As KATU-TV reported, a Forest Grove, Oregon, mom was shocked when she
checked the browser history on her daughter’s school-supplied iPad and
found out what her daughter had been getting into: ero'tic stories.
“She was reading er'otica — along with a lot of the other kids,” the mother, Sarah, told the station.
Her daughter, she said, is just 12 years old.
Sarah — who didn’t want her last name used — said her daughter
received the iPad last year through Neil Armstrong Middle School’s pilot
program, and Sarah kept strict control over the device, taking it from
her daughter each night.
But despite her vigilance and the school’s security measures
installed on the iPad, the 12-year-old found a few loopholes, accessing
ero'tic writing on the website Wattpad.
“I was shocked!” Sarah said. “It was
not something you expect a 12-year-old to look at, or to talk about, or
to want to do or anything. She’s still a little girl.”
But she said that’s not all.
“I found out she had an email account and was sending pictures of herself and having relations online,” Sarah said.
Sarah confiscated the device and said she’s debating when, if ever, to give it back to her daughter.
Why was a 12-year-old able to read ero'tica despite the school’s safety features?
“There is no way to ensure absolute
security on a technology device,” principal Brandon Hundley told WATU.
“As we develop our program as others schools are doing the same, we will
continue to focus on teaching and training our students in the
appropriate ways to use technology to support their learning, keep
themselves safe and leave as small and limited a digital footprint as
possible.”
Hundley said the school is constantly adding inappropriate websites
to its “blocked list,” but middle schoolers are a hard bunch to control.
“The truth is that students are constant problem solvers and work hard to access what they are interested in,” Hundley said.
Young students accessing se'xual material is only one of the potential
problems that has caused schools across the country, once eagerly
pursuing tech-enabled classrooms, to step back from iPads and other
devices.
The Los Angeles Unified School District this week stopped the
contract on its $1 billion plan to purchase 700,000 iPads loaded with
Pearson educational software after aninvestigation showedthe bidding
process may not have been fair and that the software was riddled with
typos and glitches.
As the Atlantic reported earlier this month, many schools are
debating whether tablets like the iPad are really the best tech tool for
students, or whether students might be better served by the humble
laptop.
