Garrett High School in the US has come under fire for its ridiculous policy of monitoring student tweets. In fact, police were even called to the school on Friday because students were threatening to protest after a student was expelled for swearing on Twitter when he wasn’t even at school.
Never mind, what Carroll said, though, how the hell did tweets become the school’s business anyway? According to Indiana’s New Center, the school actively keeps tabs on its students on social media when they’re at school.
The principal at Garrett High School claims their system tracks all the tweets on Twitter when a student logs in, meaning even if he did tweet it from home their system could have recognised it when he logged in again at school.
Unfortunately, in this case it appears that the system wasn’t even working properly, because Carroll reportedly sent the tweets at 2.30 in the morning from his own computer. Classic. What a relief that our schools are spending time and resources policing a little playground profanity online instead of, you know, teaching kids something useful. [Journal Gazette and Indiana’s News Center via TechDirt]