Model AUPs for student empowerment?
I received this e-mail earlier in the week:
My name is [anonymous]. I am a Library Media Director at [high school] in [city, state]. We are a small community, who until recently underwent tremendous growth in the number of students and buildings in our district. I am writing to you because I have been an admirer of your blog and writings on how we, as educators, can shape the educational direction of students using technology. Your posts on Dangerously Irrelevant have inspired me to no longer take a back seat and wait for changes to occur in our district. Now, I’m trying to lead the charge. I have for several years been met with the proverbial “brick wall” when attempting to get the district to allow more access to technology tools on-line. We currently do not permit access to many Web 2.0 sites that actually help with our student’s education. With persistent badergering, our Central Administration is allowing me to rewrite our Acceptable Use Policy so students can supplement class instruction with blogs, access academic content from YouTube and similar video sites, and post information on wikis. I would love to know what you believe should be in an AUP that addresses the concerns of today but is still conscious of the technology access of tomorrow. I’m sure you are very busy, but any help you can provide to me and my students would be greatly appreciated.
Here is my rather lame response:
Hi [anonymous], I haven’t really seen any good model AUPs, but then again I haven’t gone looking. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.doe.state.in.us/olr/aup/aupmod.html
http://tinyurl.com/2s7o8oI would find some tech-savvy districts in your state and see how they’re handling their AUPs. They may be better resources for you than I am. Maybe the edublogosphere has some suggestions for us both?
So, how about it? Does anyone have, or know of, a good student AUP that can serve as a model for others? One that seems to appropriately address the safety concerns of districts while simultaneously affording students access to the digital tools that are revolutionizing the rest of society?
You know, NSBA, AASA, NASSP, and/or NAESP (and their state affiliates) should be helping districts with this. Maybe some of these leadership organizations are and we just need to bring their efforts to the forefront?
