The mission of the Skype an Author Network is to provide K-12 teachers and librarians a way to connect authors, books, and young readers through virtual visits.
There are computer service centers that would be happy to extract the data for a (hefty) fee; a true geek would be the one working at center, not taking his or her drive there.
There are inexpensive programs that you can use to do this - it helped us with a personnel matter quite a few years back - I think every IT person should have such a program and every teacher should understand that it is possible for such a program to be used. I teach my students that everything ever saved on a hard drive can be retrieved - be careful.
This is an example of how I used Diigo to create an annotated link to give feedback on a wiki on Flat Classroom. I love using Diigo for giving wiki feedback because I can mark up the page. I like ot share them through groups that are private with my students and I and the annotated link feature is one of the best ways to do this.
After all, kids can write all kinds of nonsense on a sheet of paper and spread it around school, as well; they've been doing that for generations. Yet, I don't see too many teachers wondering whether we should allow them to write.