without emitting any sound faking a mic problem in order to not receive questions from his teacher

When I was in high school, we had one BC Calculus teacher for the entire school district. He'd visit each school round-robin and would teach the other schools via video conference. Given that this was 20 years ago, we'd have streaming issues with some frequency. The solution was usually to reboot the streaming machine at the teacher's location.

One day before class when the teacher wasn't at our school, one kid said, "when I cough three times, everyone freeze." About 20 mins into the lecture, he did just that and we all held our positions. The teacher noticed about ten second later, asked us a bunch of times if we could hear him, and then, with exasperation, said, "well looks like they froze up again..."

We had a good laugh for the two mins or so we were down and then continued on. I don't think anyone ever blabbed that we had faked it just for kicks.

My daughter did kindergarten online. I once observed that at least some kid behaviors remain the same online.

The teacher lost connection one day and one of the kids said "she's gone!" and it was immediate chaos, everyone started talking and making noises, one kid was literally screaming the whole time, the kids were drawing on the screen and fighting over who was sharing their screen, everyone was laughing and having a good time until the teacher reconnected. Later my daughter fondly told me about it, but I had already overheard the whole thing from the other room.

In my daughter's school during PE on Zoom one kid always had only the left half of his body showing, everybody thought it's a limitation of his camera or something. Then one day his cat moved his laptop and everybody realized he was moving only the visible part of his body and was playing on his phone in the other hand the whole time.

Physical Education class over Zoom is something that I never contemplated being attempted

My wife had Kundalini Yoga over Zoom and I liked the results.

This is somewhat crude, but does meaningfully contribute to the discussion.

my boomer-aged mother is a PE teacher for K-6th graders in the US. She had to run Zoom PE classes for about six months...it was interesting to watch her learn a new competency.

There are ways to do it, but the fear that she could potentially not be in control of her classroom at ANY MOMENT was something to behold and says something about our education system's focus and beliefs. There was a lot of information from me and my siblings with her on how to do it and options she could pursue to make online PE class engaging...fun times

For a time I taught high school and later college. The key difference between the two jobs is apparent in the interview process. For a high school teaching job, the interviewer wants to know how you will manage the behavior of the students in the room. For a college teaching job, the interviewer wants to know how you will impart your subject matter to the students. Classroom management is easily the most important aspect of K-12 teaching.

I would argue classroom management is the biggest focus of K-12 teaching not the most important aspect.

It speaks to our educational systems priorities and structure not its function

If you haven't been at the front of a K12 classroom (and I mean really in front, not the guest lecturer with the teacher in the room to keep things in order), you're not qualified to make that statement. The fact of the matter is that you're with a room full of children. If you can't manage them you can't teach them. Without classroom management, you will fail at everything else. It's easy to forget this when you see a skilled/experienced teacher at the front of the room. They've internalized the management to a level that makes it almost invisible to an onlooker, but it's very much there.

It's the natural evolution of exercise tapes.

My kids’ school did it and the results were pretty awful until people pointed out that you have to explicitly tell second graders to make sure they are doing calisthenics in a safe place so they aren’t tripping over school supplies and knocking over lamps, or just flailing their arms into stuff that will hurt them. My kid broke her school-issue iPad on the first day because they didn’t even think to tell the kids to take their headphones off. They just said, “ok, let’s do jumping jacks.” Crash.

Edit: the scariest was when I was getting an early start on some dinner prep and my kid came sprinting through the kitchen in socks while I was going from one side to the other while holding a big knife. They were doing a scavenger hunt and each item would be announced and they’d have 60 seconds to go try to find it. I had to email the teacher about that one and ask them to be cognizant of the safety of what they are asking the kids to do, given that they have no clue what environment each kid is in.

Cartman?

Reminds me of the boy who changed his name on Zoom to Reconnecting

I think the name to use is "Connecting audio..."

and then black out the webcam (don't turn it off). Then the name shows up in the corner, and nobody will nominate you to speak. Heard this via a church group from a teacher at the International School of Geneva. Seems like word gets around fast!

Awesome pro move!

The teacher could find other ways to test sound. Ask a student to clap their hands, for example (presuming the teacher knows their students are mischievous).

This is similar to another hack I heard: put some clear tape over your camera lens to blur the image. "It looks fine on my end??? I'll just keep my camera off."

You may also like this story where a young girl figured out a way to trick everyone into thinking Zoom was broken so she didn't have to attend online lessons: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/eight-year-old-girl...

TL;DR of that one: she activated a login lock by filling in the wrong password a couple of times.

Zoom support should have been able to see "this account has been locked out due to too many login attempts" though, so that's a bit of a fail. And of course the login error should say as much.

My job here is done; Captain Hindsight, away!

The other good one I saw was to change your name to "Connecting..."

lolz... thats really oldschool!! we did with at the BBS-era also we "echoed" this "Type +++ To go voice chat" was epic

Things that date me: Knowing the Hayes AT command set

Coming from a rural Aussie upbringing, I arrived on the scene slightly too late it incorporate that into a career. +++ath0 was still fun though.

And the AT set is still used (with extensions) in GSM modems! It's still relevant!

Even in some wifi "modems". It's like in that "space shuttle size is connected to horse ass width" story.

