Always look a (public school) gift horse in the mouth

Not about homeschooling, but absolutely about home and school.

A school in PA gave laptops to each student.... then used them to spy on families.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/02/18/24789.htm

 

Oh my.

 

This is quite incredible.

#1: Issuing all students with a laptop is a colossal waste of money. They tried that in our county, but it failed when someone realized school officials were illegally steering the deal to a "preferred" supplier.

#2: The invasion of privacy of so blatant, and I'm amazed this isn't a headline on major news sites. Anything, literally anything, happening at home could be captured on video and, in the worst case, distributed to millions of people around the world.

 

Wow. There's so much more to think about, too. Like anyone's ability to have programmed into any laptop this same capability. Big Brother isn't too far-fetched with today's technology.

 

Alice took the words right out of my mouth. Oh My

 

There would most definitely be some heads rolling if this happened to my child.

 

Wow!!! I just...just say "wow!"

 

OK...sometimes, my laptop is in my bedroom.....and sometimes, even left open. And I AM married.....


uuggghhh!

 

Speechless. totally speechless.

 

wow. I'm speechless.....

 

tape is going on my webcam now. this is so wrong of the school to do that.

 

You think thats bad....

Ok, so yeah I'm one of those moms with an xbox Anyway, we went out and got the kids the kinect for Christmas so they could play with a virtual tiger. Anyway, it has a cam and voice. It follows your movements with no need for a controller. So one day, they were NOT playing and I'm walkimg through the family room in my pjs. I'm suddenly startled by the kinect 'head' with the cam literally following me across the room! Turns out that as long as the dang thing is plugged in, if you forget to turn off the xbox, it's still going! LOL That was about the time the kinect took a flying leap from which it was unable to recover!

 

I think the deal originally was in case the laptop came up missing they could see who had it illegally and recover it... ANOTHER thing school administrators failed to think through properly.

 

This is totally disgusting. An adult could actually witness a minor undressing or doing other things privately in their own rooms. Uh, couldn't that be considered child pornography, or am I just overreacting?

 

:shock::shock:
I don't think you're overreacting. That was my first thought too.
Marty

 

That is totally outrageous.

Even without the contraversial things that could be viewed--this is too much power in the hands of someone without the best interest of children at heart.

I don't think we should link our homeschooling with any public school institution. The "free" stuff might be tempting, but what is the real price?

 

EXACTLY-WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS! (and yes I meant to yell!)

Not only that-my first thought was....say mom and dad don't allow jr to use the computer anywhere but the living room-It's Friday night-Jr goes out with friends, mom and dad want to get freaky in the living room...Principal Schmuck gets a free peep show...

This is just so far over the line, you can't even see the line from this is!

 

And then Principle Schmuck puts it on the internet!!!! :shock:
Sorry, that's where my thoughts went to. Any more it seems to be the natural progression of this world. :?
Marty

 

I'm fairly new so I was just going through the articles when I saw this!!! All I could think of was George Orwell's 1984. This is very unsettling.

 

What a gross invasion of privacy. Seems to me as one person said if certain images were caught or watched on cameras that it could consistute child pornography. Shame on them I hope the people who came up with this twisted idea are punished to the full extent of the law. I would be livid to find out that my kids were being used in such a fashion.