That's funny... Sophie's and Paul's monitors always show elevated heart rates at the same time.

If the kids volunteer, that's one thing, making it a requirement is a whole 'nother.

DNRTFA, but, I wonder what drug company came up with this brilliant idea?

"Yeah. We'll make it all about monitoring kids, but really? We need these numbers for the Ritalin-type medication whose patent is about to expire. We need to know how much we can detweak the little snowflakes for our next batch."

Creepy.

"Well, we see Tommy's heart rate is up again right before going to sleep."

So long as the wristband doesn't have a pedometer.

Yeah this is in no way a bad idea.

Later this school year, the district plans to collect data about activity levels and even sleep patterns for a week at a time. It will have the students wear the devices round the clock.

The Fark they will, if it were my kid. No way would I consent to someone tracking that amount of information on my kid outside of school. This definitely falls under "None of your goddamn business". And yeah - someone at a fitness equipment dealer just made a farkton of money selling this shiat to the schools. The funny thing is, they're notoriously inaccurate anyway.

I can see it now... "Jesus Christ!! Mrs Schmitt's entire fifth grade class just flat-lined!!!"

Yep, no way they would prank people...taking it off...attaching it to the classroom pet...

Citizen, cease your erection immediately! A chaste society is a perfect society. Thank you for your cooperation.

UberDave: I can see it now... "Jesus Christ!! Mrs Schmitt's entire fifth grade class just flat-lined!!!"

Yep, no way they would prank people...taking it off...attaching it to the classroom pet...

Getting disciplined when they do because it throws off some farkhead administrator's statistical report...

If I were a parent with a child at that school, I'd be raising all kinds of hell and demanding a public records release on the contract for those things - including who initiated the process and who bid it, plus who signed off on it and who profited.

Oh no. They're going to tell the CIA All the data they need to calibrate their mind control satellite.

davidphogan: ArkAngel: So long as the wristband doesn't have a pedometer.

That's a safety feature so they don't get molested?

that's only in the version found in State College, Pennsylvania.

If they're collecting health information, it sounds like they've turned into what the feds call a "covered entity." The HIPAA fines will be astronomical.

how else are we supposed to know when they're ready for Carrousel?

FTFA
""If a university would do this study, they'd need to have lots of approval and consent from our internal review board, because this is a form of human subject research,"

This is no joke. Do you have any idea how much paperwork you would need to do this in a university? On adults?

I don't see where it's listed as a requirement, but if it is optional and the parents consent, I have no problem. I have one of those monitors, it's very useful. Sometimes our guesses at how much physical activity we get in a day are way off... in my case, I was low-balling it... but I think it is a good way to help kids develop good habits.

No way in hell, would I allow that on my 12 year old granddaughter. Of course, I would not have to worry about it as my daughter, her mother, would be in the school office, promising to rip the throat out of any school admin who even suggested such a thing.

I put a pedometer on my wrist and fapped one time.

piltdown: As long as it's voluntary, I don't see a problem with it. From the looks of the information they're tracking, it's basically wearing a glorified pedometer for a week, and not a GPS-enabled, spy-camera tracking device.

A week, fine.

A year? Go talk to my lawyer.

I'd like to think if a school strapped one of these onto a kid of mine, it'd soon be attached to a large hyperactive dog.

I'm guessing the school doesn't have malicious intent for this, and that they don't really understand the impact of their data gathering, but their lack of knowledge/understanding is no excuse. And that's assuming the best-case scenario -- if the school administrators actually understand what's happening they're clearly in the wrong. And of course there's no telling what the people funding this are expecting, or what their intentions are.

As other have noted, any reasonable IRB would never approve this sort of human study, not without much better controls, and the only reason it's even on the table is because it's being proposed by a body not qualified to do human studies in the first place. As to whether it violates HIPAA or the like I'd consider the question irrelevant -- the school administration is clearly not competent to administer such a study, and it should be rejected on those grounds alone, even if it would otherwise be acceptable.

Subby is trolling you guys. The article does not say the school is requiring them. The schools only have 25 monitors each which they hand out during gym classes (for just the gym class duration), and parents have to opt their kid in in order for the kids to participate in the week-long program which tracks activity at home.

Atheist_Republican: opt their kid in

A) Parents opting in children is only one step away from wardens opting in inmates
B) Even if the study is optional, it's still not properly administered, and should be disallowed on that basis alone

Hrist: Remember the last time tracking devices were tried on kids? I think it was with laptops. Each kid was given a laptop to take home and use at school. However, some parents found that the laptops were farking RECORDING VIDEO when they were at home, so there was a ton of questionable content on them because they were somehow set to record video when they were at home. I never heard what became of it, but I'd imagine there was some kind of large settlement. The 'justification' was that some students might steal their laptops and so recording video of them or their rooms while they were sleeping was fair game.

Now this?

Come on people..if you think this won't be used against you/your children, you're sorely mistaken. Looks like Timmy's heart rate is up and his O2 level is down and it's 1AM..I bet he's getting molested. Summon the police!

Last i heard about the laptop thing there hasnt been a resolution, but the district threw their IT guy under the bus and was also blaming the software manufacturer who sold whatever to them.

So its kind of like the wolf with a tracking collar my office was watching. That farker walked thousands of miles, across rivers, over mountains and some times just ran around in circles chasing its tail. Then, one day, it stopped moving. I can just imagine some tech watching a kid's activity pattern when then the activity stops and never starts up again.