That seems like instead of a joke, it could be a really cool way to actually implement voice chat... just unlink the modem from the call and use a phone.

Change your name to the teachers name and tell everyone that class is cancelled for the day.

Yeah. At this point, social engineering is a hallmark of the Covid generation. In retrospect, Zoom hackery almost seemed like the inevitable outcome. We’ve shared good laughs with our kids over the antics “classmates” pulled because of zoom

It's also taken this long to stack enough layers of digital abstractions that kid pranks aren't running afoul of the draconian CFAA.

Original Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mfpiccolo/status/1360685864100237318

(The article just recaps this without linking to it.)

Good find. I knew I'd seen it in a better format somewhere before but Googling just found 101 articles.

> but Googling just found 101 articles

This is just what Google does now.

Yes. Don't get me started. Quite frequently recently I've searched for answers to things and the "smart" answers they give are flat out wrong or dangerous because they misinterpreted a text. I should probably start to keep a list..

time to build a search engine hall of fame website, or subreddit?

Imagine a world where schools are not built to resemble factory work conditions but actually catered to kids’ natural curiosity.

Where learning happened via the pull of that curiosity and not via force-feeding.

Problem with this is mechanically in terms of schooling. You need general education that has to somehow be given, and how do you arrange teaching for the wishes and whims of hundreds of children?

Even in classical one to one mentoring, an element of curriculum is how learning is shaped and comfort zones broken down.

Seems like you're looking for Montessori schooling. I was actually fortunate enough to attend one for ages 3-5. Although I don't have many memories from then specifically, I do remember repeated bordem when I stopped going and was moved to public school. I always wanted to do more hands on activities as I had before, but the closest it ever got was art.

Another note of interest, my senior class at high school consisted of 4 people whom I attended Montessori with, of those four, three took IB classes and participated in clubs / extracurriculars above the average rate for my school. I can't help but wonder if even just those few years at a young age made a lasting impact.

I'd expect it to be the parents choices, same for whether boredom is tolerated or encouraged at home.

Heard a story from a secondary school teacher during the second lockdown about one of her students that wouldn't enable the video camera because "it's pay-per-minute on their computer".

And sure enough, in the age of everything-as-a-service, that was just about believable to the teacher.

I feel like we should find these kids and get them out of school where their time is being wasted. Let's get them into some proper practical training that lines up with their interests or hell, just hire them and teach them on the job. In fact, maybe we could do that for....all the kids?

"School is not a place for smart people" - Rich Sanchez

Not sure that quoting Rick and Morty like it’s some kind of gospel is the best argument for education reform.

It was somewhat tongue in cheek - but only somewhat. But points for getting the reference.

The only thing more delicious than an unironically 'I got a big brain' Rick and Morty quote is when the person making the quote is super confident about how obscure it is.

Isn't that line from the very first episode of the whole show?

I don’t know that quoting cartoons signals “I got a big brain”. It’s fascinating though that people are commenting on the quote. I didn’t think that would resonate.

Because you should immediately mock anyone who might enjoy Rick and Morty and get that happiness feeling when someone recognized the quote from the show they watched which is fairly typical for any film or show someone has watched. Because everyone who watch that show think it's strictly limited to only high IQ individuals and watching, enjoying that show is a clear indicator of higher intelligence.

I read this 3 times and still can't parse what you're trying to say.

That quoting Rick and Morty in no way means they think they are intellectually superior or anything remotely to that. It can very well happen that some topic simply makes you remember a quote and you think it's fitting and you are also glad when someone else recognizes where it is from.

It could just as easily have been a quote from Foucault. Not sure that makes it any less edgy though.

It's true. Time and again we hear stories of bright kids being beaten into submission by the aggressive uniformity of our school system.

It is HARD to get the ones who do the worst to work at the level of those who do well.

It is "easy", however, to make everyone suck equally as much at school. At least that is my experience.

I actually got diagnosed with a high IQ, which I got tested for because most classes were boring to me and thus I didn't really do well. As aresult of me not being challenged much if at all back then, I never really learned how to learn.

Thus I slid further and further down with learning until I dropped out.

IMO there should be more separation between kids with high and low abilities at school. Push the "better" ones much harder, while also providing specially trained teachers to the "worse" ones. Don't try to get everyone to the same level.

Dad, is that you? Seriously, that was my father's experience in school, and hence why I was homeschooled, for which I am eternally grateful. My dad is also an SWE and lurks here, so hi dad!

I doubt that I am your dad, as I do not have any kids.

Also, you are probably older than I am.

Put those kids in honors, AP, IB, or advanced classes.

School is not a place for kids low in trait conscienciousness. This can often mean smart, as it has a correlation with IQ, but mostly it's conscienciousness.

Definitely did stuff like this in school. I was in a honours social studies class, and would consistently say "We're the honours class, there's got to be a better way to teach this" whenever our teacher decided we were just going to take notes for the day. He was always very excited about it, and would come up with huge class exercises to teach the topic. It was really awesome but would end up taking the whole week instead of the one day worth of note taking. We ended up doing about 1/4 of the curriculum that year, and the final was incredibly short.

This wasn't "discovered" by any kid. That observation has been around for a while and its source is people who looked for reasons to discredit the meaningfulness of that test.

Ingenuity at work is always a beautiful sight.

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