8 ms·

Limit Internet access until your child makes progress on educational sites

67 points by j_s 9y ago

drallison 9y ago
I wish there were some experimental evidence that this approach is effective. Would some parental attention and tutoring have the same effect as the "educational sites"?
- j_s 9y ago
  I agree! However, that takes real work & prioritization (time) rather than electricity/technology. Also (meme-ing a bit here): why not both? :) In reality, it's always a mistake to let the nonexistent perfect be the enemy of the good (or to be most pessimistic: the not-as-bad). I personally am desperate for an app-ified version of this well-researched "direct instruction" book/process: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...
- utefan001 9y ago
  Hi Drallison, I am the co-creator. This is my biased description... My 14 year old son said that he was surprised to learn how fast 30 mins goes by when using DnsLearning. Encouraging children to come up for air every 30 mins is a good thing. My 9 year old daughter went to Khan Academy 7 times one day during the summer. This means she was watching a lot of youtube videos. I told her I was impressed how many times she went to Khan Academy. She responded. "Yea, well I got tired of doing Khan Academy so I decided to clean my room instead." So, for those 2 cases, for my 2 children, it has been effective :)
- utefan001 9y ago
  Regarding parental attention, the reality is that most parents are extremely busy. Single parents, long commutes, multiple jobs, etc. DnsLearning was primarily created to help parents that cannot afford private schools, tutoring, or moving out of a low income neighborhood. All of these great education sites are competing with very powerful algorithms that are designed to keep users watching video after video. If youtube starts encouraging users to do a few Khan Academy problems before watching the next video, I will consider DnsLearning a total success.
- varjag 9y ago
  Speaking as a parent to now teenager. Fact is just like their parents, kids are tremendously connected these days, so there's a massive networking effect in the cohort. There's much less outdoor/social activities among kids than there were couple decades ago, simply because there's noone playing outside. Yes we can argue that no screen can replace human interaction fully but it does replace quite a bit of it. We often hear this parents not doing their jobs sentiment over and over, either from people who have no kids or had them prior to smartphone era. Do you often find yourself spending a whole evening with a laptop or tablet? Checking facebook on your phone compulsively? Well same thing with kids. Sure I could just seize my son's devices, but then what? Push him out to the empty street? Try to be his playmate until he's 18? Because it's not just your kid, the whole social interaction fabric went the way of Great Barrier Reef. Sure no technology can substitute parenting; most parents we know do the expected job of taking the kids for activities, courses, helping with homework etc. But you can't (and shouldn't) hover over your kids all the time. If this project can convert any of the social media/gaming time to at least something useful, it is priceless.
j_s 9y ago
Any feedback on the website, sign-up flow, and especially the project itself would be tremendously appreciated.
- ekblom 9y ago
  Yeah, why have an iMac on the site when you only have an app for Android?
  - j_s 9y ago
    Thanks for asking! I believe the screenshot is of the management interface.
- varjag 9y ago
  When enabling the study sites it's not immediately clear the credentials should be for an account you create on that site. Safari just happily autofills them with login pair to dnslearning itself. Perhaps "create account here" link to signup pages (where possible) would be helpful.
  - j_s 9y ago
    Thanks for making time to share this opportunity for improvement. The transition to setting up an account is indeed already quite abrupt and your mention of auto-fill does indeed make the problem worse!
  - krisives 9y ago
    Thank you for the feedback! We'll fix this
krisives 9y ago
Hi guys I'm a developer on this project if you have any questions or notice something that could be improved please tell me here or kris@dnslearning.org Thank you all!
- throwawayReply 9y ago
  Hi, I don't see a privacy policy or other page which makes it clear what information you collect and how that information is stored. How is session management handled from the point of view of administering the service, how does the service track users and for how long is that information stored?
  - utefan001 9y ago
    Just added this..https://dnslearning.org/privacy https://dnslearning.org/privacy
  - j_s 9y ago
