Technology Policies in School

Looking at the Bellingham Public Schools website I was able to view their technology policies. Clearly, the best part of their policy was found under “unacceptable use”—participating in chain letters. Joking aside, the technology policy at Bellingham Public Schools covers EVERYTHING. I especially liked that they included staff in the rules. Most people are held to special standards when issued a device for work. But each school can be different. Teachers in my (small) school seem to enjoy a little more freedom with their devices. But the next time I get a chain letter in my school email I will suggest some more strict changes to our policy. ☺ Rutland does have an acceptable use policy in place. It does a good job being descriptive about what may fall in the spectrum of inappropriate or unethical. It does not (smartly) list the effects of a violation past restriction or removal from the network or school issued device. I do think that there could and would be additional repercussions for those violating the usage agreement. But you certainly would not want to speculate about what the punishments could be for every possible scenario. Every situation is different. Rutland also has a Distance Education policy. But it only states that this is available as an option for students. It seems no different that the policy of other districts. Rutland does not have an Internet Publishing Policy. I have noticed that other schools require parental permission before a student’s work can be published. Certainly this is important. And this is the one that, since lacking, Rutland should be the most concerned with updating. Updating technology policies is a project that needs to be an ongoing part of a school’s technology team. Technology is constantly upgrading and the change in it should lead to a change in rules and guidelines for a school. Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) is a good teaching tool to instruct students about how to best use the technology in a safe manner. To update our policies at Rutland, we should incorporate staff into acceptable use policies and develop a policy for publishing student work to the Internet. It seems like there are some classes that we should be able to assume a student’s work will be published. Students working on a newspaper should expect their work to be published. But parental permission is a good idea across the board for all students in all classes. I also think that Internet Publishing Policies should include some notion of schools having the final say in what may or may not be published. It seems like Rutland likes the idea of “less is more” in their technology policies.