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A teacher's tale: 'I have seen children sending porn pictures to each other in class'

Louise Davies
Friday 08 April 2011 00:00 BST
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Sometimes at the extreme end, children use phones to take pictures of each other, send texts and upload web pages of adult content while in class. I have seen them sending pornographic images to each other and while the law says a teacher can now take a phone off a child, you are putting yourself at a huge amount of risk in doing this.

I have had a child say, "You're taking my property, I am going to get you done for this." I've also seen images uploaded to Facebook and YouTube of colleagues, which are less than favourable. Children set up situations with a teacher so they can take photos, which could look as if they are threatening a child. Anything that takes a teacher's attention away from the rest of the class has a negative impact on them. If I constantly say "Turn your phone off", "Take your iPhone out of your ears" or "Stop texting", I am not asking if they understand their work or whether they have any questions.

There are three issues: the way the child learns themselves, the impact of their actions on other children and the effect this has on staff if they start misusing our very sophisticated technology."

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