    I would appreciate hearing more about what it would take to satisfy your privacy concerns. DNS providers do gain a 99.9%+ complete overview (and VPN providers get complete metadata) into the browsing habits of their users, and it is more than reasonable to request a public commitment documenting how this information is handled. In general there is an entire category of the majority of users who don't care enough about their privacy, and then a second group who want to know that it's been considered but appreciate the convenience of relying on a third party. (I think the Signal app is good example of a tool attempting to cater to these first two categories.) A slightly overlapping but mostly separate third group is not going to be satisfied by just about anything a third party claims to do (often in part due to nation-state level considerations) and typically doesn't use off-premises tools like this one. It is hard to justify attempting to meet the needs of this small but vocal group of users since it reduces the level of convenience (and thus mass-market appeal) that can be offered to the other groups. It is, however, very much worth documenting where the line is drawn because doing so can alleviate legitimate concerns of the privacy-conscious but busy second group and avoid public outcry (caused by speculation/proof of incompetence and/or indifference) being picked up by the majority of potential users.
scalablenotions 9y ago
I hope nobody will try to use this as a substitute for supervision with regards to children accessing the internet. Not that many parents seem to think supervision is necessary for children accessing the internet, which never fails to floor me.
- krisives 9y ago
  For what it's worth we block many bad domains and soon will be forcing YouTube into restricted mode (by always resolving to restricted.youtube.com CNAME records)
positivecomment 9y ago
".org" domain suggests (to me, at least) that this is a free service, however, it won't stay free. There is no information about how it works, let alone some technical aspects - interesting, especially considering the name. About link doesn't work as well.
- j_s 9y ago
  Appreciate the feedback - a 'how it works' is a great idea, especially for the HN audience. Thanks also for the tip on the About link!
- pricechild 9y ago
  > DnsLearning is Free until January 2018 Oh wow, literally.
- krisives 9y ago
  We are a registered non-profit but yes we have to keep our monetization options open. I will fix the About link. We are a small team and marketing isn't our forte so any feedback or suggestions are appreciated.
Timothycquinn 9y ago
I have to admit I thought this app design through before and think it's a great idea. I have wished to see an app like this and have tried other nanny style apps but found that they eventually break and can be bypassed. My question to the developers is are you using undocumented APIs for core functionality and what is being done to ensure that future android updates don't kill core functions that make the system work.
- j_s 9y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, the bulk of the restrictions are implemented by pointing devices to a custom DNS server (a VPN can accomplish much the same but I don't know if this product implements that). The majority of the app is the user interface for the reporting/status capabilities. You can read a bit more about the implementation on the HN discussion where I discovered this tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913547 > utefan001: After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. [...] It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube The somewhat similar Circle product is sold as a device that resides on the local network and accomplishes its configuration using ARP poisoning.
- utefan001 9y ago
  Hi Timothy, We have designed DnsLearning so that all you need to do is point the child's device to use one of our DNS servers and then link an education site. As long as a device supports changing DNS, the device will always work. The play/app stores are not our main focus.
- krisives 9y ago
  To avoid bypassing we have a iOS app on the way their APIs allow for parental controls. For Android you have to use a device that has support for restricted profiles. We don't do anything undocumented to prevent bypassing and we have actually taken some bypass protection features out while we fine tune our UI and onboarding experience.
aneutron 9y ago
As a kid who actually used to boot from linux, delete the "internet security product" from program files, and then happily access the internet, I think it's a great idea, to train your kids to always find solutions.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  When I was in school I found that the content blocking only monitored the actual page you were visiting, so if you wanted to go to albinoblacksheep.com or whatever, you just wrote an HTML page with an iframe inside and it would work fine. Memories...
  - aneutron 9y ago
    That's incredibly witty. Props to you.
  - amag 9y ago
    When I was in school Internet wasn't a thing yet. However, me and some friends "hacked" the program that blocked virtually everything interesting unless you had the password on our school computers. The first thing we did was boot up in DOS. There we found the secret password file for the blocking program. Alas, when we tried the password it didn't work. It must be encrypted! So we went back into DOS and renamed the password file. When we booted up Windows again the program thought it was running for the very first time and asked us to enter a password. We entered "AAAAAA" and exited into DOS again. The new password file now contained the "encrypted" password: "GGGGGG". Hmm, there's a pattern here... We then restored the old password file and "decrypted" the original password. From that point on we had full access to any system! Those were the days!
