I think many in that room would probably have liked to ask, "What is a 'webcam?'"
They were simply to shy to admit their ignorance!
I'm not sure, but I saw a video, probably on PBS, showing a school using Mac laptops. The computer administrator showed the interviewer how he could activate the camera and see what the student was doing, presumably while in the school. Everyone seemed rather blasé about this, and it may, indeed, have been someplace that had the student sign a waiver.
The purported use of this capability was to see how much time the students were waisting, but the administrator stated they never did anything about finding students using the laptop (and, no doubt, Photobooth) as a mirror. Or simply sleeping. Of course, the software also enabled the admin to simply view the laptop's screen to see what was going on; game playing, homework, Facebook monitoring, etc.
I was under the impression that these laptops were assigned/restricted to a particular, public (school)room, where normal visual monitoring would be possible. That point may have been over-looked or I simply missed any words about this capability being used as in the linked article.
If this is done, in an open classroom, I see no problem, even with video. Anywhere else, even in the school building, could easily lead directly to invasion of privacy at worst or abuse at the least.
