Video captures high school student 'body slamming' teacher for confiscating his cellphone

[TheTruthHurts]

If he has high marks let him do whatever he wants. If he has low marks let him use his cellphone but kick him out of the class.

[Drive-By Body Pierce]

I am well aware that it is technically feasible to inhibit cell phone use. None of these solutions are legal that I can think of. The FCC and Industry Canada have made that clear. No exception for public schools has been created.

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/jamming-cell-phones-and-gps-equipment-against-law

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf10048.html

Principals have already tried to use cell phone jammers at schools and were forced to take them down when students quickly figured out what was happening. Here's one example:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cellphone-jamming-principal-forced-to-retreat-at-b-c-high-school-1.822933

Moving on to the subject of wifi. When I was in high school, our school had a private network, but it never took long for someone to find out one of the teachers/administrators' passwords and spread it around. Young people can be very resourceful and can usually find ways to skirt the rules, especially with technology.

And yes, I have a smartphone, it can connect to wifi separately from my data network. If you go into your local Rogers or Telus store, every single smartphone there has the same capability. I can tweet, instagram, facebook, message my friends, even talk to people on the phone with no data connection whatsoever. Don't try and make me look ignorant when you're unaware of such a basic feature that anyone who has used a smartphone for more than 5 minutes would be aware of.

You have proven my point for me. Because it is currently deemed illegal, does not mean it can't be a solution, just that a given group of people have deemed it not allowed.

To expand on my suggested solutions beyond "cell phone jammers", something like a Faraday cage could be used. And your "basic feature" of having a phone connect to WiFi, which you ignorantly accuse me of being unaware of, is moot. Blocking ALL wireless signals using a device such as Faraday cage, means both your data network connection AND WiFi will be inoperable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

Examples

...

• Elevators and other rooms with metallic conducting frames simulate a Faraday cage effect, leading to a loss of signal and "dead zones" for users of cellular phones, radios, and other electronic devices that require external electromagnetic signals. Small, physical Faraday cages are used by electronics engineers during testing to simulate such an environment to make sure that the device gracefully handles these conditions.

Unless you have a shielded, hardwired connection through the Faraday cage, you are better off with a carrier pigeon. Also, last time a checked, metal walls with and electrical connection to ground weren't illegal.

[TheSnipeshow91]

This crap happens because certain people think it's cool. What a joke.

[etsen3]

You have proven my point for me. Because it is currently deemed illegal, does not mean it can't be a solution, just that a given group of people have deemed it not allowed.

To expand on my suggested solutions beyond "cell phone jammers", something like a Faraday cage could be used. And your "basic feature" of having a phone connect to WiFi, which you ignorantly accuse me of being unaware of, is moot. Blocking ALL wireless signals using a device such as Faraday cage, means both your data network connection AND WiFi will be inoperable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage

Unless you have a shielded, hardwired connection through the Faraday cage, you are better off with a carrier pigeon. Also, last time a checked, metal walls with and electrical connection to ground weren't illegal.

First off my argument was never that your proposed solutions wouldn't work, it was that these solutions are impractical and illegal. For example your Faraday cage would require extensive renovations in most buildings (as you said yourself), would block all signals including ones that could be useful to teachers and students in a learning environment (teachers need a connection more than anyone), and may still be illegal, as the Radiocommunications Act bans the act of blocking signals, not any specific type of device.

And if you were aware that phones can connect to WiFi, why did you tell me that none of the phones at school are connected to a WiFi network? Did you think kids are just unaware that WiFi exists and that they can connect to it so they don't waste data? At my high school, everyone had WiFi even though the network was private.

[Hunter56]

Let the kid learn the hard way. Let him use his cell phone all year, and when it's exam time, he'll fail cause he wasn't paying attention. Think he'll use his phone when he's repeating grade 10? Only way kids will learn is the hard way.

No. When he fails he'll just pull the race card and then the liberals will give him a free scholarship to a high-class university.

[Drive-By Body Pierce]

First off my argument was never that your proposed solutions wouldn't work, it was that these solutions are impractical and illegal. For example your Faraday cage would require extensive renovations in most buildings (as you said yourself), would block all signals including ones that could be useful to teachers and students in a learning environment (teachers need a connection more than anyone), and may still be illegal, as the Radiocommunications Act bans the act of blocking signals, not any specific type of device.

And if you were aware that phones can connect to WiFi, why did you tell me that none of the phones at school are connected to a WiFi network? Did you think kids are just unaware that WiFi exists and that they can connect to it so they don't waste data? At my high school, everyone had WiFi even though the network was private.

Maybe we are arguing different points. But the solutions aren't as impractical as you may think. Many buildings deemed to have high population densities are already outfitted with physical, metal, firewalls to help contain fires to smaller areas. But for those without, there is an even simpler solution. Conductive plastic film bags exist for anti-static protection of electronic components. It would be very easy to apply a plastic film to existing walls with no structural renovation, like applying wallpaper.

To address your points, this is also NOT illegal, which is even supported by one of the links you posted.

A radiocommunication jamming device, also known as a signal silencer, blocker or disabler, is a radiocommunication transmitter designed to interfere with, disrupt, or block radiocommunication signals and services.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf10048.html

The "jammer" uses signal transmission to create interference. A Faraday cage is NOT a transmission device. It is simply a physical conductive shield at zero potential. You can find them all over place whether they are intended to block signals or not. My previous example of an elevator is one, or as I also said, we have one in the production warehouse area of my office, for product development purposes. It is an area enclosed by a chain link fence, illustrating other potential solutions in that it does not even have to be a continuous metal wall.

The reason the transmitting devices are banned is because they may have varying transmission strengths, something which is also affected by environmental aspects. They may also potentially be mobile devices. These points, possibly among others, lead to the concerns about interfering with the communication of emergency services, because the "dead zone" boundary cannot be clearly defined, or can even be intentionally variable. This is in contrast to a fixed physical shield.

As for enhancing the learning environment, a hardwired connection can be used with cable run through the building. The teacher can then setup WiFi within the Faraday cage, and enable/disable it at their discretion.

So with these aspects in mind, my reason for dismissing the WiFi/network data switching (both external to the cage) was because the type of external wireless signal (or maybe better defined as the frequency range of the external wireless signal) is irrelevant.

My apologies for implying that you are ignorant. You clearly can put together an intelligent argument. But I will stand by my points that a solution is not only technically and financially feasible, but also legal and complete. I even have personal experience with such solutions. And, If you are interested I can even take pictures of the cage in my office and post them.