Week 3: Filtering Content & Digital Citizenship

Reworking our current Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) was much more difficult than I had anticipated! Our current document is six pages long (single spaced) so I thought it would be pretty easy to pull out the main ideas.  The AUP is something I discuss with all my classes and even more so in depth with my eighth graders so I consider myself somewhat of an expert.  However, trying to narrow down three big ideas was harder than I thought.

Here is the link to my school’s current AUP: http://www.hershey.k12.pa.us/cms/lib/PA09000080/Centricity/Domain/4/815%201%20Acceptable%20Use%20of%20Technology%20STUDENT.pdf

After constructing what I thought would be final document, I decided to pull up two neighboring school districts’ AUPs for comparison.  I was surprised to find that both comparable districts were MUCH shorter and easier to understand.  However, each policy did have similar ideas to our AUP.  Like previously mentioned, the only real difference was the length. Upon investigation of these comparable AUPs, I decided to go back and revise my initial document. I wanted to make it shorter and easier to understand like the ones I had found online. 

Like Joe Wood said in the video, our kids do get it.  When he shared the story about his kids finding an inappropriate fern image, they moved right along and navigated to the next thing.  I agree with Joe’s thought that the more we filter, the more we hinder our kids.  They get it.  So, keeping that in mind, I decided to develop my AUP based on the thoughts that a long list of prohibitions might not be what’s best.  As I mentioned, I wanted to develop something easy to understand, short and to the point.

The link to my revised AUP can found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wd5UAkj5q9GBXJHUVeikkD-digJf6cJ_-n1rGEzNcSk/edit?usp=sharing

Here is the link to a neighboring school district’s AUP: https://www.palmyraportal.org/files/uploads/website/files/BoardPolicies800/816.C.pdf

I don’t have many recommendations for this one because I liked it the best out of the three.  The only thing I would change would be to shorten the list of prohibitions.  The list of 19 different things that students aren’t able to do is a lot.  In my opinion, less is more effective. 

And here is the second link a neighboring school district’s AUP: http://www.ldsd.org/cms/lib/PA09000083/Centricity/Domain/40/244_-_attach.pdf

Again, I don’t have many recommendations for this policy because I really liked it.  However, the one thing I noticed right away is that the policy doesn’t dictate any specific SCHOOL-related consequences in the policy.  For example, in our policy, it specifically states that consequences could range from detention to suspension to expulsion.  I think providing both students and parents those consequences in black and white, helps avoid any complications in the future.

My classroom approach to digital citizenship is pretty much what my curriculum is all about.  The Computer curriculum uses a website called CommonSenseMedia.org for a majority of our lessons.  This is a free resource available to teachers to teach students about digital citizenship.  Our big idea is, “How can I be a responsible digital citizen?”  Personally, I think the best way to approach this topic is to have open and honest conversations about digital citizenship.  This is something that directly affects them on a daily basis. Like Joe Wood mentions in the video is that students are going out on the Internet and using different applications and tools but our job is to educate them on how to use them appropriately and what are the consequences if they don’t.  I connected with that the most because that is something that I try to do in my classroom with my students.  We talk about cyberbullying, private and personal information, copyright and sexting (just to name a few) and educate them on how to be smart out there on the Internet, be educated and be informed about the consequences of choosing to abuse one of these topics. 

One way to approach digital citizenship that I came across in one of my other graduate classes was that it was discussed about giving students time throughout the day (whether at lunch or the last fifteen minutes of the class period) to utilize their own personal devices like “Device Time”. I have mixed feelings about this approach.  I believe one advantage would be again, to have open conversations with students about how to use their devices appropriately but on the other hand, I wonder if they will abuse that privilege.

Another approach to digital citizenship that has been gaining popularity is the Bring Your Own Device policy.  Again, I have mixed feelings about this.  I think that educating students about digital citizenship would open the lines of communication with this policy however; all teachers must be on board.  In addition, a district would need to make sure there is one uniform policy for teachers to follow so that way, not only are students learning about how to become good digital citizens but the rules of what that looks like doesn’t change from one classroom to another.