# data[].attributes.headline
The problem with homework: A letter to my younger brother.X (Mentioned in V.1)

# data[].attributes.subject
The problem with homework: A letter to my younger brother.X (Mentioned in V.1)

# data[].attributes.body
10.1177/00317217221082818

# data[].attributes.headline
Mathematics problem-solving homework as a conduit for parental involvement in learning. Evaluation of a pilot study.IX

# data[].attributes.subject
Mathematics problem-solving homework as a conduit for parental involvement in learning. Evaluation of a pilot study.IX

# data[].attributes.body
10.1080/00131911.2019.1566210

Note 1:
A study was conducted
Note 2:

Note 3:

Note 4:

# data[].attributes.headline
Homework OverhaulVIII (Relates to VII.2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Homework OverhaulVIII (Relates to VII.2)

# data[].attributes.body
Zalaznick, M. (2018). Homework Overhaul. Education Digest. Retrieved March 19, 2023.

Note 1:
The changes in Marion [County]—which has scaled back assessments to give teachers more in-class instruction time—reflect a wider shift away from homework at all levels of K-12. And when it comes to the homework that's still assigned, educators are re-envisioning its academic purpose as districts everywhere try to drive academic gains but reduce stress. There is also a push to give students more time for family, friends, and extracurricular activities.

Note 1j:
Have you ever looked into a sky full of stars and then realized you have a stupid English paper due the next day? Then we have something in common!

Note 2:
They eliminated homework. "We no longer have the rote worksheets and endless math problems—the research says this stuff doesn't result in academic gains," she says. "What does is reading aloud 20 minutes a night, which also builds bonds between the child and family member when they talk about what book to read." (Maier)

Note 3:
"We have no weekly homework expectations," Townsley says. "Students may be asked to do something like interview their parents—something that can be done only at home. We're not asking them to just practice more of what they're doing during the day."

Note 4:
"One hundred percent of the work happens during the school day because it's a collaboration between students," Stacy says. "Plus, we want to see their thought processes. We want to have it happen in front of our eyes where we can guide the kids as opposed to just sending work home where we have no idea who's doing it." (Superintendent Mike Stacy)

# data[].attributes.headline
Home improvement: look at the role of homework in education, where we are today, and what schools need to consider as the y evaluate their approach.VII

# data[].attributes.subject
Home improvement: look at the role of homework in education, where we are today, and what schools need to consider as the y evaluate their approach.VII

# data[].attributes.body
Baran, A. (2019). Home Improvement: look at the role of homework in education, where we are today, and what schools need to consider as the y evaluate their approach. Independent School. Retrieved March 19, 2023.

Note 1:
[A]ny way it’s examined, homework has
been and continues to be viewed as a
statement about how to raise healthy,
educated children.

Note 2:
In Florida, the school superintendent of Marion County Schools (Heidi Maier) decided to outlaw homework for K-5 students, claiming research showed no observable benefits from homework for elementary students.
Original:
In Marion County, Florida, the superintendent of schools,
Heidi Maier, made the decision to ban homework for elementary-age children, citing a lack of research about any benefits.

Note 3:
The belief that we [...] have in the effectiveness of homework seems to be a matter of a sense of security rather than legitimacy.

Note 4:
“Inherent in the old paradigm are the assumptions that all students can do the work (not all of them can), that all students have the time to do the work (not all of them do), and that students should take as much time as is necessary to do the work (not all of them will).”
-Cathy Vatterot

Note 5:
What we’ve learned so far is that when it comes to homework, we cannot practice a one-size-fits-all approach. It has always been our default to assign homework, but what would happen if we conducted an experiment? What if not giving homework became our default setting? What if we asked ourselves: Is there a specific reason that this homework assignment is necessary? Then maybe we could truly be mindful of our students’ lives outside of school, and put the learning and wellbeing of students first.

