As if we needed more reasons for people to avoid the teaching profession and shy away from the use of technology:
Norwich, Conn seventh grade teacher, Julie Amero has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor after her classroom PC displayed pornographic pop-ups in class.
Slashdot | Teacher Found Guilty of Endangering Kids Due to Spyware
Amero faces up to 40 years in prison! Consider this: the computers were running Windows 98; she reported the incident as soon as it happened; the people involved in the trial, from what we can tell from the original story, seem technologically challenged as well.
This entire event is clearly a case of district negligence, yet a substitute teacher is going down for the district’s technological incompetence. Read the story and the comments in the Norwich Bulletin. Also see BoingBoing’s comments on this issue.
This is terrifying and beyond ridiculous. All educators using any form of online technology should be up-in-arms about this case. Unless some other information comes to light that will show Amero acted intentionally (which seems highly unlikely from what I’ve read so far), it seems clear there should never have been a charge, much less a trial and conviction.
Have you ever been subject to unwanted pop-ups, even on updated and protected computers? Have you ever tried to regulate the sometimes-mindless clicking of students with internet access? If this trial stands, how can we ever use technology without a constant fear plaguing us?
I’m deeply concerned about the trends I see in our government: NCLB has inspired mindless teaching and a culture of stress, the Patriot Act and other moves have seen the government violate more and more rights to privacy. And in the rest of the world: Australia deciding that links to copyright material are illegal, teachers in the UK calling for internet censorship, Canada questioning fair-use rights.
What’s next, firing teachers for their artistic expression, pursued in their off-hours?
I think I’m confused: what country am I in? what century is this?
January 17th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
You have hit the nail on the head — “If this trial stands, how can we ever use technology without a constant fear plaguing us?”
I’m surprised how little attention this has received in the edublogosphere.
My post here (and I quote you).
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:24 am
Apparently the Norwich Bulletin did like all of the traffic from your link to their site, as it has been pulled down.
Thanks to all of you, though, I believe that we will make a difference. This has been going on in Education since the advent of technology (and before that, through textbooks) and the desire on behalf of the corporations and others, to create a collective ignorance in which everyone agrees (tacitly or otherwise) on the “standards.”
I first noticed what was happening when the first application of PC technology was for ATTENDANCE RECORDS. Then when the Internet came along, there was this desire to ignore the power and the implications of PCs in the classroom.
I belive that it is now up to professional educators, technologists, IT consultants and the people in the general to begin to tell the social darwinists (especially those that seek an unfair advantage by trapping people like Julie Amero in their wicked web) that their gig is up. As seasoned professionals, we have all spent a lot of time on process improvement, “six sigma” root cause analysis and “total quality management” programs. We KNOW that when something like this happens it is the PROCESS, not the person that needs to be corrected.
Wake up, folks! The time to act is now. Each day that passes we are all at risk of losing our freedom. Not one more day!
Peace.
Out.