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Scenario This is the second year of a three year, bond funded, expansion of technology in the Bloomingtown Schools. Last year the bond funded the creation of an infrastructure which provides internet access to all classrooms in the district. This year five multimedia computers are being installed in each classroom, and a 20 station lab opened in each elementary building. Labs in the middle schools and high schools were updated and laptop carts are available as well. All of the rooms have been equipped with interactive whiteboards and the teachers are to be trained on all of the technology as the year progresses. As access to technology has increased in the schools, your district has recognized the need to develop policy about:

* how to keep students safe as they use the internet, * how to ensure students know how to behave when using the internet, and * how to provide students with the best learning experiences possible on the internet.

As one of the most knowledgeable teachers in your building concerning the use of instructional technology in schools, you are a member of your school Technology Committee and you advise the district-wide committee to help develop and implement policy. Last year the committee used a sample Internet Acceptable Use Policy Template downloaded from Bascom, Technology for Education to create a district-wide Acceptable Use Policy. This year, your committee is studying the issue of filtering software to recommend whether the district should adopt filtering software for any or all of its buildings. Finally it will develop a plan for teaching teachers, students and parents how to use the internet responsibly in the Bloomingtown Schools.

Meanwhile many of the science classes in the Middle School have been introducing students to the Internet as part of a grant project with a local university. Parents signed a permission slip giving students permission to participate in the project. Students (and their parents and teachers) signed the district acceptable use policy accepting responsibility to use school equipment and privileges appropriately.

Students were taught how to access the Internet from school and how to search for information using a search engine. They were encouraged to take home URLs for the science work they were doing so that they could show parents what they have been doing and so that they might work on extra credit assignments at home if they had home access to the Internet. They also learned how to scan and edit images and bring images from the Internet into word-processed papers so that they could use illustrations in their final report for the project.

Yesterday one of the teachers confiscated a set of a composite pictures which show the faces of students, teachers and administrators scanned from the school yearbook, integrated into pictures of nude bodies from the Internet. When talking with the principal, the student who brought the pictures to school denied violating the acceptable use policy all students signed, stating that no school equipment was used to create or print the pictures. When contacted, the student's parents were furious with the school for teaching the student skills to achieve such a task independently at home without adequately teaching the responsibility for how to use the skills. They are organizing a petition to take to the school board aimed at restricting use of the Internet in the schools. The investigation into this incident uncovered two cases of cyber bullying, both involving middle school girls. In one incident, untrue rumors had been broadly spread about a very popular girl, while in the other snide comments had been posted anonymously about an academically poor student who had earned a coveted solo part in the school musical.

=Task= You need to be knowledgeable about all aspects of the issue, but the committee has decided to break into subcommittees. You have been asked to serve on a sub-committee of your technology committee to learn about and share recommendations about one aspect of this situation. Your group should discuss the issue and prepare a set of recommendations for our Superintendent of Schools. This is district-level committee and should take the needs of all grade levels into account. The committee as a whole will edit a letter to Superintendent Bednar which will represent your agreement on one set of recommendations; if you can't all agree, you can have what is called a minority report, a section of your report in which those that disagree express their side of the argument. If someone on the sub-committee does not participate in the discussion and the development of the recommendations, go ahead without them. Teaching an online activity is a bit like herding cats. Some people don't pay attention to the schedule nor do they read their email.

We will use a set of interconnected wiki pages for this project; each subcommittee will have its own wiki page. The purpose of the wiki page is as a place for you to collaboratively write your letter to the superintendent of schools containing your subcommittee's recommendations. The wiki page has a discussion (go to your subcommittee page first, then click the discussion tab at the top) where your subcommittee can discuss what the recommendations should be. Then on the wiki page itself you all help to edit the memo (remember to turn on editing to be able to edit your wiki page). You should not use email, face-to-face contact, or telephone to communicate; we need a record of all group correspondence on the project. To get to your subcommittee wiki page, click on the committee name below:

How should the student be disciplined? What school policy was violated? Does the school AUP cover the incident adequately? If not, how should it be amended? ||= Committee2 How should Internet filtering be used at the schools? What type of filtering is best and how would it work? ||= Committee3 What should students be taught about cyberbullying? What policies should the district develop related to cyberbullying? ||= Committee4 Do special safeguards and/or privileges need to be available for students at different grade levels? || Foley Masland Souders ||= Bosh DeDona Fraley Mosquera Stoll ||= Brown Figarra Jennings Paruta Wilson ||= Carpenter Flowers Kalinski Sammons ||
 * = Committee1
 * = Andrews

Resources
To prepare for this in-class activity, there are links to several websites listed below. In addition, you should feel free to search the Internet to find your own resources. There are many examples of actual school acceptable use policies, commercial filtering programs, etc. There is also a link in the course shell for an acceptable use policy template.


 * __Safety Net__
 * __[|School Discipline__]__
 * __A Safety Net for the Internet__
 * [|GetNeTWise Tools for Families]
 * __[|Blocking Software FAQ__]__