In Harrington County, Pennsylvania, a wealthy suburb installed a “feature” that allows them to turn on the webcam. The school district has said this was implemented so that if a laptop was stolen they could turn on to determine who had the laptop. However, all of this came to light when an assistant principal used a shot from the laptop webcam – taken while at home – that was used during a discipline situation.
We know schools are using the internet, emails, and webcams at school to help discipline students, keep up with students, and understand where the current school culture is at any given time. Schools are also working hard to figure out how we protect students from on-line dangers but do the “protections” step over the line?
One of the allegations is that the web cams were used for child pornography as the laptops were open in students’ bedrooms. We can awesome that was not the intent of the school district. Remember only administrators had access to the webcams. But with this technology have they gone too far? Especially without informing parents.
It will be interesting to see what happens. I think this will be a hot topic in the news. It seems as though it has already become sensationalized. This will be interesting to watch. Let us know your thoughts.
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.boingboing.net%252F2 010%252F02%252F17%252Fschool-used-student.html&h=9ec0bfba63fbef83ff32452a3d5 67168&ref=nf> home Boing Boing