General Technology
General Technology
Activity Four
Developing a School Acceptable Use Policy
Brief Description
The Internet is a wide open environment that contains many helpful
educational resources, but also many documents, images, and files that may not be suitable for
children. To help deal with concerns about students accessing inappropriate materials, many school districts are
developing and implementing acceptable use policies for their teachers, staff, and students.
These policies describe what the school system deems 'acceptable use' of technology for
educational purposes. These policies help protect school systems from any liability incurred
by allowing students, teachers, and staff access to the variety of information
on the Internet. This activity describes how to develop an acceptable use policy, suggestions
for getting community support for this policy, and references to other resources available on
the development and implementation of these policies.
Goals
- Learn if your school system already has an acceptable use policy for technology.
- Learn how to write an acceptable use policy for technology in your school.
- Get school board support and approval for an acceptable use policy.
- Gather local support from students, teachers, staff, and parents as you implement your
acceptable use policy.
- Learn where to get additional information on acceptable use policies.
Materials and Resources
In developing our lessons and activities, we made some
assumptions about the hardware
and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the
LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or
activities have a computer
(PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and
monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or
dial-up
software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but
perhaps
Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special"
hardware
or software
requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above)
and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.
-
Special hardware requirements: none.
-
Special software requirements: none.
-
Internet access: Medium-speed (28,800 BPS via phone) or High-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network).
Activity Description
Bringing technology into the classroom can be a powerful, if not frightening,
process. Along with all the wonderful resources available on the Internet there are some things parents and
teachers may not want their children and students to experience. To help students, parents, teachers,
and staff understand, engage in, and monitor wise use of the Internet, many school systems are
implementing acceptable use policies (AUP) for their students and personnel. These policies lay out under
what conditions access to the Internet from a school computer is acceptable and when it is not.
These policies generally take the form of a written document which describes what is acceptable school
use of technology.
Many communities are implementing policies that guide student, teacher, and
staff use of technological resources so as to limit liability and restrict access to those resources
that are deemed "appropriate" for educational use. Restricting access to resources
brings up concerns of censorship. School districts need to address these concerns by thinking
carefully about what they want their
students to have access to, how they want to restrict access (assuming they do), and what they will
do when students gain access to materials deemed inappropriate.
While each community must decide for itself what it feels is appropriate
use of technology, there are many helpful resources available on the Internet
that can guide the creation and implementation of an acceptable use policy for schools. In addition
to the resources in the Internet Resources section below, school personnel may wish to consider
the following issues when developing an acceptable use policy:
- Get broad support for any acceptable use policy. Ideally,
a school board should be directly involved in establishing any acceptable use policy adopted by a
school district. Since the issues around restrictions to resources are often controversial, school
board members (who are elected officials) will be held accountable for whatever policy restrictions
are implemented. Since popular support is key, AUPs should be drafted by teams involving board
members, teachers, parents, and others in the community.
- Deal with concerns of censorship by addressing specific situations to be covered in the
acceptable use policy as well as defining what the outcome of such actions might be. Characterize
possible risks as you develop your AUP. Example risks might include all of the following:
- Students sending or receiving explicit sexual messages.
- Students accessing explicit content in an unsupervised situation.
- Restricting access to objectionable materials by means of software used by teachers, students,
and staff.
- Student contact with questionable people.
- Objectionable student behavior.
- Destructive student behavior.
- Reflect on the impact of the AUP on the school system and student learning:
- What restrictions might be infringements on individual free speech?
- Is monitoring school e-mail messages a violation of personal privacy?
- Who is ultimately responsible for student behavior in the school?
- What legal obligations do school systems have for the behavior of their students?
- Any acceptable use policy should include the following "basic" items:
- A definition of the school districts' stance on what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate
materials or resources.
- An outline of how student access will be monitored and who will ultimately be responsible for
student behavior?
- A description of what restrictions and responsibilities are placed on staff?
- An outline of what responsibilities are placed on students and parents?
- One approach that may school systems use is to develop a student contract that is sent home
to parents. This contract spells out the details of the responsibilities of students, parents,
and the school system, and is signed by both student and parent. Included with this contract
should be the AUP as well as a list of consequences associated with actions deemed inappropriate.
- Take advantage of what others have learned about drafting and implementing acceptable use
policies. Visit Internet sites that have example or actual AUPs (see our list of Internet
Resources below), talk with people (use e-mail
or the telephone), get ideas from people who have already implemented these plans, and don't be
afraid to get interested parties together to resolve issues or solve problems.
Internet Resources
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