# data[].attributes.headline
Point: Homework Should Be Severely Reduced or Eliminated in Elementary and Middle Schools Across the United States.VI

# data[].attributes.subject
Point: Homework Should Be Severely Reduced or Eliminated in Elementary and Middle Schools Across the United States.VI

# data[].attributes.body
Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher Name. DOI (if available)

DOI: 10.3331/pov_us_2017_20170210_18

Note 1:
The debate over whether students should be assigned homework, and how much is appropriate at each grade level, has continued for more than a century. Over the years, numerous research studies have collected data to determine how much homework students typically complete in a night, and whether there is any positive relationship between homework and overall academic performance. Time and again, the research fails to show a positive correlation between homework and academic success, particularly for elementary school students. Speaking to Kelly Wallace for CNN in 2015, Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman of the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology described data showing that homework does not benefit children's grades and is even "detrimental to their attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social skills, and their quality of life."

Note 2:
[E]ducation researcher Alfie Kohn reports that student performance and attitudes toward learning in classrooms actually improve when no homework is assigned.

Note 3:
Since research does not demonstrate a measurable benefit to academic progress from assigning homework in the years prior to high school, Kohn recommends that it be assigned sparingly, if at all, especially to younger children.

Note 4:
The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted problems of equity, as students lost the support offered by schools during lockdowns and school closures in 2020 and beyond, and many students had increased responsibilities at home, such as watching younger siblings while daycares were closed.

# data[].attributes.body
James, K. (2022). Let's take another look at homework. Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved March 19, 2023.

This article examines the half-hearted nature of homework in a classroom setting from both the teaching and student perspectives.

Note 1:
"They'll never look closely at it to see of you actually understood it, and they'll never reference that material again," Colin writes.

Note 2:
After a six-hour day at school — listening, learning, reading, writing, solving math problems, absorbing history, investigating science anomalies, and the like (even when interesting and taught well) — how many of us were eager to get home, open the books again, and continue our tasks?

Note 3:
Yet, during our hours of homework, most of us could find bright moments, new revelations, and sources of inspiration. Study time was not a loss, as our brains were exercised. Generally, all students really do want to learn, and they deserve the pathways for doing so.

Note 4:
One teacher at a university in my community calls her assignments "fun at home," and it can be! This rethinking of what homework is has potential not only to change students' perspectives on what they're asked to do but also to encourage teachers to make sure that what they assign really does present an opportunity for learning, whether through practice and reinforcement of learning begun in class or through expansion into new areas.

Note 5:
Must there be homework, or opportunities at home, every night? I say yes, but the activity's ability to inspire learning is more important than the time spent. Similar to the way we plan our meals for good health and therefore balance three nutritious meals a day (one hopes!), we can "cook up" a variety of delectable activities that engage learners at home every day. Students need to keep in touch at home with the concepts they are learning in school, and they can do so in many imaginative, interesting ways.

# data[].attributes.body
Basically a cake is only a cake if one eats it in a cake store

# data[].attributes.headline
X - Why you should take a break: Prioritizing mental health in schools

# data[].attributes.subject
X - Why you should take a break: Prioritizing mental health in schools

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD0w_gOEbUI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why you should take a break: Prioritizing mental health in schools | Hailey Hardcastle | TEDxSalem

# data[].attributes.headline
IX - How School Makes Kids Less Intelligent

# data[].attributes.subject
IX - How School Makes Kids Less Intelligent

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yt6raj-S1M

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How School Makes Kids Less Intelligent | Eddy Zhong | TEDxYouth@BeaconStreet

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR6NC0PF_uQ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Math Homework: Does It Add Up?:  Natalie Klein at TEDxABQED

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/d_qMpV9V9To

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Homework overload | Mikel Garmendia | TEDxPascoCountySchoolsED

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmE8dQcZgB4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This company pays kids to do their math homework | Mohamad Jebara

# data[].attributes.headline
Should Middle Schools Do Away With Homework?IV

# data[].attributes.subject
Should Middle Schools Do Away With Homework?IV

# data[].attributes.body
Junior Scholastic. (2018). Should Middle Schools Do Away With Homework?. Junior Scholastic. Retrieved March 1, 2023.

