I head back out to the airport this morning, after a couple of weeks at home. During my time here, I finished the biggest layer of a major writing project, re-wrote Hitchhikr, spent a little time in my favorite City, Asheville, with Brenda and my parents, and saw my daughter graduate from college — and move back home.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon shopping for luggage, downsizing to comply with the airlines’ recent clampdown on carry-on bags. My 22 inch rollaboard, it seems, is actually 23 inches long, when you factor in the wheels. I understand the airlines frustrations as delays result from late boarders not having room left in the overhead for their rollaboards, and having to check them through to their destination. It won’t work for me. I’ve had too many valuables disappear from checked luggage, items that all seemed to be exempt from the airlines reimbursement policies (don’t leave jewelry in your checked luggage).
But that’s not the point. I want to let you know about a new wiki site that I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks. It’s not a topic that I have any real expertise in — which is why I made it a wiki, I guess. However, it is a topic that is coming up increasingly in conversations, and one that is related to the perennial discussions about inappropriate content and unsafe net practices.
We wrote Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) in the mid-ninties, as schools added technology to their classrooms and connected themselves to the Internet (remember NetDay?). But many of those AUPs have not changed in more than 10 years, while the information landscape has grown enormously and evolved in some significant and impactful ways.
So I have established this wiki, School AUP 2.0 (sorry), to facilitate more conversation about AUPs, and to provide a watering hole for professional educators who are looking to cross the desert. The page features an overview, a notes page (for random jottings), a structure page (listing common structure elements), and an article about a layered approach to AUPs.
The wiki also includes a number of resource pages with RSS feeds from my own Diigo account and Del.icio.us sites tagged by anyone. There are listings for:
- AUP Guiding Documents (tagged “aup” & “guide”)
- Sample AUPs (tagged “aup” & “sample”)
- AUP Examples (tagged “aup” & “example”)
- Cell PHone Policies (tagged “aup” & “cellphone”)
There is also an RSS feed listing for blog entries that include school and AUP.
Some of the wiki pages are not editable. However, most of them can be commented. There is an RSS feed for the entire site as well as separate feeds for individual pages.
Thanks for all this hard work. I have just been accepted to create an Internet Safety curriculum at my school. This is very important to me as a mother and an educator. Thanks for helping keep the students safe in this new world.
This is a great and much needed contribution. I will share it widely. I don’t suppose anything like this exists for school technology plans?
Lisa Nielsen – The Innovative Educator
http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com
This is exactly what I’m presenting on at NECC this year and have collected several ‘best practice’ policies from around the world that I can share. I’ve also done a pretty fair amount of research on the topic, about what MUST be included and what is optional to include.
I’m en route myself right now, but I’ll contribute within the next few days.
Interesting idea! Will the URL be made public so we can view and/or chime in?
Sorry Doug. There was a link in the article, but the URL should have been posted. It’s:
http://landmark-project.com/aup20/
If this becomes active, then I’ll probably buy a Domain…
I’m on a committee to update our district’s very outdated AUP. We’ve just started the process and have already had some interesting discussions, such as how an online high school newspaper, for instance, differs from a print-only version. I’ll definitely being revisiting the wiki. Thanks for organizing an important, timely topic.
See you tomorrow at the Sacramento COE 🙂
The school district I work with has just started on this journey by forming a committee. We learned from the IT department that the main source of our frustration is that the program (Websense) we have to monitor sites re-certifies websites several times a day so that one minute a site is available and the next it is blocked.
We are looking for a safety program that has more flexability. At the same time we are rewriting AUP policies. David, Thanks for creating this wiki. I have already posted it on our committee wiki site.
Thanks for putting together the wiki. Our school has been looking for a resource to see AUP policies and to adopt one that fits our needs.
David,
Great idea! I was working with a district several weeks ago who was struggling with this. I’ll be sure to send them to the wiki.
Thanks!
glennw
Hi David
You may want to take a look at CTAP Region IVs Cybersafety Project. We have extensive resources for AUP’s, cell phone policies etc.
We also have a robust Administrator Resources section for school administrators who are dealing with disciplinary issues around social networking. We’ve been presenting workshops called “MySpace, Your Campus and You(Tube) to school administrators all around the SF Bay Area and will be training other CTAP Regions on the materials this summer.
CTAP Region IV Cybersafety Project
http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/
Admin workshops:
http://ctapcybersafetyschooladmin.pbwiki.com/
Links to other Cybersafety sites:
http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/cybersafetylinks.htm
Ha! I could have used your resource this past summer when I revised our district’s AUP in committee. We did scour the web, read articles, and came up with something much better than we had. What we did is make separate AUPs for Staff and Students/Guests. There are similarities, no doubt, but there are some differences, too.
Our teaching contract stipulates agreement with the AUP each school year.