Students Suspended After Revealing Photo Of Teacher Pops Up On School iPad [UPDATED]
Students who use iPads in the classroom score higher on literacy tests and tend to be more excited about learning. But there are some dangers, as four boys at a middle school in Anderson, Ind. have learned. They clicked a button, reports WRTV in Indianapolis, and claimed a partially topless photo of their teacher popped up on screen. The boys have been suspended as a result.
Students who [UPDATE: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. EDT on Oct. 19, with new reports from the Anderson police department and Anderson community schools.]
On Thursday, Charles Rubright, legal counsel for Anderson Community Schools, released a statement saying the photo was not pornographic, and did not depict a nude or topless woman, reports a local newspaper, The Herald Bulletin. In a separate statement, Anderson Police Detective Joel Sandefur said the image was not of a topless woman, but a person "from the neck down, with partial exposure."
But four students at Highland Middle School who clicked on the photo, while playing a game on an iPad, have been suspended and threatened with expulsion. One of the boys, 13-year-old Joshua Troutt, says the teacher must have synched her iPhone to the school iPads. If an iPad and iPhone are both set to photo synchronization, then a picture taken with any of the devices will be immediately sent to all of them.
At first, Assistant Superintendent Beth Clark said the teacher would be disciplined, but the latest report from The Herald Bulletin states that the teacher has been cleared of any wrongdoing. The photos were allegedly synched without her knowledge.
Troutt's mother said the school gave two explanations for her son's punishment: He accessed the Internet, and also that the boys may have been the ones to bring the iPad and iPhone in synch. In a follow-up interview with the newspaper, Clark said the boys were disciplined because they broke schools rules, not because of the content of the photograph.
"It's not our fault that she had the photo on there," Troutt told WRTV. "We couldn't do anything not to look at it, if it just popped up when he pressed the button. It was her fault she had the photo on there."
More: 8 Bizarre Teacher Scandals You Won't Believe
The youth's mother, Nicole Troutt, agrees, saying her boy's punishment is "very unfair," and that her son didn't even touch the iPad. "Another kid pulled up the picture on the iPad. He never touched it, period."Don't Miss: Companies Hiring Now
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Claire Gordon
Claire Gordon has contributed to Slate's DoubleX, the Huffington Post, and the book Prisons: Current Controversies. While an undergraduate at Yale University and a research fellow at Yale graduate school, she spoke on panels at Yale and Cornell, and reported from Cairo, Tokyo, and Berlin. Follow Claire on Twitter. Email Claire at claire.gordon@teamaol.com. Add Claire to your Google+ circles.
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