July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 1995 Vol. 4 No. 2
Censorship and Electronic Environments in Schools
By Jennifer Spaeth
To ensure its students enjoy the benefits of on-line access, the San Francisco Day School has addressed community concerns with a full menu of student and parent education, Internet workshops, student Internet use policy and materials, and a parent volunteer program.
It happened at the beginning of this year. Our school went on line with full Internet access—high speed and in full media. Generous donations, an excited faculty, a terrific Internet provider, and a helpful phone company resulted in a swift transition into the information age. The San Francisco Day School's (SFDS) administration and faculty decided that the first phase of Internet access development would be to create a small but powerful computer center in the library, since we view the Internet as an information source and, therefore, a fundamental library function.
Faculty and students alike were very excited about the access to new sources of information. Images, text, sound, and video from millions of sources on and off the planet are available via the Internet from places like the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia; the Hubble telescope in space; and the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The opportunity for rapid communication with the NASA space crew on the Space Shuttle, relief information on the Kobe earthquake in Japan, and cooperation and response from the global community open doors to different ways of teaching and learning.
As
one parent talks with teacher Jennifer Spaeth (wearing the black turtleneck)
in the background, another parent volunteer works alongside the students at
the Internet center in the San Francisco Day School's library.
Concerns and Benefits of Internet Access
The school community recognized early the need for a student Internet use
policy. School faculty, parents, and I struggled to come up with a plan. The
community was concerned that students would access inappropriate material
and that student privacy needs could be compromised. The SFDS Technology Planning
Committee, with the help of library parent volunteers, evaluated potential
approaches to managing Internet access. The committee, which I chair, is comprised
of 13 teachers and administrators who have worked to understand the concerns
and the benefits involved in giving our students access to electronic information.
The responsibilities of the committee include making recommendations for planning
the technology program at SFDS.
Among other challenges faced by the committee was the representation of the Internet in the media. The media tends to pay more attention to access to pornography and inappropriate materials than to the educational potential of electronic information. To balance this representation, the SFDS Technology Committee identified the benefits of on-line access, which include using technology as a critical thinking tool to encourage students to make informational connections and identify degrees of relatedness. Teachers commented on the advantages of technology in integrating the curricula of all subjects, addressing different learning styles through multimedia, and giving students access to more information sources and communication potential than had previously been available. The SFDS faculty are also excited about how the use of networks and multimedia could change portfolio student evaluation. Educators are enthusiastic about interschool collaboration on research projects and the ability to access up-to-date information relating to their subjects.
The SFDS Technology Committee was also worried about students' accessing inappropriate material on line and giving out personal information that could be used by individuals who want to harm children. These issues and others are being addressed by educators through curriculum design and integration that focuses on the use of on-line services and electronic media as a critical thinking tool.
A survey of the fifth- to eighth-grade students at SFDS showed that approximately 30 percent of upper-school children have on-line access at home, with most of them acquiring access within the last year. This discovery underlined the need for a school education program aimed at teaching students and parents common-sense safety practices. When children “go on line,” they leave the building and may meet other people on their journey-other students, teachers, professional experts, or friends. They could also engage in conversations in cyberspace and encounter Internet users who may want to harm children. Just as we educate our children to make intelligent choices when they exit the home environment, we also need to help them exercise common sense when they exit the school environment and travel the planet via wires and satellite.
Traveling on line is also like entering a very large bookstore. Some of the information is not appropriate for children. Such information can be found through a directed search or simply be stumbled upon. Students need guidance on what material is acceptable to access, just as they would in a bookstore. Students will be less confused if the educational message regarding safe and smart use of on-line services is fairly consistent between home and school.
From a technological standpoint, trying to control conversational space and access to inappropriate material at the school would be extremely difficult if not impossible. Some students invariably will excel at manipulating networks and getting around any controls that a system's administrator might put into place. Because of this, and because many of our students have access at home, SFDS chose an approach that focuses on parent and student education as well as student supervision.
Education and Supervision
To encourage a more united community approach to managing student use of the
Internet, SFDS developed a parent education and volunteer program. Our efforts
to involve parents include sending home educational materials and a student
contract and conducting monthly workshops on how to use Internet tools. In
addition, the Internet center's parent volunteers help develop student use
policies and are responsible for supervising and helping students who use
the Internet to access computers outside of class time. Parent volunteer suggestions
and ideas are critical in developing the management policy for Internet use
in the library. When parent volunteers explore the Internet with students
in the library, they help the school community come to a consensus about what
materials are deemed inappropriate.