- TausAmmer 9y ago
  My sister thought it was cool idea to put password on bios, I found out mother board has battery on it.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    Same here but I found the password reset jumper. Good old days!
mas886 9y ago
I don't think it's a good idea, "well used" (and setting what is or what is not a good use on the application of this might be kind of hard) can be an incentive for the childs, but, an overuse of this/using it as an obligation might cause the counter effect of associating learning with obligation and with that, the contempt towards learning, or having it as something negative that hinders what child want to get.
dandare 9y ago
On a tangential note: I am still waiting for a philanthropic billionaire to create (sponsor) the ultimate learning digital world for kids of all ages (in 200+ languages please) aka Ready Player One. There are already some high-quality learning apps (reading and counting) for kids but the best ones are paid and they usually cover only a narrow segment in a narrow subject. I wonder if the "authorities of Effective Altruism" would agree with me that this is a good way to spend charity money.
- j_s 9y ago
  Do you have any pointers to recommended technologies for kids to learn foreign languages?
- j-pb 9y ago
  Please only in one language but with a really good course for that language as the first material. English would be nice, but I would also accept lojban or hawaiian.
  - dandare 9y ago
    When your child is 3-4, you don't necessarily want to start with a foreign language, especially if the parents don't speak English. Think of all the languages supported by your favorite tablet. Or maybe you are right - I am sure learning experts will know what is the right thing to do.
  - patrickdavey 9y ago
    I'm really curious as to why you'd only want our mythical billionaire to build it just in one language?
    - j-pb 9y ago
      Computer science is an amazing field to work in because we all communicate and collaborate in english, it makes large scale global project efforts possible. I would like to see that hurdle removed from other disciplines. Same goes for international politics and peace, your neighbour becomes a lot less threatening if you speak the same language. German is my mother tounge but after living in the netherlands for 4 years, I consider english my primary language, its what I write my grocery lists and diary entries in. I think the world would be a much better place if we all spoke the same language. Also f* unicode. That unmaintainable mess of a standard. ASCII4ever!
l1feh4ck 9y ago
Thinking on the kid's side. I personally don't want to be a kid who is forced to learn something which I have no interest in. Especially to get access to the internet on my free time to do/learn something that interests me. Reinforced learning will give results, but better results can be obtained if the `desire` to learn is developed from within.
- r_singh 9y ago
  I honestly think the desire to learn something is not something that exists inside us, but rather develops based on how we are appreciated the first few times we try to learn something. Can't fathom how kids can be interested or not in things they have no experience with.
  - l1feh4ck 9y ago
    I disagree. The desire to learn is always within us it is the very nature of human being. It is very observable among kids. They try to learn everything by observing around them. Limiting the window to which they can learn is what the conventional school system has implemented through ages. I cannot find the point in forcing a kid to learn math when he is clearly interested in music or art. At best he will become a bad mathematician. Where he could have become a great musician. The idea of forcefully planting interest of something inside a young mind is terrible. Instead, give him the freedom to choose. Give his both math and art. Let him choose what he likes. And please don't give a reward if he chooses math over music.
    - j_s 9y ago
      There are multiple educational sites supported by this tool, but indeed they are focused on math just because that is the most common. Can you recommend any sites or apps teaching the subjects you warned might be left out?
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    It seems to me the opposite: kids are born with a natural curiosity of the world around them, which is why at a young age they incessantly ask the question "why?". This quickly becomes annoying to the adults, who were themselves taught not to ask so many questions, and so the cycle repeats. Big brother-esque/authoritarian programs such as this which enforce arbitrary learning boundaries kill the natural curiosity and spontaneity of the child because it forces them into a mold rather than fostering a genuine interest.

