A few minutes ago, UK Canadian educator Sharon Peters blogged (Web 2.0 Integration and New Issues with AUP) about a staff development that she delivered on Web 2.0 applications (podcasts, wikis, etc.), and how thrilled she was about the response from teachers, for whom this is all quite new. She even has teachers wanting to try Moodle. A challenge that she sees, and one that I had already intended to write about this morning, is that most schools and districts are operating under Acceptable Use Policies that were written before there was a Read/Write Web.
Back in November, EdTech published an article of mine on managing edublogging from a school or district perspective. The article was called, Blog Rules. In it, I suggest that we “..shake out those old AUPs and re-dress them for the read/write Web.” Here are three elements that I believe should be a part of any school or district AUP.
- Why — How do these technology applications help us do our jobs as teachers and learners.
- What — What practices do we believe will result in our goals.
- What Not — Here are the practices that we do not want to see.
Yesterday I received an e-mail from a tech director asking if I knew of any published AUPs that are addressing Web 2.0 applications. My answer was no, but I’d ask. So here I am asking.
- Is your district working on a new AUP to address new web applications?
- Have you already completed one and have it available for viewing by other educators?
If your answer to either of these questions is yes, please reply to this blog with any information that will be useful to others who are grappling with making the most of these brand new tools in ways that do not cause any harm to our children, to us, or to our cause.
Sharon and I have gone back onto the http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/Social Networking Acceptable Usek12 online wiki (http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/Social Networking Acceptable Use) and are working on a draft acceptable use there. We invite all educators who have “2 cents” to help us with a template to share here. We are observing students recording and posting to youtube, etc. the things the record at school, but going home and posting them. This will affect even schools who block it altogether because they cannot block handheld digital and video recorders. I’m working on a blog post on this subject right now with examples of what is happening. Thank you for bringing this important issue to light.
Note: I had a tough time inserting the hyperlink on this comment. Has it been disabled?
Here is a real live AUP/rules page for a learner blog, which links to a number of others – http://hetherington.learnerblogs.org/rules-for-blogging/. I take no credit, I just came accross it and remembered this request.