This article explains both sides of the argument of whether homework should remain in its place in middle school education.

Against: Many students spend more than 40 hours a week doing homework and going to school. (KHS, for example, takes 38h 25m for just school)

Against: Homework isn't even helping students achieve their goals. In fact, it's hurting their health. When students were given 60 minutes of homework per day in "one recent study," they did better on exams than their counterparts who received 90-100 minutes of homework per day.

For: An appropriate amount of homework each night can help a student get better grades. Did you feel you performed better when you did your homework as opposed to when you didn't?

For: Homework builds study habits and teaches you to organize your assignments and practice time management. (I disagree with this as it only compounds time management issues, at least for me.)

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpFR_hZjOXg

Doron, E. [TEDx Talks], (2019, August 30). Homework revolution | Eyal Doron | TEDxTelAviv [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpFR_hZjOXg

A man in China wanted to learn English but it wasn't provided at his school so he started working at a hotel to provide tours for people who did. He learned so much from it that he made his own company for students like him.

Eyal Doron often goes on walks with his daughter to the local ice cream vendor. On these walks a while ago, he asked his daughter to find one thing on each walk and relate it to what she had been learning in school. It became increasingly difficult for every walk, and so his daughter eventually asked her teacher to teach her more stuff.

1/3 of classroom time is actually spent learning new things. If the class time is restructured, students will be able to complete all their "homework" before class is over and also learn more.

One day his daughter flipped the question and asked him to do the same thing. He found himself in the same situation, genuinely wanting to learn.

# data[].attributes.headline
Commentary: Changes in grading and homework policies are turning education upside downII

# data[].attributes.subject
Commentary: Changes in grading and homework policies are turning education upside downII

# data[].attributes.body
Richmond, G. (2023). Commentary: Changes in grading and homework policies are turning education upside down. Chicago Tribune (IL). Retrieved February 27, 2023.

This article explains how some schools are getting worse at actually educating schools through non-meritocracy principles. Con-antihomework

Note 1:
The pandemic may be over, but those academic declines may be just the beginning as some schools are now turning the very purpose of schooling on its head. Across the country, we are seeing schools de-emphasizing or banning practices that have long been the norm, such as homework, grades, attendance and academic recognition.

Note 2:
One Virginia high school has gone a step further, not just rewarding students who do no work but also penalizing students with high academic achievement.

Note 3:
One of the school officials who withheld the notifications offered this rationale: “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.”

Note 4:
Even school systems that have built their reputations on academic rigor have changed their stripes.

# data[].attributes.body
Smith, A. (2023). The homework hackers happy ending. PC Pro. Retrieved February 27, 2023.

This article explains how one student hacked his school's online learning platforms during the pandemic and managed to attain acclaim for his work. Non-argumentative

Note 1:
Mostly, software engineers are rather lazy individuals. We tell metal how to do stuff for us. Homework, then, is naturally an arduous task for a developer who is still at school.

Note 2:
Together, Jake and I scraped the entirety of Hegarty’s database and now had a JSON file that was arguably worth as much as the company itself, because the entire product sat in the database we had copied. With this file, I wanted to take it a step further and allow my friends and other people to make good use of it without directly giving out the whole database. So Mochip was coined.

Note 3:
HegartyMaths is a brilliant learning resource and, at the end of the day, it’s there to help students learn rather than be an inconvenience.

Note 4:
being able to skip up to 20 minutes of homework time was especially useful – and it was a lot of fun to build, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Section:

FEATURES

Then 15-year-old Alistair Smith used his coding skills to hack his maths . It led to a showdown with the owner of the homework site. Here Alistair tells his extraordinary tale of what happened...

Back in 2020, my school used a few online learning platforms that allowed professors and teachers to assign homework to students. I, as a lazy developer, wanted to spend more time playing games and writing code, especially when everyone was spending their time at home because of lockdown. I succeeded in hacking our homework system and I was caught - but it didn't turn out badly for anyone involved.