67 points by j_s 9y ago

I wish there were some experimental evidence that this approach is effective. Would some parental attention and tutoring have the same effect as the "educational sites"?

j_s 9y ago
I agree! However, that takes real work & prioritization (time) rather than electricity/technology. Also (meme-ing a bit here): why not both? :) In reality, it's always a mistake to let the nonexistent perfect be the enemy of the good (or to be most pessimistic: the not-as-bad). I personally am desperate for an app-ified version of this well-researched "direct instruction" book/process: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...
utefan001 9y ago
Hi Drallison, I am the co-creator. This is my biased description... My 14 year old son said that he was surprised to learn how fast 30 mins goes by when using DnsLearning. Encouraging children to come up for air every 30 mins is a good thing. My 9 year old daughter went to Khan Academy 7 times one day during the summer. This means she was watching a lot of youtube videos. I told her I was impressed how many times she went to Khan Academy. She responded. "Yea, well I got tired of doing Khan Academy so I decided to clean my room instead." So, for those 2 cases, for my 2 children, it has been effective :)
utefan001 9y ago
Regarding parental attention, the reality is that most parents are extremely busy. Single parents, long commutes, multiple jobs, etc. DnsLearning was primarily created to help parents that cannot afford private schools, tutoring, or moving out of a low income neighborhood. All of these great education sites are competing with very powerful algorithms that are designed to keep users watching video after video. If youtube starts encouraging users to do a few Khan Academy problems before watching the next video, I will consider DnsLearning a total success.
varjag 9y ago
Speaking as a parent to now teenager. Fact is just like their parents, kids are tremendously connected these days, so there's a massive networking effect in the cohort. There's much less outdoor/social activities among kids than there were couple decades ago, simply because there's noone playing outside. Yes we can argue that no screen can replace human interaction fully but it does replace quite a bit of it. We often hear this parents not doing their jobs sentiment over and over, either from people who have no kids or had them prior to smartphone era. Do you often find yourself spending a whole evening with a laptop or tablet? Checking facebook on your phone compulsively? Well same thing with kids. Sure I could just seize my son's devices, but then what? Push him out to the empty street? Try to be his playmate until he's 18? Because it's not just your kid, the whole social interaction fabric went the way of Great Barrier Reef. Sure no technology can substitute parenting; most parents we know do the expected job of taking the kids for activities, courses, helping with homework etc. But you can't (and shouldn't) hover over your kids all the time. If this project can convert any of the social media/gaming time to at least something useful, it is priceless.

j_s 9y ago

Any feedback on the website, sign-up flow, and especially the project itself would be tremendously appreciated.

ekblom 9y ago
Yeah, why have an iMac on the site when you only have an app for Android?
- j_s 9y ago
  Thanks for asking! I believe the screenshot is of the management interface.
varjag 9y ago
When enabling the study sites it's not immediately clear the credentials should be for an account you create on that site. Safari just happily autofills them with login pair to dnslearning itself. Perhaps "create account here" link to signup pages (where possible) would be helpful.
- j_s 9y ago
  Thanks for making time to share this opportunity for improvement. The transition to setting up an account is indeed already quite abrupt and your mention of auto-fill does indeed make the problem worse!
- krisives 9y ago
  Thank you for the feedback! We'll fix this

krisives 9y ago

Hi guys I'm a developer on this project if you have any questions or notice something that could be improved please tell me here or kris@dnslearning.org Thank you all!

