Porn on Your School Computer?

Last night my mom told me about a substitute teacher who was convicted and may possibly be jailed because she accessed her email on a school computer, left the room, and then came back with students around the computer looking at porn.

Who's to blame? The substitute, Julie Amero?? She claims not to be very technology literate. The computer is a 98 Windows Machine, running Internet Explorer 5, with an expired firewall protection, no spy-ware protection, and the anti-virus protection out of date. One expert was prepared to testify that the spyware was installed weeks before she came to the room, but that testimony was not allowed in the courtroom because the testimony was not given to the prosecution before the case went to court.

The prosecution blamed her for not turning off the computer and not being proactive about the pop-ups. In her defense, the teacher of the classroom asked her not to sign her off. She went down the hall and asked for help. The teachers there told her to ignore the ads. The students even testified that she tried to get them to stop popping up. She didn't throw a coat or sweater of the computer because she didn't wear one that day.

The students of course went home and told their parents, who were upset and called the school system in an uproar. Could it be that they weren't mad at Amero, but furious that the school systems were not up to date and not using a filtering system (that I thought was mandatory to get funding for technology)? Could it be that Amero was the scapegoat for their problems?

In my old district, substitutes were not allowed on the computer. Teachers weren't allowed on computers until they took a test and passed it. This assured us that computer literate teachers were the ones on the computers, and also made sure the teachers knew their rights and responsibilities when on the computer. If a teacher accessed a site by accident, they were to report it and then they would not be held responsible. It allowed the technicians to find out how it was accessed and why it was allowed through the filtering systems. If the teacher did not report it, well that's when things could be suspicious.

By the way, the incident with Amero started in 2004. Her sentencing is to take place on March 2. Talk about a speedy court case. I personally hope that they are lenient on her, pardon and expunge the conviction and clear her name all together. It's the school's technology leaders and well, the federal funding that's actually at fault here.