The back story

Let's set the scene. In 2018, my school introduced a new online homework platform for students. It was called HegartyMaths, and it did a lot. It was fairly simple: teachers chose a topic to set for us as homework, we got a 10-to 15-minute tutorial/informational video on the subject (and on which we had to write notes while watching) and a shortish quiz to complete after finishing the video. It was a lot of work, especially the quiz, and in the worst cases could take up to an hour to complete one topic.

Mostly, software engineers are rather lazy individuals. We tell metal how to do stuff for us. Homework, then, is naturally an arduous task for a developer who is still at school. So a close friend called Scott and I decided to do something about the Hegarty situation. We started to reverse-engineer the front-end app and eventually came up with a Tampermonkey user script that would glitch the embedded YouTube player to say that we'd watched the video at least once. Our teachers could see how many times we had watched the video, so being able to skip up to 20 minutes of homework time was especially useful - and it was a lot of fun to build, too.

So, we flexed it on our Snapchat stories and had our school friends message us to use it. We eventually figured out that we could also set a video to be watched over 9,999 times; every time we did that, our accounts were reset by the Hegarty team.

Alerting the developers

Following this, we got in contact with our maths teacher in November 2018 and asked her to send an email to HegartyMaths informing them of our petty exploit. They got back to us very quickly. I don't have the original email any more but I distinctly remember it saying something along the lines of "stop trying to hack our platform and get back to doing your homework ".

This response excited us a bit. They were now aware of us messing around with the site and they had no intention of fixing the minor vulnerability we had found, so we kept using it. We also tried to build a script to answer the questions for us, but it was too much work at the time (complex data structures, weird API responses and so on).

For a while, students had access to another platform called Educake. That was similar to HegartyMaths but targeting biology, chemistry and physics. We'd used it since I joined the school, but I'd never thought about reverse-engineering it until all of this began.

One common factor between HegartyMaths and Educake is that they immediately gave you the correct answer if you got a question wrong. We took advantage of this and wrote a small node/Mongo app and Tampermonkey script to detect when a user was on a quiz page, then answer every question with a random number and store the correct answer in MongoDB. I don't have the original source code, but the Tampermonkey script was something like this:

const guess = Math.random(); const result = await post('/api/answer>, { body: { answer: guess,

},

});

await post('http://localhost:8080/save>, { body: {

question_id: question.id,

answer: result.success ? guess : result. correct_answer,

},

});

// Go to next question and repeat code above nextQuestion();

As you can see, it was quite literally a loop through every question, saving the correct answer as we got it and moving on. Eventually I added a few more features to fetch from the database if we already had the right answer (meaning we didn't answer Math.random every time), and I added support for multiple choice (so that we actually picked one of the possible answers rather than making one up - I was surprised that the Educake back end would allow an answer that wasn't even in the possible choices).

Now working on the project solo, I decided it was time to build a nice UI for it all and bundle it into a simple Tampermonkey script for both flexing rights on Snapchat (people constantly begging me to use it was certainly ego fuel I hadn't experienced before) and to get out of the homework I didn't want to do.

The end result? A roughly 200-line codebase and a 15MB Mongo database, which scooped up all of the questions and answers on the site and could repeatedly get 100% on every single assignment. Later I added a "target percentage", meaning users could get something other than 100% to look like a more real score.

Hacking Hegarty

The success of this script along with pressure from my peers motivated me to start working on reversing Hegarty again. I reached out to an internet friend who, for the sake of his privacy, we'll call Jake. He also used HegartyMaths at his school and was in the same boat as me, trying not to do homework. Together, we managed to figure out how to answer many types of question, including multiple choice and ordered answers, resulting in a huge amount of data stored. We had sacrificial user accounts and managed to answer 60,000 questions in a couple of minutes, rocketing our way to the top of the HegartyMaths global leaderboard.

