A few resources dedicated to rethinking acceptable use policies (AUPs) in schools.
1. Getting in the Right Mindset
In all of our efforts to teach students safe, appropriate, and responsible technology use, are we forgetting the more important job of teaching our students empowered use?
- Instead of an AUP, how about an EUP? (Empowered Use Policy)
- 27 Internet safety talking points
- Blocking the future
- Don’t teach your kids this stuff. Please?
- If you could give your child a superpower, would you?
- The ‘rules’ of school … and why they’re not really rules
- Rethinking technology restrictions in schools
- The one percent doctrine
- Straight from the DOE: Dispelling myths about blocked sites
- Dispelling six myths about blocked sites
- The way we should be thinking about Internet filtering
- I don’t like my district’s AUP
- What message does your AUP send home?
- I don’t like Internet filters
- Can social media and school policies be ‘friends?’
2. Some Student AUPs
- NIST International School
- Columbia County (GA) schools launch student-created social media guidelines
- The AUP of the future
- Siskiyou Union High School District AUP (Mount Shasta, CA)
- Science Leadership Academy AUP (Philadelphia, PA)
- Yokohama (Japan) International School Connected Learning Community Handbook
- AUP driven by vision not protection
- Anastasis Academy AUP (Centennial, CO)
- East Lothian (Scotland)
- Washoe County School District AUP (Reno, NV) [pp. 12-14]
- Newell-Fonda, IA Schools AUP
- CoSN – AUPs in a Web 2.0 and Mobile Era (sample AUPs start on page 6; Item 7)
- Social Networking Acceptable Use (ongoing project)
3. Other Resources
- Three sets of computer ethics
- Steps to follow when creating social media guidelines for your school
- CoSN – Rethinking state and school district policies concerning mobile technologies and social media
- Teachers and social media (New Zealand Teachers Council)
4. Employee AUPs
- We trust you with the children but not the Internet
- No Facebook for you!
- Why you don’t need an employee social media policy
- Teacher rules
- Proposed social media policy for employees, Part 1 (the comments are excellent)
- Proposed social media policy for employees, Part 2
- Avoid social networking
- Teachers and the Facebook dilemma
- The social media policy of the future
- Sample guidelines for the use of educational networking sites by professional staff
- Minnetonka, MN Schools Employee Use of Social Media Policy
What would you add to these lists?
Nice list of resources here, Scott.
In your opinion, what is the purpose of policy?
Great question, Darren. In my opinion, public school policy should enable optimal empowerment of individuals within a school or district to meet personal, organizational, educational, and societal goals. Some policies promote certain behaviors while others limit or place structure on behaviors, but either way the end goal should be optimization of empowering environments. Where I think policy typically goes wrong is when somebody’s fears, agendas, or other issues result in policies that get in the way of people and/or schools being able to do what they’re supposed to be doing.
What would you say is the purpose of policy?
I like the idea of policy enabling empowerment, and am hopeful that more might assume such an attitude while thinking through its development.
Additionally, I view policy as an opportunity to help cooler heads prevail.
Hi Scott,
One way we can turn around “reactive filters” (the types that stop kids from going to ‘Russian Midget Porn’ etc.) is to convince Google Education to use their datamining capabilities to good use, namely, sharing all sites searched for and visited *with classmates and teacher*.
This is what I call “proactive filtering” that teaches students to be responsible, and helps them build up their own “cool sites” d-base with their peers.
Take a look at http://snurl.com/boredom2 (my response to Elizabeth English’s article “Why So Many Schools Remain Penitentiaries of Boredom). I presented to TICAL today, and EVO13 Online a month ago (where I talk on Blackboard about that presentation, contact me if you’d like to see it).
Keep up the good work! I’ve made a shortcut to this page: http://snurl.com/rethinkingaups
I read this and immediately followed the “AUP of the Future” link a while ago. When I read my end of course COETAIL assignment to collaborate with folks in our cohort to rewrite our school AUP, I had to backtrack in my reading list to find it. Tremendous resource.
Our school has minimal filtering on, but we do monitor for the biggies. In our first six months of 1:1 rollout, we’ve only had a few issues. They are starting to get bidder though. I feel we’ve gone too fast without taking time to explicitly understand and internalize, at each developmental level, what our AUP really means. It is not written for students.
It is my goal to come up with something short, sweet, and empowering on a student level. I have yet to dig much deeper in these resources, but I thank you for them sincerely! Mick
i’ve just started reading through this resource and loving it so far. Just spotted that the “27 internet safety talking points” links opens a page called “26 internet safety talking points” and I guess you changed it after you wondered what was going to happen when you got to Z 🙂
Rob