Six Problems with Mobiles. and Six Solutions

This is two years old and many of the issues remain unresolved! 

To see this in its glory click here and click 100% on the top left.

Acceptable Use Policy: Two school years on.

In the near two academic years that the AUP has been in force, it has stood up to the ebb and flow of issues raised in a School.

There was a rash of Facebook incidents which were easily covered by the terms. Twitter has taken root amongst teenagers despite the hostage to fortune that it entails. Again the AUP quickly dealt with these issues: the concept of a School Community that exists outside of physical locations has taken root.

The rise of Smartphones and tablets has been easily accommodated.To date there hasn't been an incident that would case me to update it. 

Unfortunately it seems a step to far for most schools who continue to churn out semi-legal commandments which thunder about not a lot but at great length.

The AUP

5/9/ 11 Acceptable Use Policy: What happened Next.

(This post dates back to September 2011)

As part of our overhaul of the School’s ICT strategy to include mobile deviceswe totally revised the Old Testament AUP policy which was the usual set of commandments all beginning ‘Thou shalt not…”

By engaging the whole school community in what we were trying to achieve (including Staff, School Council, parents and Governors) using a mix of surveys and the School’s website to disseminate information, there was widespread awareness of the proposals. As is normal in any survey, the response rate was around 5% and some amendments were made in the light of this. The overall response in meetings and discussions was very positive as have been emails I received on the proposals. 

The new AUP is being rolled out to all students from Wednesday as a splash screen. It will form part of the annual Internet Safety lessons we run in ICT so we can deal with the queries it throws up.  Time will tell if it works!

Here's a PDF of the policy.

15/6/2011 Acceptable Use Policy: A fresh approach.

This originally was posted on 15/6/2011

With the move to using mobile devices and the ease at which anyone can access the web it was becoming increasing clear that we had to rethink the Acceptable Use Policy to reflect more accurately what was happening and likely to happen. I evolved a set of criteria:

1. It would involve the School Community (students, staff, parents and Governors) in consultation before being finalised.
2. It would try to include all devices and services used within the Community.
3. It would try cover all use within the  Community (which includes Social networking).
4. It would not be written like the Ten commandments or in pseudo legal jargon. It is a policy.
5. It would not include policies already covered elsewhere ie behaviour, property liability.
6. It would not includes the laws of the land such as copyright.  These apply whether included or not.
7. It would not do a Canute and try and ban all non-educational use as that’s frankly impossible. Every Teacher would be in breach for starters! Pragmatism rules.
8. It would treat the students with some respect because their day to day usage in the vast majority of cases is exemplary.

Going through the many AUPs online it became clear that there is absolutely no trust in many Schools regarding their students use of ICT. Draconian sums up the majority: one had four pages and three of them required multiple signatures! Many tried to fit the AUP into one page even if it meant size 8 font!

I found two exceptions:  Edorigami’s original concept http://edorigami.edublogs.org/2009/05/21/digital-citizen-acceptable-use-agreement/ which was in turn followed by Daniel Stucke  (link dead).

Not surprisingly I used this approach in drawing my own AUP. As I write this has gone out to the entire School Community for comment (online of course) and no doubt the Student Council will have plenty to say! At least they will be able to quickly read and understand it.

Of course what might work in one School Environment might not in another.But ask yourself the question.Would respectingand trusting the students’ intelligence in their use of ICT not be the better approach?

The new AUP 

Welcome

This blog is repository of posts I made on the now defunct Posterous and the equally defunct Saving ICT blog I ran there. (Clearly I didn't save ICT partly because by the end nobody could put up a valid argument about what ICT stood for anymore.) 

It's also a record of my current developments.