child protection + anti-cheating

[Chris Ball]

Hi Carlos,

I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers:

   > How do we protect children from accessing porn or other
   > questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from
   > communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC?

You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access.

   > Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to
   > address these concerns?

"dansguardian" and "squidguard" are free pieces of software that attempt
to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools.
You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list.

   > How do we prevent cheating between students?

You can't prevent this.

   > Like instant messaging each other during quizzes?

The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the
class looking for anyone doing so.  If network access is not needed
during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on "Extreme
Power Management" in 8.2.0 (which turns off the wireless radio), and
then the green wireless LED lights on the front of the XOs should
remain visibly off for the duration of the quiz.

Hope this helps,

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>