Submitted by Carol C (not verified) on April 5, 2008 - 19:06.
I am responding to Trina's post about how devastated she and her students were when the district disabled access. I am having a related problem with my district that I am not sure how to resolve.
For our homebound students, I attempted to create a blog or webpage through our district's website, working with that site's administrator. My idea was to have one place with links to lots of different educational sites, organized by subject, and with brief comments to help kids and teachers find the best site for their purposes. I learned that over 90% of the links I had chosen did not comply with the the administrator's interpretation of district acceptable use policy (because of links to advertising, or links to places where students might do something terrible, like download music).
So, I made my own personal weblog, using edublogs.org (yay edublogs). Now my department head has expressed concerns about district liability if we refer kids to the blog. My supervisor suggested some sort of permission slip, but that seems to imply a connection to the district that I was trying to sever by making the blog personal.
I practiced law a long time ago, before there even was an Internet, (yes, there was a time with no Internet!), and I have tried to imagine what kind of liability might arise from referring kids to a site from which they might conceivably, through a long series of links, eventually end up at a "dangerous" site. In researching the issue, I have only been able to find liability attached to copyright violations.
I believe strongly that rather than shielding kids, we should be teaching them to shield themselves, especially because they are already so far ahead of us. I also see us become less and less relevant to our students, because we are trying to keep them safe, back where we are. The kind of fear-driven decisions like the ones that affected Trina and me only tie our hands tighter as we try to reach out to our students.
Does anyone have any experience with the kind of liability my bosses worry about? Or any strategies for educating the most difficult learners of all, i.e. administrators? Or ideas about guiding kids to use the Internet for learning some of the things we think they need to know without bankrupting our districts through liability suits?
Internet access in schools & at home
Submitted by Carol C (not verified) on April 5, 2008 - 19:06.
I am responding to Trina's post about how devastated she and her students were when the district disabled access. I am having a related problem with my district that I am not sure how to resolve.
For our homebound students, I attempted to create a blog or webpage through our district's website, working with that site's administrator. My idea was to have one place with links to lots of different educational sites, organized by subject, and with brief comments to help kids and teachers find the best site for their purposes. I learned that over 90% of the links I had chosen did not comply with the the administrator's interpretation of district acceptable use policy (because of links to advertising, or links to places where students might do something terrible, like download music).
So, I made my own personal weblog, using edublogs.org (yay edublogs). Now my department head has expressed concerns about district liability if we refer kids to the blog. My supervisor suggested some sort of permission slip, but that seems to imply a connection to the district that I was trying to sever by making the blog personal.
I practiced law a long time ago, before there even was an Internet, (yes, there was a time with no Internet!), and I have tried to imagine what kind of liability might arise from referring kids to a site from which they might conceivably, through a long series of links, eventually end up at a "dangerous" site. In researching the issue, I have only been able to find liability attached to copyright violations.
I believe strongly that rather than shielding kids, we should be teaching them to shield themselves, especially because they are already so far ahead of us. I also see us become less and less relevant to our students, because we are trying to keep them safe, back where we are. The kind of fear-driven decisions like the ones that affected Trina and me only tie our hands tighter as we try to reach out to our students.
Does anyone have any experience with the kind of liability my bosses worry about? Or any strategies for educating the most difficult learners of all, i.e. administrators? Or ideas about guiding kids to use the Internet for learning some of the things we think they need to know without bankrupting our districts through liability suits?