Together, Jake and I scraped the entirety of Hegarty's database and now had a JSON file that was arguably worth as much as the company itself, because the entire product sat in the database we had copied. With this file, I wanted to take it a step further and allow my friends and other people to make good use of it without directly giving out the whole database. So Mochip was coined.

Mochip was a Chrome extension, a collection of both our scraped Hegarty and Educake databases, sitting behind a TypeScript API and a small React app. Hosted on the free tiers of Heroku and MongoDB Atlas, users could log in, enter a question from either site and get back a list of answers Mochip had for that question. In-app stats showed the total estimated time saved and how long you'd had your account for. We gamified it to keep people engaged.

Our Chrome extension was made just as Educake disabled copying question text with the clipboard, but we re-enabled that by clicking a button that was injected into the UI.

Our userbase grew so big that we ended up with a Discord server and even our own listing on Urban Dictionary - I'm yet to find out who made it!

Eventually we "rebranded" as I wanted to disassociate my name from the project. I made an alt discord account and a few announcements saying we'd "passed on ownership"; however, this inevitably lasted only for a couple weeks before we were rumbled.

Caught, but not punished

All good things must come to an end, and Mochip did after Scott posted about it on his Reddit account. Like any good CEO, Colin Hegarty searches for his company every now and then on Google to see what people are saying or doing, and unfortunately came across our Reddit post. He signed up (under a different email address), tested out our app and was shocked to see it working.

Shortly after this I received an email from Colin. He wasn't angry or aggressive; quite the opposite.

"Firstly I wanted to say how impressed I am at your skill and ability to do this - you and your friends must be super smart," he wrote. "I set up HegartyMaths to try and help children learn and progress in their lives and to see someone with such great talent and intellect is always lovely to see."

He asked if we could have a Google Meet about the app I'd built. "Sometimes when it comes to issues like this, companies can take a legal approach when trying to resolve them... but I'd much rather have a chat with you and sort this out in a friendly way."

I was upset but also content - it was validation that I'd successfully made it, and catching the attention of Colin Hegarty himself was sort of a good thing. We quickly scheduled a Google Meet, also inviting Scott, and I had one of the most memorable conversations of my life. I am extremely grateful for the advice Colin gave us in the call.

I'd like to give a special thank you to the legendary Colin Hegarty for his kindness and consideration when reaching out to me. Things could have gone a lot worse for me. HegartyMaths is a brilliant learning resource and, at the end of the day, it's there to help students learn rather than be an inconvenience.

Shortly after, Colin reached out to the Educake team, with whom we also scheduled a call. We explained our complete methodology and suggested ways to prevent it in the future. The easiest fix from our point of view would be to implement a rate limit with Redis that would make it wildly infeasible to automate a test. The other thing we suggested was to scramble IDs in the database to invalidate our cloned database as much as possible (we only had the Hegarty IDs, so we could no longer reverse lookup a question).

Postscript

After writing about all of this on my blog, I posted it on Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) and amazingly got to number one for a few hours, so my site received a lot of traffic. I served almost 1.5TB of content in about six hours. That's also where PC Pro saw my story and asked if it could republish it.

Some of the employees at Sparx (the parent company of HegartyMaths) ended up seeing my post and sent it to Colin. I received a really lovely email from Hegarty himself with the subject line: "Congrats to you!". I am so grateful for the kindness and consideration Colin has shown Scott and I. If you're a teacher reading this, then please use HegartyMaths for your students! The happy ending.

Alistair Smith is on Twitter at @alistaiiiir. This article was originally posted on his website at alistair.blog/mochip

PHOTO (COLOR): BELOW The education platform HegartyMaths is now secure

PHOTO (COLOR)

PHOTO (COLOR)

Copyright of PC Pro is the property of Future Publishing Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Section: FEATURES Then 15-year-old Alistair Smith used his coding skills to hack his maths . It led to a showdown with the owner of the homework site. Here Alistair tells his extraordinary tale of what happened... Back in 2020, my school used a few online learning platforms that allowed professors and teachers to assign homework to students.

# data[].attributes.body
Citation 1