You may or may not have heard of the awful plight of teacher Julie Amero, who was convicted if exposing minors to pornography after her classroom computer began showing pornographic popup ads triggered by spyware. Backgrounders here and here. Amazingly, she is looking at possibly 40 years in prison for this. As Chip pointed out in the comments here, it’s just another instance of people making decisions related to technology who obviously have no clue about technology.
There’s a lot to write about this terrible travesty of justice, but for now I just wanted to point out that there is a blog for Julie here. It’s not got a lot of posts yet, but what is there is informative (lists of contact info, etc.) and heart-wrenching (firsthand reports from Julie’s husband). Go read all of it and put it in your RSS reader. I’m hopeful that the educational and tech blogosphere can make some sort of difference in this case.
[Update: There's another Amero blog here.]
Technorati Tags: Ed tech, Julie Amero, Technology
4 responses so far ↓
Chip Bennett // 17 February 2007 at 10:52 pm
Thanks for the link. I hope more people are made aware of Julie Amero’s case.
Liz // 18 February 2007 at 3:08 pm
Thanks Robert — I wrote about Amero’s case here, with more links.
I’ve been surprised how quiet the edublogosphere has been about the case.
Here’s my post requesting contributions to Julie Amero’s legal defense fund.
Liz // 18 February 2007 at 10:31 pm
I sent Julie Amero a donation three hours ago and just got an email thank you note.
Again, thanks for alerting me to Julie’s blog and her legal defense fund.
In defense of Julie Amero at Joanne Jacobs // 19 February 2007 at 10:44 am
[...] I’d like to join I Speak of Dreams, Casting Out Nines and others in asking bloggers to contribute to Amero’s defense fund. A teacher should not be held responsible for an unprotected computer. [...]
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