Pennsylvania School Allegedly Spies on Students At Home

A school in the Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania has been accused of activating webcams on the laptops issued to students while the students were at home.  A sophomore student at the school became aware of the surveillance when he was called to the principal's office and told he had been engaging in "improper behavior" in his home.  The principal proceeded to show a photo snapped on the webcam as evidence.  A law suit has, understandably, been filed.

This case is truly shocking, and the implications are enormous.  I know of many businesses and schools that have issued laptops to students, faculty or employees, and I honestly don't want to think about the fact that this technology is available to any immoral authority figure that wants to use it.

Teachers: Help Your Students Cope with Disaster

Seeing the footage of the disaster in Haiti on the news these last few weeks has been difficult.  It is hard for adults to wrap their minds around such disaster, poverty and pain.  Yet I remember how much more difficult it was to watch the news during my childhood; I was a sensitive child, easily affected by the intense words and images.

There was an earthquake in California during my early childhood; misunderstanding the wreckage I saw on the news, I wrote in my school journal entry that millions of people had died.  My teacher wrote a note on the entry, explaining that in this instance, no one had died but many buildings had been destroyed.  While teachers can not offer this comfort to students in the case of the earthquake in Haiti, they can help their students deal with various kinds of tragedy.

Kids and the Internet: Please Respond

I was paging through some magazines yesterday and I came across two separate references to negative affects of the internet on children.  The first asserted that too many "gadgets" in the classroom have led to kids not having any manners; the second, from a teacher, claimed that because of internet and TV, children don't get enough practice in resolving their own conflicts and end up tattling to the teacher.

Now hold on just a minute.  I'll be the first to stand up and say that the prospect of raising children in a time of such rapid technological change is terrifying.  We don't yet know all the effects that growing up with internet and TV may have; we can be fairly certain that increased obesity is one of them.  But that's not my point here.  You can't just hop on the technology-blaming bandwagon to explain away childish behaviors.