throwawayReply 9y ago
Hi, I don't see a privacy policy or other page which makes it clear what information you collect and how that information is stored. How is session management handled from the point of view of administering the service, how does the service track users and for how long is that information stored?
- utefan001 9y ago
  Just added this..https://dnslearning.org/privacy https://dnslearning.org/privacy
- j_s 9y ago
  I would appreciate hearing more about what it would take to satisfy your privacy concerns. DNS providers do gain a 99.9%+ complete overview (and VPN providers get complete metadata) into the browsing habits of their users, and it is more than reasonable to request a public commitment documenting how this information is handled. In general there is an entire category of the majority of users who don't care enough about their privacy, and then a second group who want to know that it's been considered but appreciate the convenience of relying on a third party. (I think the Signal app is good example of a tool attempting to cater to these first two categories.) A slightly overlapping but mostly separate third group is not going to be satisfied by just about anything a third party claims to do (often in part due to nation-state level considerations) and typically doesn't use off-premises tools like this one. It is hard to justify attempting to meet the needs of this small but vocal group of users since it reduces the level of convenience (and thus mass-market appeal) that can be offered to the other groups. It is, however, very much worth documenting where the line is drawn because doing so can alleviate legitimate concerns of the privacy-conscious but busy second group and avoid public outcry (caused by speculation/proof of incompetence and/or indifference) being picked up by the majority of potential users.

scalablenotions 9y ago

I hope nobody will try to use this as a substitute for supervision with regards to children accessing the internet. Not that many parents seem to think supervision is necessary for children accessing the internet, which never fails to floor me.

krisives 9y ago
For what it's worth we block many bad domains and soon will be forcing YouTube into restricted mode (by always resolving to restricted.youtube.com CNAME records)

positivecomment 9y ago

".org" domain suggests (to me, at least) that this is a free service, however, it won't stay free. There is no information about how it works, let alone some technical aspects - interesting, especially considering the name. About link doesn't work as well.

j_s 9y ago
Appreciate the feedback - a 'how it works' is a great idea, especially for the HN audience. Thanks also for the tip on the About link!
pricechild 9y ago
> DnsLearning is Free until January 2018 Oh wow, literally.
krisives 9y ago
We are a registered non-profit but yes we have to keep our monetization options open. I will fix the About link. We are a small team and marketing isn't our forte so any feedback or suggestions are appreciated.

Timothycquinn 9y ago

I have to admit I thought this app design through before and think it's a great idea. I have wished to see an app like this and have tried other nanny style apps but found that they eventually break and can be bypassed. My question to the developers is are you using undocumented APIs for core functionality and what is being done to ensure that future android updates don't kill core functions that make the system work.

j_s 9y ago
To the best of my knowledge, the bulk of the restrictions are implemented by pointing devices to a custom DNS server (a VPN can accomplish much the same but I don't know if this product implements that). The majority of the app is the user interface for the reporting/status capabilities. You can read a bit more about the implementation on the HN discussion where I discovered this tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913547 > utefan001: After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. [...] It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube The somewhat similar Circle product is sold as a device that resides on the local network and accomplishes its configuration using ARP poisoning.
utefan001 9y ago
Hi Timothy, We have designed DnsLearning so that all you need to do is point the child's device to use one of our DNS servers and then link an education site. As long as a device supports changing DNS, the device will always work. The play/app stores are not our main focus.
krisives 9y ago
To avoid bypassing we have a iOS app on the way their APIs allow for parental controls. For Android you have to use a device that has support for restricted profiles. We don't do anything undocumented to prevent bypassing and we have actually taken some bypass protection features out while we fine tune our UI and onboarding experience.

aneutron 9y ago

As a kid who actually used to boot from linux, delete the "internet security product" from program files, and then happily access the internet, I think it's a great idea, to train your kids to always find solutions.

FussyZeus 9y ago
When I was in school I found that the content blocking only monitored the actual page you were visiting, so if you wanted to go to albinoblacksheep.com or whatever, you just wrote an HTML page with an iframe inside and it would work fine. Memories...
- aneutron 9y ago
  That's incredibly witty. Props to you.
- amag 9y ago
  When I was in school Internet wasn't a thing yet. However, me and some friends "hacked" the program that blocked virtually everything interesting unless you had the password on our school computers. The first thing we did was boot up in DOS. There we found the secret password file for the blocking program. Alas, when we tried the password it didn't work. It must be encrypted! So we went back into DOS and renamed the password file. When we booted up Windows again the program thought it was running for the very first time and asked us to enter a password. We entered "AAAAAA" and exited into DOS again. The new password file now contained the "encrypted" password: "GGGGGG". Hmm, there's a pattern here... We then restored the old password file and "decrypted" the original password. From that point on we had full access to any system! Those were the days!
TausAmmer 9y ago
My sister thought it was cool idea to put password on bios, I found out mother board has battery on it.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  Same here but I found the password reset jumper. Good old days!

