Kids are swapping AirPods and using text-to-speech to talk secretly in class

Kids are swapping AirPods and using text-to-speech to talk secretly in class(imore.com)

29 points by bgrynol 6 years ago | 25 comments

casion 6 years ago |

I'm confused as to why kids are allowed to have airpods in their ears in class at all?

It's really not difficult to figure out when a kid is trying to hide it. (source: I'm a teacher of adolescents)

I can only assume that this is either allowed (implicitly or explicitly) or this is in schools where teachers are so overloaded that any sort of message passing would probably go unpunished anyway.

gowld 6 years ago | |

Some people have long hair

Waterluvian 6 years ago | | |

Wouldn't matter. Teens are just terrible at hiding anything in class. You can even just tell when their focus is elsewhere.

Already__Taken 6 years ago | |

Many classes aren't lectures, rather you're sat there completing work. On the face of it allowing headphones isn't unreasonable.

bgrynol 6 years ago | |

Thought about this too...the whole headphones in class thing is confusing haha

travmatt 6 years ago |

Before we had cellphones, we used to use the windows terminal “net send” command to send each other messages in classes we had computers.

chrisMyzel 6 years ago | |

You can build pretty good "spam viruses" with that commans and a simple shell script forcing someone to confirm thousands of messages or reboot the computer

travmatt 6 years ago | | |

It’s a good thing I never realized that, although at the time I was fascinated with self-modifying code. I did figure out that our home economics budgeting game stored it’s data as base64 encoded json - it was pretty funny watching my teacher trying to understand how I suddenly became a millionaire.

anotheryou 6 years ago | |

we chatted handing the graphical calculator back and forth

matznerd 6 years ago |

Someone should make an app for this and it could be done way better. Here are is how I would do it so its better and fits in the use case.

1. More realistic and even custom sounding text-to-voice API such as amazon polly or - https://aws.amazon.com/polly/ (this one uses polly https://www.text2voice.org/) or google wave net https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing

2. Then, and this is where you can get creative, is to mask the app so its UI looks like something that is allowed in a classroom i.e. dictionary, wikipedia, ebook reading, audible, spreadsheets etc. Also, make sure to name your app something innocuous.

See these examples of Reddit masked as Microsoft Outlook: http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/ Reddit as word -> http://pcottle.github.io/MSWorddit/ Reddit as code -> http://codereddit.com/ Reddit as unix shell -> https://redditshell.com/

Also, allowing the app to recognize which companion you are voice to texting (with the earpods still paired with original phone), then the app can use logic to know when one person is "speaking" and hold off on speaking a message until your companions message is over, otherwise there is potential for overlapping cross-talk (also have quick-cancel/pause speaking).

Other obvious features would be to clear spoken texts from the input box and maybe even keep recently typed/spoken words as in a "recently used" area to minimize new full-text input being required. And if partner's app is doing the text-to-voice, it would already have the conversational nouns and details. Anything to minimize typing input, etc.

If someone builds this lmk :)

bgrynol 6 years ago | |

This is so thorough and so rad...thanks for sharing. Had no idea about those masked reddit feeds...hilarious!

whenlambo 6 years ago |

Why not just use text messages?

danbolt 6 years ago | |

I think this prevents them from having to look at their phones, and the expressiveness mirrors speaking since text-to-speech is so immediate.

habitue 6 years ago | |

Yeah, at that point, you have your phone out and airpods in your ears.

This is just texting with more steps

lkbm 6 years ago | |

I suspect they can text without looking at their phones -- I know kids could with physical T9 keypads. Having your phone in your lap while looking forward isn't as obvious as staring at your lap is.

forkLding 6 years ago | |

I think its for the cool and fun factor and to hear google text-to-speech voice talking to you. It must feel cool one way or another, its usually how kids and teenagers spread things.

eindiran 6 years ago | |

A big reason is that parents read kids' text messages. If there is no text message sent, there is nothing for your parents to find.

weare138 6 years ago | | |

I think it's also because of the teachers. This way if the teacher accuses them of texting in class, the student can deny it and there's no evidence of the message.

gowld 6 years ago | | |

There's a delete button.

sesuximo 6 years ago | | |

back in my day we had Snapchat

rolph 6 years ago | |

because it is transmitted over the airpod connection so there is no manipulating the network to stop it and its crypted so no evesedropping

burundi_coffee 6 years ago | |

The time used to read the message can be used to pretend you are working

aaron695 6 years ago |

A good example of how describing something people don't use in their life allows them to believe in magic.

The lack of cord changes the way people think and puts them in magic zone.

Without a cord everything you'd normally pick up on, like they have to type on a phone in class, they have white things in their ears, is lost.

It just works because of the magic of a missing cord.

Advertisers use this all the time.

Works well with VC's

It's a good skill to know to get funding.

roflchoppa2 6 years ago |

When i go to dates with my girlfriend ill usually give her a (clean) earpod so we can listen to music together. its pretty convenient.