As I said, this is a travesty of justice that this young woman is being
held responsible for this. The school district certainly had a
responsibliblity to provide her with training and appropriate tech
support, especially when she ask for it for so specific a reason. It
should be a wake up call to all of us. My student assistant on the
other hand discovered what we all know: filters are imperfect and can be
bypassed. She typed in specific pornography sites in Japanese. Filters
sometimes do not filter out foreign words.
Becky Vasilakis
Library Media Specialist
Amanda Clearcreek SD
Amanda OH
bvasilakis@amanda.k12.oh.us
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Nancy Willard
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 10:12 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Amero: Scarier and scarier
> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:44:49 -0500
> From: rshull <rshull@GREENAPPLE.COM>
> Subject: Re: Amero: Scarier and scarier
>
> I can understand how it happens. I had a student assistant use the
> circulation computer to go to some pretty obscene sites (at 50 I
> thought I had seen a lot but this was beyond me). When I found this
> web site and clicked on it the porn site came up. I hit escape another
> site came up; I hit to logout another site came up. Each one getting
> more obscene. OH, MY, I WAS GOING BLIND IT WAS SO NAUGHTY. I believe
> this is called mousetrapping. It took less than 30 secs to reach
> behind the computer and unplug it. Our tech guys came and took the
> info as evidence and cleaned up the machine. They also gave me a
> lecture on not turning off the computer by unplugging it. Needless to
> say, student assistant when she came back from out of school
> suspension, was no longer a student assistant. I think the court case
> was a travesty. However, I know that it is not good for the computer
> but it takes nothing to pull the plug. Becky Vasilakis
However, what would you have done if you had been specifically told,
with some emphasis, that as a substitute you were never to turn off the
computer? And if, as a computer neophyte, you were not even sure how to
turn off the machine without breaking it - for which you would be held
responsible?
Apparently what Julie did was to turn the screen so that students could
not see (a couple unfortunately could, but not very well) and she tried,
apparently the entire day, to get the porn sites to stop popping up. She
also quite apparently did not know that the only way to stop this kind
of an attack is to turn off the machine.
Julie actually did an incredibly good job of trying to deal with this
situation -- to the best of her ability. I do not have exact class
figures, but at least 5 classes. And only a handful of students saw
glimpses of stuff
-- and virtually all of them knew something was afoot and used a "sneaky
method" to try to go and look.
Unfortunately, it also appears that your student assistant was highly
likely the victim of this kind of garbage-spewing technology -- and not
at fault. And as a result she got suspension and removed from a job she
likely enjoyed.
How many other teachers and students have been falsely accused because
no one understands?
Nancy
--
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
http://cyberbully.org
nwillard@csriu.org
Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online
Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress. New edition, published by
Research Press.
Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use
the Internet Safely and Responsibly. Jossey-Bass (March 16, 2007)
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