I am in the process of creating an acceptable user policy for our elementary school students to use blogs at school.
I have found several amazing resources that are helping me put this policy together. Thank you to all who were willing to share their work.
I started out exploring a Wiki from Adavis. That took me to the Safe Blogging Post from Mathematical Musings. Mrs. Simpson has put together a great Blogging Policy for her students. She cites the following sources:
Darren Kuropatwa, Bud The Teacher, East Side Community High School, Vicki Davis, and Anne Davis.

I have used most of her content and changed some of the vocabulary to make it more appropriate for the elementary school situation. Here is the final product of Blogging Guideline & Policies for the students of our school. Feel free to adapt any further.

Blogging Guidelines

Blogging is a very public activity. Anything that gets posted on the internet stays there. Forever ! Deleting a post simply removes it from the blog it was posted to. Copies of the post may exist scattered all over the internet. That is why we are being so careful to respect your privacy and using screen names only.

Students using blogs are expected to treat blogspaces as classroom spaces. Speech that is inappropriate for class is not appropriate for our blog. We expect that you will conduct yourself in a manner reflective of a representative of this school.

Never EVER EVER give out or record personal information on our blog. Our blog exists as a public space on the Internet. Don’t share anything that you don’t want the world to know. For your safety, be careful what you say, too. Don’t give out your phone number or home address. This is particularly important to remember if you have a personal online journal or blog elsewhere.

Again, your blog is a public space. And if you put it on the Internet, odds are really good that it will stay on the Internet. Always! That means a few years from now when you are trying to get accepted into another school or university; it might be possible for them to discover what you wrote. Be sure that anything you write you are proud of. It can come back to haunt you if you don’t.

Freedom of speech comes with personal responsibility. Everything you post represents you. You shouldn’t post anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone, from your parents or grandmother to teachers, viewing.

Blogging Policy
To use the “Insert your School’s Name” school blogs, you must agree to the following statements.

1. I will not use any inappropriate language.
2. I will not say anything that I would not say in school.
3. I will not use fighting words or provoke anyone.
4. I will avoid the use of chat language.
5. I will not use tOgGlE-cAsE or ALL-CAPS.
6. I will try to spell everything correctly.
7. I will only use my screen name and address my classmates with theirs.
8. I will not post pictures of myself.
9. I will not give out any personal information about myself or anyone else.
10. I will not share personal stories
11. I am responsible for anything posted in my screen name.
12. I will not plagiarize (Copy things from someone else and pretend that I wrote it).
13. I will use common sense.

Posted: 26. August, 2006 at 10:28 pm. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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