A brochure regarding child safety and the use of on-line services is also included in materials sent home with the students. The brochure, “Child Safety on the Information Highway,” was written by Lawrence J. Magid, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and produced by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Interactive Services Association. The brochure clearly explains the risks of on-line access and outlines ways to reduce them while using on-line resources. The guidelines ask parents to take responsibility for and become involved in their children's use of on-line services. Parents are also urged to mention the importance of not giving out personal, identifying information. The brochure includes a section titled “My Rules for On-Line Safety”, which is meant to be detached and put near the computer to help remind children of their responsibilities.
| My Rules for On-Line Safety |
|
| Reprinted from the brochure “Child Safety on the Information Highway,” by Lawrence J. Magid, with permission of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). ©NCMEC 1994. All rights reserved. This permission constitutes neither sponsorship nor endorsement by NCMEC of the points of view or opinions presented in this publication. Copies of the brochure are available from NCMEC by calling 800/843-5678. |
Also included in the informational package SFDS sends home to students and parents is a Student Acceptable Use Contract. This contract clearly outlines both parent and child responsibilities and is to be read and signed by both. The contract was modified from a document made available on the Internet by the California Department of Education. This and other information can be found on the Department of Education's Web site at: http://www.cde.ca.gov/.
Any students signing the contract must assert that “as a representative of the school, [they] will accept personal responsibility for reporting any misuse of the network to the system administrator.” The contract states that “misuse can come in many forms, but it is commonly viewed as any message(s) sent or received that indicate or suggest pornography, unethical or illegal solicitation, racism, sexism, inappropriate language, and other issues described below.” The contract also requires that the student be polite, use appropriate language, and follow privacy guidelines. Students are taught how to exit quickly from inappropriate material they may have stumbled upon on line. The consequences of not following school guidelines include loss of use and service benefiting the technology program.
When parents sign the contract, they state that they “accept full responsibility for supervision if and when [their] child's use is not in a school setting.” Teachers, through the contract, maintain that they will “agree to instruct the student on acceptable use of the network and proper network etiquette.”
SFDS offers parents monthly hands-on workshops on how to use Internet tools and explore electronic information with their children. Emphasis is placed on using the computer as a tool to bring people together and share experiences. Many of the parents who participate have little experience with computers and no experience with on-line services, and through the workshops they become more comfortable learning how to use new technologies. The workshops generate so much enthusiasm that parents who have attended them often become involved in the parent volunteer program of the school's Internet center.
The Parent Volunteer Program
When teachers bring their classes to the library to research information or
to communicate via e-mail, they are responsible for student supervision. After
school, the library is open for students to explore information on their own
time. Since the librarian has many responsibilities at this time, additional
supervision was needed at the Internet center.
The Internet center's parent volunteer program helps the school increase the level of supervision of student Internet use and creates opportunities for parents to become much more knowledgeable about Internet access issues. Parent volunteers are responsible for ensuring that students abide by library computer use policies and do not access inappropriate material, supporting student research as much as possible, sharing the students' experiences, and learning about Internet access from the students.
The parent volunteer program can benefit the school community. Increased parental involvement in schools has been identified by the California State Assembly as a way to improve student performance. To encourage this involvement, a new California law allows parents to take time off from work to participate in their children's school activities. The Family-School Partnership Act, Assembly Bill 2590, became state law on January 1. The act was authored by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin when she was still a state assemblywoman. Eastin commented that “when schools work collaboratively with families, studies show that students have higher grades and test scores, better attendance, fewer placements in special education, more positive attitudes and behavior, higher graduation rates, and greater enrollment in postsecondary education.”
Conclusions
The Internet is an incredible information resource and a powerful communication
tool. The ability to use new technologies is becoming a more important factor
in career options, and the future success of today's students will be more
affected by their understanding of and ability to access and use electronic
information. The increased use of on-line services in the home by children
adds to the impetus for schools to take a more active role in family education
regarding their use.
Schools have the potential to be access points and educational centers for exploring Internet resources. Increased involvement of parents in school education programs can help address community concerns and can improve their children's overall academic performance. If educators assume responsibility for helping students master the use of technology and educating them about potential risks, students will become more empowered to make intelligent choices.
Jennifer Spaeth is a Math and Computer teacher at San Francisco Day School in San Francisco, California. After earning a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Jennifer Spaeth joined the Peace Corps and taught math and science to seventh and eighth graders in Nepal. Two years later, she resumed her education, earning a master's degree in environmental studies from the University of London. After several years doing environmental impact analysis for Environmental Science Associates in San Francisco, Spaeth returned to the classroom to teach math. Her involvement in teaching computer began with a personal interest in and excitement with the computer.
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