Beware "wilfers" and the computer-challenged - Mary Kirwan, Globe and Mail
... A good example is the case of Julie Amero, 40, a Connecticut middle-school substitute teacher convicted earlier this year of exposing her young charges to pornographic images on her classroom computer screen. She faced up to 40 years in prison for the incident that she attributed to pop-up spyware messages that infested her machine, and that she could not control. At her trial, she was faulted for not turning off the computer, but she stated that she was told by superiors not to turn it off, and that when she asked them for advice about the malignant pop-ups (she did not, apparently, mention that they contained pornographic images), she was told to ignore them as they were such a frequent occurrence.... Things are looking up for Amero, but the case has alarmed educators, who fear that they could easily end up in a similar predicament- substitute teachers without union representation possibly being especially vulnerable. The concern is that teachers, especially those who are not technology savvy, are not trained to react in such circumstances and/or they blindly trust employers to prevent such scenarios arising in the first place. There have even been wild-eyed suggestions that teachers in Connecticut may revolt and refuse to use their computers, until they are fully trained on how to use them.

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