Committee4

July 14, 2015

Dear Superintendent Bednar:

As a committee, we were presented the question, "Do special safeguards and/or privileges need to be available for students at different grade levels?" After thorough investigation and research, we have brought together a few main ideas that you may consider.

Firstly, we discussed time restrictions. After researching, we have found that before two years old, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children have no screen time, but this is not the age when children are attending school. It is then recommended that children 3 and older have up to 2 hours of screen time a day. Children need to be exposed to the technology that is so prevalent and important in our times today. We may choose to limit the younger ages to less time on the computers, but the research we reviewed doesn't support the need for different times for different ages. It depends more on the quality of what the time is being used for. In terms of time restrictions based on different grade levels, we submit our decision that there should not be different time privileges. Remaining under one hour on technology per day is appropriate for all grades. Teachers may submit a request for longer periods of time in the period of one day if major research projects are taking place. Their requests will be reviewed by our committee and a decision will be made.

Second, we discussed the availability of internet and educational programs to different grade levels. One aspect that we explored was that of what material would be accessed by children in grades K-5. In grades K-2, children typically are only using computers for educational purposes as far are games, exposure, typing, and simply learning how to navigate on the World Wide Web. Once students reach grades 3+, children begin using the internet for more extensive purposes such as image searching, finding documents and/or PDF files, researching people, places, etc. and more. It moves far beyond the introductory game level, which is why we believe filters should be included on school computers. We did discuss one project possibility for students in grades 4-5, where we would explore characteristics of "safe" and "unsafe" websites. Typically people consider ".com" sites as unsafe, but that is not necessarily true. We need to teach our students some key things to look for when determining whether a website is safe. Some examples that we hope they would come up with would be flashy banners claiming a prize, sites asking for personal information, pages with pop-up ads, etc. While school computers should block these spam sites, it will teach our children how to navigate the internet safely at home as well.

We hope that with this exposure to technology in education at early ages and with the correct measures taken, once students reach middle school and high school they will understand how to use the Internet properly. We believe that blocking social media sites on school property, such as Facebook and Twitter, will prevent distractions and cyber bullying. However, classrooms will have access to websites, such as Skype, that allow classrooms to communicate with other classrooms and pen pals. Therefore, special access to social media sites will be strictly for educational purposes. Teacher supervision is key to helping students learn how to use technology and to keep them off of inappropriate sites, yet one teacher cannot have her eyes on all the students' screens at one time. That is why filters blocking inappropriate sites, pictures and ads that ask for information are necessary.

We hope that you take these safeguards and privileges into consideration. Thank you.

Sincerely, Committee 4