mas886 9y ago

I don't think it's a good idea, "well used" (and setting what is or what is not a good use on the application of this might be kind of hard) can be an incentive for the childs, but, an overuse of this/using it as an obligation might cause the counter effect of associating learning with obligation and with that, the contempt towards learning, or having it as something negative that hinders what child want to get.

dandare 9y ago

On a tangential note: I am still waiting for a philanthropic billionaire to create (sponsor) the ultimate learning digital world for kids of all ages (in 200+ languages please) aka Ready Player One. There are already some high-quality learning apps (reading and counting) for kids but the best ones are paid and they usually cover only a narrow segment in a narrow subject. I wonder if the "authorities of Effective Altruism" would agree with me that this is a good way to spend charity money.

j_s 9y ago
Do you have any pointers to recommended technologies for kids to learn foreign languages?
j-pb 9y ago
Please only in one language but with a really good course for that language as the first material. English would be nice, but I would also accept lojban or hawaiian.
- dandare 9y ago
  When your child is 3-4, you don't necessarily want to start with a foreign language, especially if the parents don't speak English. Think of all the languages supported by your favorite tablet. Or maybe you are right - I am sure learning experts will know what is the right thing to do.
- patrickdavey 9y ago
  I'm really curious as to why you'd only want our mythical billionaire to build it just in one language?
  - j-pb 9y ago
    Computer science is an amazing field to work in because we all communicate and collaborate in english, it makes large scale global project efforts possible. I would like to see that hurdle removed from other disciplines. Same goes for international politics and peace, your neighbour becomes a lot less threatening if you speak the same language. German is my mother tounge but after living in the netherlands for 4 years, I consider english my primary language, its what I write my grocery lists and diary entries in. I think the world would be a much better place if we all spoke the same language. Also f* unicode. That unmaintainable mess of a standard. ASCII4ever!

l1feh4ck 9y ago

Thinking on the kid's side. I personally don't want to be a kid who is forced to learn something which I have no interest in. Especially to get access to the internet on my free time to do/learn something that interests me. Reinforced learning will give results, but better results can be obtained if the `desire` to learn is developed from within.

r_singh 9y ago
I honestly think the desire to learn something is not something that exists inside us, but rather develops based on how we are appreciated the first few times we try to learn something. Can't fathom how kids can be interested or not in things they have no experience with.
- l1feh4ck 9y ago
  I disagree. The desire to learn is always within us it is the very nature of human being. It is very observable among kids. They try to learn everything by observing around them. Limiting the window to which they can learn is what the conventional school system has implemented through ages. I cannot find the point in forcing a kid to learn math when he is clearly interested in music or art. At best he will become a bad mathematician. Where he could have become a great musician. The idea of forcefully planting interest of something inside a young mind is terrible. Instead, give him the freedom to choose. Give his both math and art. Let him choose what he likes. And please don't give a reward if he chooses math over music.
  - j_s 9y ago
    There are multiple educational sites supported by this tool, but indeed they are focused on math just because that is the most common. Can you recommend any sites or apps teaching the subjects you warned might be left out?
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  It seems to me the opposite: kids are born with a natural curiosity of the world around them, which is why at a young age they incessantly ask the question "why?". This quickly becomes annoying to the adults, who were themselves taught not to ask so many questions, and so the cycle repeats. Big brother-esque/authoritarian programs such as this which enforce arbitrary learning boundaries kill the natural curiosity and spontaneity of the child because it forces them into a mold rather than fostering a genuine interest.