// Langwitches Blog

I was asked to write a policy to address the use of social network sites, in particular MySpace, by our elementary school students (even from outside of the school). This policy should also address cyberbullying, expressing racial and other offensive comments, etc.

I turned immediately for help to my own social network, such as Twitter, Classroom 2.0 Ning and to a Listserv “Forum For Independent School Educators“. In addition I e-mailed the Technology Director from one of our feeder schools here in town.

Most of responses and posts that came out of the “cry for help/info/resources” was a request to please share what I come up with and to keep the thread public. Also, there was the issue of “Are we even allowed to make a policy for our students that deals with issues that are not taking place on our campus”?

The most useful response came from Colin (American School in London). He sums it up nicely by stating:

As a result, we have policy that doesn’t outright restrict students from having MySpace or other online profiles, even if it means the students have those profiles in violation of the site’s terms of service. Instead, we educate the students and the parents about the dangers of the internet and their responsibilities of being online. It’s a continual process that changes from year-to-year depending on the situations we encounter.

In response to how a school can deal with issues when students have been “caught” posting inappropriate material (school information, inappropriate photos of themselves and classmates, hateful material, cyberbullying others, etc) on a social network site or distributing it via other electronic media, Colin has the following advice:

Because what they had posted had an effect on our community, we were within our rights to deal with the situation (despite the fact that some parents still want to claim that because it happened off school grounds, we shouldn’t be able to get involved). However, our school’s mission statement clearly integrates community into our philosophy, so we have pretty solid ground for dealing with these situations. We combined that discipline with education across the middle school grades (5-8) about rights and responsibilities online, and made sure that information got home as well.

from George at one of our feeder schools I received the following:

from my experiences it is best to incorporate the social networking policies that you develop into the broad acceptable use policy that you have students sign at the start of each school year. It is imperative that students understand that they represent your school even when they are off campus, and their ability to utilize resources on campus is tied to their behavior off campus.

I have been looking at all different AUPs that schools all over the world have posted on their websites, in order to come up with one that will best fit our elementary school community.

Resources

• Why do school’s need Acceptable Use Policies? (.pdf)
• Acceptable Use Policies (Wiki)
• Social Network Acceptable Use (Wiki)
• EduHound Weekly