Blog Juice for Educational Technology

From the Region 19 BOE Gazette:

The Alex Eckelberry Op-ed piece in the Norwich Bulletin has triggered a very interesting set of responses (view all the comments).

Alex got me wondering about what might have been the environment at the time of Julie Amaro’s malware encounter. What I discovered was more than a little troubling. In June and July of 2004, before Julie’s experience, the Griswold Middle School had an infestation of pornography that caused local authorities to seize a computer and hard drives. A student printed a nude image to take home in their backpack! Funny how no prosecution took place in those cases.

It is inexcusable that no action was taken to upgrade the protective software at that time (they had the summer to do it). And it explains why nobody thought much of Amero’s experience at the time, essentially telling her “not to worry about it.”

What this adds up to however is grounds for a mistrial since the community responsible was well aware of computer pornography being present on school district computers yet prosecuted Amero under the pretense that she was the menace to society.