ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

"We may have been great fools to develop the post office, to invent the newspaper and the railway; but the harm is done--it will be our children who will see it; we have created a Frankenstein monster at whom our simplicity can only gape." Henry James, late 1890s

Technology exists, and its prolific functions and purposes, while immensely useful in todays world, can be extremely dangerous. It is the job of an educational institution to protect its students and that is the intent of the acceptable use policy. Technology advancement has only sped up each year, and educational institutes are struggling to keep up with these advancements. Schools have attempted to block certain websites, filter the internet and essentially control all data coming into the school; this is an impossible fight. Schools have recently come to the realization that they cant protect students from the outside world once they have plugged into the internet, and even more importantly they shouldnt have to. Schools realized that they were acting as over-protective parents, smothering the students, rather than teaching them to deal with the realities of the World Wide Web. Students need to be taught how to make good choices online, just as we teach them to make good choices out in the real world. For many educators, teaching students to be responsible users of technology is more palatable than the imposition of external controls. Young people who critically evaluate the information they retrieve, respect intellectual property, and monitor their own online behaviour are better able to function as conscientious citizens in the modern world. Therefore, many schools are adopting locallydeveloped Acceptable Use Policies which put the onus for ethical Internet use on the individual (Miller, 2004). This new way of thinking about protecting students opened the door for new questions as well. How private is e-mail? Who's liable if the messages students send contain hate speech? It's

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so easy to lift code from a well-designed Web site, or to incorporate popular music and other multimedia into presentations, so how do you make copyright issues real? What consequences are appropriate when students (or staff) cross the line (Carter, 1998)? These are all things to consider when writing an acceptable use policy. Most acceptable use policies follow a general set of guidelines, with variations to accommodate specific school needs. Most institutions include the following information in their policies: 1. An explanation of what an acceptable use policy (aup) is and why the school needs one; sometimes, this section can also include the mission or vision statement for the institution and the school uses that statement to tie in the aup. 2. Most aups also include an availability of access, or a policy statement, that explains who the policy applies to and how one might be granted access to use a device while attending the institution. This is also the section that typically addresses which type of technology services fall under the aup; for example, mobile devices, school and personal computers, internet usage, networking systems etc... 3. The next two sections are what might be referred to as the meat and potatoes of the aup. The acceptable and unacceptable use statements. The acceptable use statements usually cover what an appropriate use of the computer would look like. For example, you are responsible for maintain the secrecy of your login ID and password, or your school account is to be used for educational purposes only. 4. The unacceptable use policy statements should clearly outline behaviors that would be unacceptable. For example; school technology resources cannot be used for illegal

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activities including but not limited to the following: illegal downloads, copyright infringement, child pornography, drug sales or purchases, harassment or hate mail. 5. Typically these two sections are followed up with the consequences section. In this section consequences for violating acceptable use policies are laid out in detail, and often vary from in house punishment to legal prosecution.

Below are several AUPs that are varied in complexity, and yet generally following the format outlined above. http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/Departments/main.asp?titleid=etsaup http://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/technology/docs/AU_Guidelines_20131206.pdf http://www.nisd.net/acceptable-use-policy http://www.allenisd.org/Page/2378 One last consideration on the topic, when writing an AUP a school must consider its own beliefs and vision for its institution in order to create an AUP that will work with its population not against it. Below I have included a power point that goes into detail about the considerations an IB school must take when framing an AUP policy that fits with the IB mission statement. This was particularly useful for me as an IB teacher and technology coordinator for an IB school. http://www.ibo.org/ibap/conference/documents/SheldonBradshawFramingAcceptableTechnologyUseThroughtheLearnerProfile.pdf

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Works Cited
Allen Independent School District. (n.d.). Acceptable Use Policy. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from Dr. E.T. Boon Elementary School: http://www.allenisd.org/Page/2378 Austin Independent School District. (2011). Acceptable Use Policy. Retrieved February 5, 2014, from Austin ISD: http://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/technology/docs/AU_Guidelines_20131206.p df Carter, K. (1998, March). How to Teach Students the Rules of the Online Road. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from Questia: http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-20442206/how-to-teach-studentsthe-rules-of-the-online-road Greenville County Schools. (2014). Acceptable Use Policy. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from Greenville County Schools: http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/Departments/main.asp?titleid=etsaup Miller, J. (2004). Intellectual Freedom and the Internet: Developing Acceptable Use Policies. Retrieved February 4, 2014, from School Libraries in Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/eppparchive/100/201/300/school_libraries_in_canada/2004/v23n03/Article.aspx@ArticleID=33 Northside Independent School District. (n.d.). Acceptable Use Policy. Retrieved February 6, 2014, from Northsaide ISD: http://www.nisd.net/acceptable-use-policy